". . . we will not . . . be in a position to understand much less to change ourselves until we have learned to accept this responsibility [for our emotions], to view the passions as our own and our doing, and to ask, not 'What causes me to feel this?' but always 'What reason do I have for doing this?"
--from Robert C. Solomon's The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotion
I am nearly finished with this book, and I will certainly discuss it more--this is just a taste. This shift he describes in one's approach to the emotions completely turned me on my head when I read it. In the days following, I have already noticed a distinct change in my attitude towards my emotions, particularly paying more attention to the strategies employed by different emotions, but with a greater sense of responsibility, assuming that each reaction or habit is at heart my own doing. This is been my opinion on the matter for a few years, but Solomon's book has really helped to clear much of my confusion about putting this conviction into practice.
(J)
What I've noticed in the past (in myself) is that emotions are tight-fisted and arrogant; in that, even in my anger, I felt justified in my angry moments because it created Self, created one of the necessary attitudes in and towards life, and changing it, which I would usually think about only in retrospect, was more about the embarrassment of my Self as a human being (and because it didn't match up to the superhuman I wished to be). What I learned was that it wasn't the emotion that was important, rather the reaction to the emotion. Why am I embarrassed?
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I perceived, less recently, is that emotions are habitual; my anger arises out of embarrassment or controlling issues, but also, out of arrogance of Livelihood (Life should be lived this way!). In a sense, an emotion (e.g., anger) in isolation, while always coming with different hues, is arising from me, out of circumstances that my mind and body felt ill fitted for (I found that this is true also about the emotions itself; at the moment my anger occurred, I was not ready for it, thus a regret for it).
(H)