2017.09.03: What are emotions?
Dear Journal,
A seemingly simple question bears the title of this journal entry. A question that most anyone can answer fairly easily. Emotions are a "feeling" that one has about their current context, an instinct or an impulse. Despite the ubiquity of emotions among human beings, there exists a disparity in emotional education and resources to handle all these emotions. We feel regret, we feel unstable, we feel out of place, we feel fits of joy, and fits of depression. We feel anxious and awkward for events long gone. We feel love, belonging, and comfort. However, I've been called emotionless, cold, calculated, robotic, logical, psychopathic, and sociopathic. I've felt emotions similar to everyone else around me and perhaps felt extremes similar to the most unstable of humans. That said, I have learned valuable lessons and ways of thinking about emotions that few tend to agree with or even consider.
“Emotions are tools.”
Emotions are a universal language to understand the other humans around us without speech. Emotions are a more fundamental form of communication than any logical expression. Emotions are instinctual states of mind.
Emotions are just that. Tools to interpret and communicate, tools to empathize, tools to validate. However, as with all tools, when used improperly, they are hazardous weapons that may wreak havoc with the user's own mind and the minds around them. Just as a hammer is used to push nails through wood, emotions are used to interpret the world around us at an instinctual level. A hammer would be improperly used to bash someone's head in. An emotion would be improperly used to cry yourself to sleep.
“The game of life is more or less about optimizing happiness”
The game of life is more or less about optimizing happiness (we'll dig deeper into that in another journal entry). If we use our emotions wrong, they will prevent us from being happy, and if we let them dominate our logical decision making processes, we are nothing but dogs. Eternally reacting to the environment around us and never achieving any long-standing or logical goals. Although the goal of Project Del has emotional roots, to make a difference for a better tomorrow, that goal is never realized without setting emotions aside from time to time in order to succeed. Emotions such as longing for comfort is a blatant obstruction to my own progress. Comfort must be forgone for some period of time if I'm to succeed in building something which has yet to be built. More time with friends and family must be forgone. These emotions or desires are powerful tools in order to connect at instinctual levels with other human beings, but are not the right tools for the job right now. When spending time with friends and family, it's important to pull out the proper emotions for meaningful connection. When working to push a long-term engineering project forward, it's important to keep those tools in the toolbox. Of course this is difficult to achieve and no one can achieve such an ideal toolbox. Sometimes we pull out the wrong tool at the wrong time. However I have also learned ways to prevent such mishaps from occurring.
It's about preventing ourselves from being HALTed (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired). In preventing these states, we may achieve an optimally organized emotional toolbox and ultimately prevent ourselves from self-sabotage. Emotions have a surprisingly ruthless way of sabotaging us because they only account for the past and present, they hardly ever take into consideration our future aspirations.
In order to build a better tomorrow, it is incredibly important to be emotionally adept and able to prevent reactive emotional decisions from dominating our lives.
Sincerely,
Alex
2017.09.07 Edit: One might ask why this post exists in the first place, especially on a company's blog. I retort, Project Del is about creating change for a better tomorrow, and it is in everyone's best interest that tomorrow unveils emotionally educated individuals in order to prosper in communities and coexist as individuals with very different perspectives. It takes real empathy or emotional understanding to understand a different perspective and communicate properly with other humans. That is why Project Del champions proper emotional use. That said, I didn't give enough advice for keeping an organized toolbox. An organized toolbox, in this context, to mean prevention of emotional breakdowns and lashing out at others or oneself. I'll give two tips for now.
“life has a way of taking the things we cherish away from us (it’s just the way it goes, y’know?)”
1) Positive momentum: if you have nothing to live for then you have nothing to live for, the choice is yours. However, life has a way of taking the things we cherish away from us (it's just the way it goes, y'know?). It is in our best interest to "not put all our eggs in one basket" and keep positive momentum in at least one aspect of our life at all times. Whether that be career, friendships, close relationships, hobbies, sports, etc. I've generally kept to three general categories. If there's anymore in my life, my momentum is weak in all aspects of life. If I have any fewer, I find less meaning in the aspects I choose to prioritize. Personally, I put my career at the forefront. It's something I've always been good at and made small incremental forward progress each hour I put in. It's my fallback. Friendships are usually stagnant for me. I don't make a lot of new friends, but when I do make a friend I keep them around for a while. With changing life circumstances, friends will shift in and out. There's not much we can do about that, and it can really jostle our emotional toolbox. However, as long as we have our career to look forward to and our close relationships to cherish, we can be resilient. Finally, the third aspect of life I always keep in the back of my mind are my close relationships that may or may not be in close proximity. The people that have known me my entire life. The people I've made friends with but are at a different stage in life. If my career is broken and my friends are all gone, these people are what I live for. I can help them, I can learn from them, and generally be comforted by their presence. So those are my three. Career, friends, and generally very close relationships. Health is obviously a good one to keep on the radar such as eating vegetables more than I eat breads and sugars, but that's just something that stays fairly static. Sometimes I have a workout routine for a month or two, but it slowly fades as the main priorities in life become more demanding. And then it'll spark back up and fade once more. On and on the cycle goes. Ensuring forward momentum in at least one of these aspects at all times is key to stability. It gives us something to live for and provides proper exercise for our emotional toolbox.
2) An emotion can only last as long as we keep it around. If we do something that makes us sad, we can change what we're doing. That is an option. For example, say we're sad, and we will sabotage ourselves if we're left to our own devices. Solution: don't leave ourselves to our own devices. Go somewhere, be with someone, call someone. The public is always a good way to stay stable. A library or restaurant or even our place of work are great for keeping cool and level-headed. While we're avoiding our own sadness we can push forward with another aspect of our life until we're stable enough to confront the original issue.
In conclusion, keep moving forward and stop encouraging self-sabotage by avoiding it to begin with.
“emotions drive a human’s purpose”
2017.12.08 Edit: It seems this post will be edited for as long as I have a head on my shoulders. Emotions are tough, malicious, beautiful, harmonious? etc. They cause a ruckus and they cause euphoria. What are these elusive states of mind? Why are they so fundamental? Why are they our most basic tools? Perhaps "why" is the wrong question. "How" is probably the better question in this context. I've recently realized, through meeting new people and exploring new stories, that emotions drive energy. I very much value rationality, however, I've found the people around me who are the most ruled by emotion are also the ones who sleep the least. How could this be? Shouldn't they be exhausted from their fits of emotion? Shouldn't they be tired from their lack of sleep due to anxiety? How are they not splitting at the seams? Perhaps they are! But we can't ignore the fact that they have seemingly unlimited energy. Days upon days with less than 6 hours of sleep. I'm falling asleep at my desk after a single night of less than 7 hours, how are they alive and kicking with less than 6? Could it be my diet, prolly not, could it be my exercise, prolly not. What is it? The only common strand is their strong connection with emotions. Finally, this leads me to the point of this edit -- emotions drive a human's purpose -- purpose that will fuel us to unprecedented possibilities. Now, I'm not arguing to sleep less, I'm simply pointing out: those who have high levels of emotion are also able to stay awake longer and wake up earlier. Meaning, the more I'm able to make Project Del an emotionally purposeful pursuit, the more it seems I'll be able to work.
In conclusion, the paragraphs above this edit might paint emotion in a necessarily negative light. Conversely, I believe emotion can be the most powerful tool we have to push forward at impossible speed. How else were we able to reach the moon? It's laughable to give rationality the credit. Emotions are what drove us to the extent of human existence, and it's what will ultimately push us even further. As we learn to channel our emotion, we may reach greatness.