Emotions

What make us human is 'Emotion', without that we are not even animals, we are dead (if we don't move or breathe) or robots. In Chinese, we depict emotions into four main areas (Happiness, Anger, Sadness, and Joy), though I can't exactly tell the difference between Happiness and Joy. Anyway, I think that these emotions have great impact to us. That's what drives us to do the best and the worst things that we are capable of.

Certainly, other than the four emotions above, there are more, like fear, jealousy, bitterness, etc. We often express or have a cocktail of them in occasions and have visible traits. Like some people will be overjoy with tears. As we human beings can something that animals can't - to pretend and fake our emotion that what is shown to the outside may not be the same as how a person feels internally. That's why some people have poker's face. Some folks don't 'bend' in torture.

Emotions are psychological as well as physiological/biological. When we got beaten, we feel physical pain, that could drive our anger and sadness, then we may strike back as revenge. But how the physiological/biological and psychological aspects of emotion linked together is not necessarily predictable or logical like science. Same action strikes two persons can produce different emotions, two persons with same emotions may produce different responses. That's what things some complicated. It is not necessary at a higher/abstract level of philosophy, but a result of such unique combination of factors that just make things so difficult for people to understand or comprehend. I guess what drive emotions and actions of a person also relate to the education, personal experience, and intelligence of that person other than his/her biological makeup. Certainly, some people will even inject the factors of astrology and karma. I'm not gonna go into that here, though believe they do play some parts in it more or less. As almost no 2 persons are the same, so the cocktail of emotions and actions are unique for each person in the world. That's why there are always someone not laughing in watching comedies and not getting scared in horrors.

As emotion can be considered as a double-edged sword, I sometimes will try to change mine into a knife rather. Take the advantage of it, and stay away from the destructive side of it. It is easy to say, but hard to do and impossible to do consistently all the time. Why? we always have a 'saying' (or excuse) that 'we are only human!' What I mean trying to take advantage to it is that I think there are few ways that can be tried:
1. Try not to produce 'negative' emotion, which may cause 'negative' actions.
2. Try to stop 'negative' emotion from causing any actions.
3. Try to convert the energy of 'negative' emotion into 'positive' actions.
4. Make sure the energy of 'positive' emotion will produce 'positive' actions.

Regardless which of the above you try to do, it is about how a battle between your 'heart' and your 'brain' - how to use your logical side to control or manage your emotion, i.e. Emotion Management. An expansion of 'Anger Management' it is. I think it is something can be taught, but whether a person can do it or not is no guarantee. He/she can certainly try and practice in daily lives. Regardless, I think it is something worth trying and is a good thing to people around you, especially by those less selfish people.

Enough said for now!