Inspired from daily experience – why is it sometimes so hard to ignore your emotions although you know that it is stupid to act emotionally? Why we humans, unlike any other species get carried away by our emotions?

The necessity of emotions, as I see it, is that emotions are tools to help us survive, to guide as through our decisions, like our inner compass. Emotions are really an inseparable part of our instincts. While it may have helped us in the wild past, then nowadays in our cultural background it is often a source of useless stress. It is not natural at all to be angry and to stay angry, to be nervous all the day, because something (something really irrelevant) happened in the morning.

Unreal emotions. Because we know what anger is, it is so easy to feel angry. Because we have principles, norms and values that tell us when we should be angry, it is even easier. There are emotions that are unreal - they are the product of our own thinking and imagination.

Try to imagine that there are no emotions. There is no such thing as happiness, anger, hatred, sadness. There are only abstract notions of how we feel. You are feeling emotions, not being those emotions. I am not saying that we as humans should be less emotional and more rational, that we shouldn’t listen to our emotions. No. We should listen to our feelings. We should act upon them. But there is something we take for granted that make emotions control instead guiding our lives. We have defined to ourselves what emotions are and labeled all those different feelings. We know what it’s like to feel sad, happy, angry, proud etc. A dog, for example, is never happy or angry, or sad from its own point of view that is. How could he, if he doesn’t know what it means. Emotions just don’t exist. They are abstract notions to describe our feelings. If you feel sad, then be sad with all your heart. If you’re happy then feel it with all your body and mind. But there is no need to define it, no need to label it. You are happy because something is making you happy not because you are experiencing an emotion called happiness.

It’s rather that we are not always listening to our feelings. Instead of listening we are using shortcuts and interpreting those feelings in the background of our cultural setting. Ask yourself is it really what you are feeling. Am I really scared, angry, happy? Or is it something else disguised. How is this then helping me? We have to listen to our feelings and not to take them for granted. Am I really angry because that other person did something bad or am I just angry because it would be exactly an emotion to feel in such situation. What’s the real reason behind my emotions? YOU ARE NOT YOUR EMOTIONS.