There have been a few threads lately on the front page about existential crisis and it has got me thinking a lot about it. I posted some stuff in those threads that might be worth looking into… mostly other people's words and thoughts that have helped me. But lately I've been thinking about what role emotions play in my life.

I have had this sense for a while that is comforting to me… that my emotions don't stem from within me. I'm not some spring of life and emotion or something, but rather I feel like a vessel riding a wave or the wind. Or maybe it's like emotions are like scents that we pick up and they enter us and change us. But I can choose to recognize when I pick up on a "scent" or "emotion" and decide how I want to respond.

I guess I'm wondering if anybody has any feelings about what emotions are to them?

What do you think of the idea of being a vessel that is moving through life and everything is flowing through you rather than stemming from you? What if who we are as a personality is just the consequences the winds or emotions we ride and flow through? It's up to us to maintain our vessel and not be blown apart by the winds and by knowing that these are just winds or scents or whatever, they are transitory and it gives me peace that I can be free of them, or independent of them. Not that I have CONTROL over them, but rather that I know this too will pass.

    • greaseboy99 [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I empathize with the desire for meaning. I think it helps us as we venture forth into a complex narrative which is a combination of our internal narrative and the external that is flung upon us. Personally, I do feel that life has a meaning of some sort, but I'm not sure I know what it is. I guess I like to think it's a mechanism of some sort in some cosmic sense and I have some small purpose in it. Being a leftist gives me a strong sense of purpose and responsibility which does help guide my life.

      On another level though, I do feel it is freeing to let go of strictly adhering to any narrative about life. It can be especially helpful in the face of fear to recognize that nothing lasts and everything is in change and flux. I haven't read Dialectics of Nature, but I guess that's my understanding of the concept. In the words of McKenna, who I love dearly, "nothing lasts, everything is changing into something else." And I think it's the second part that really brings it home. Everything is in a state of decay, but through that new life/ideas/energies/moods/zeitgeists/etc. are born. It's like a dance.

      I posted this short video (4 mins) in another thread, but I wonder how the idea that life is like a dance makes you feel?