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Originally Posted by
Lye
Those that know rage lose their minds and die in a jail cell or by the hands of the law. Those that know sadness bite their own ribbons of life through suicide. Those that know happiness are blind and know only a world of ignorance.
I could not disagree with you more.
I have anger management issues, my brother has diagnosed severe anger management issues, as do both my parents. None of them have wound up in jail, and none of them have lost their minds.
I also have bipolar disorder, and have never attempted suicide (and if you knew any of my circumstances, you would realise how much of an achievement that really is). My uncle's partner committed suicide, leaving him to find her body and raise two kids alone - he has not killed himself. A vast majority of my friends are diagnosed depressives, and again; none of them have taken their own lives.
This is because we accept the fact we feel this way.
The problem isn't *knowing* these emotions - the problem is giving in to despair when you feel them. We cannot control what we feel. To even think it is folly. They are emotions - we do not choose what makes us happy, we do not choose what makes us sad, we do not choose what makes us angry. We simply experience these emotions when the stimuli are appropriate for each of us. There is no rationality or logic applicable to what we feel: What makes one person feel like being sick will make another laugh hysterically. What makes one person weep will make another angry. We can control (to a greater degree, at any rate) what we think, but not our emotions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lye
We have control over what we feel and what we do, and that is why nature made us the hunters in the first place.
As I said above, this is simply not the case. Nature made us hunters, because of attributing environmental factors and a developing of our cognitive faculties. In nature, predators don't show emotion - have you ever seen a leopard cry when it takes down an antelope? Feelings have nothing to do with our former position as hunter-gatherers.
Quite the opposite. The reason we aren't hunters anymore, that we don't hunt each other like animals is emotion, is empathy. Predators utilise instinct, not their feelings.
If one were to feel no emotion, and be able to function despite this, then that's setting foot on the border of sociopathy. Everyone is, at some point or another, at the mercy of their emotions. Everyone has stubbed their toe and swore at the offending coffee table; or seen a dead puppy and felt sad, or ill, et cetera, et cetera. Emotions are our natural way of dealing with any number of variables, and speaking from an evolutionary viewpoint, are the main things that separate us from animals. Empathy, the knowing of how someone else feels, helps us understand people, and more to the point, ourselves. There is nothing to gain from deadening them to sensation. That leads simply to a hollow existence devoid of any worthy sensation to mark the fact you are alive.
I do, however, agree with you that the key to some form of control over your life is willpower.
Embrace the emotions that come to you, and learn from them. If you just try to switch off, eventually, everything bottled up will break free and tear through you - I have experienced this more than once, and never has it done me any favours.
You simply have to explore the impact these emotions have on you, and understand how better to cope with what they throw at you. Over time, you learn how to control them better, and lessen the effects they have on you; not killing them off, as Lye suggests, but learning how to prevent them dominating your life. I still get horribly depressed and in fact am currently going through a particularly rough time at the moment. But the fact is I'm used to feeling this way, and have learned over the years how to function despite it.
This is what I believe Zarkin might need to learn to do.
It's not easy, it's not fun. But I firmly believe it is necessary.
And, as my final note -
The fact you're dealing with these unpleasant, negative emotions right now is, whether you choose to believe it or not, a good thing for you. It's a simple truth; without the bad times to act as a contrast, the good times in our life would be utterly meaningless. The fact of the matter is everything is about balance.
There is no good without bad. There is no happy without sad.
Feeling the way you are (for whatever reason: girl troubles, deaths in the family.. the list is endless) means that when you finally overcome these emotions, then the good times that follow will be all the sweeter for it.
EDIT: and, as a final final note, just keep this little mantra in mind whenever you feel shitty.
Endure. In enduring grow strong.
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Also, I apologise is the tone of this post came across as overly hostile, or argumentative. That is not my intent.