On Emotions

Over the last year, a lot of the ideologies I've been living under have been slowly thwarted by things I see, events I experience, lessons I learn. Sometimes you face something and it hits you right away, sometimes it just takes time and multiple lessons before your conviction even begins to sway.

When Harvey and I first began talking in fourth year, he was bemused by my indifference, apathy, and relativism. i rarely have an unwavering stance on anything because i believed that everything in this world is conditional and subjective and that nothing is certain. Time moves and things change, we have no control. To be honest, he was a bit dumbfounded. He tried to teach me about about passion and how important it is to realize dreams and make the world turn. He was using Barack Obama as an example, actually, way before the world realized he was going to be an amazing presidential candidate. You have to believe, he tells me.

Professor Easton Fraser came in our class two years ago while I was taking English 301H to teach us what it takes to be an academic. Passion, he tells us, is the key.

I make fun of Adam all the time because he is what I consider overly emotional. He gets excited, you know? When he wants something done, when he believes in something, he's enthusiastic and hyper. I usually find him way too idealistic and too hopeful and I always tell him to calm down and not get overly excited about something that might not even happen. You gotta trust, he says, you gotta believe that you have control.

And you know what? In the end, he's usually right. Once in a while, he gets disappointed, but most of the time, things happen.

To be passionate, to believe, to trust, to give your heart to something and allow it to be moved....or risk it to be broken. And you know what? I can't even stand to invest my emotions into any sports game because I can't bear putting my heart into a team only to see them get eliminated.

To be passionate is to be emotional and "emotion" is a bad word. If you look up emotional in the thesaurus, you'll get synonyms like disturbed, erratic, hysterical, impulsive, irrational, pathetic, sensitive, temperamental....you get the picture. Indeed, emotions has always been considered the other end of the binary for reason and logic. Emotion is the heart and reason is the head and you should always use your head. Girls are too emotional, someone might explain, they let their feelings take over their head.

Sometimes, people might tell you to "go with your heart" but come on, really? What does your heart know about the real world? Emotions are things I avoid having unless I have to and I live my life by the belief that I should never allow emotions to affect my decisions. I pride myself in being logical and detached, never allowing my life to be impinged by feelings. Feelings? Ew.

But let's face it, we need passion. If there is something we can take out of this year's presidential election, it is passion. We can't change something and we can't work towards something if we are not passionate about what we want. How can we improve ourselves and things around us if we don't have hope, belief, and the drive to change? Passion and emotions are not the opposite of logic and reason but its partner for achieving extraordinary things in the world. Did you know that studies have found that people with their emotional side of the brain damaged is incapable of making decisions? No matter how good the person is still good at analyzing and evaluating, without emotions, you cannot decide.

We decide because we feel and know what is right and we do because we feel. If we can't feel then we won't have a drive to do and to make changes in our lives. Let your self go and allow yourself to take in the emotions. It's okay to feel, to care, to invest, to get excited, to be passionate and it's okay to get hurt once in a while. Be ambitious and believe a little and it will drive you to be the best. If you fall, get up and start again. You never know until you try.

I know hide my fear to fail, my fear of being disappointed, my fear of getting hurt behind my cynicism and doubt. I tell peopIe am practical and realistic but somewhere along the line, I lost my drive to be better and to improve, to search for what I want to do in life. I want to be moved! i want to be excited! I want to want! There is a difference between being passionate and being irrational. You can be smart and still be excited about something you desire. Passion does not blind, only witlessness does.