Emotions are a funny thing.
When something triggers emotion in me, I know that it matters. Emotions also form a bridge – or a barrier – between people. So emotions are a critically important part of the personality.
But emotions can also get away from you. Like when you ‘fly off the handle.’ Emotions are your psyche’s fire. And, like fire, we need to treat them carefully and keep them under control.
Emotion even impacts our understanding. Unless I’m ‘emotionally-available’ to internalize and accept hear your words, I probably won’t be able to appreciate their logic (i.e. if I don’t like you, your opinion is probably wrong).
Sometimes, it can feel like our emotions control the joystick of our lives. But they don’t have to. Because we also have intellect.
Intellect is the more sedate and controlled side of the human psyche. Logic is cool, calm and somewhat detached. It’s soothing water to help you control your emotional fire.
I remember reading how a man sat on a subway in NYC, while a father with three young children sat next to him. The kids were unruly and really got under this fellow’s skin. As his anger-quotient rose, the father noticed his discomfort. Apologizing for his children’s behavior, he explained that they were on the way home from the hospital. The children’s mother had just passed away and they were a bit overwhelmed with the confusion in their lives.
This subway traveler was totally transformed. Ashamed of his snap to judgment, his anger was immediately replaced by empathy and concern.
Why do you think his anger disappeared?
It’s because his perspective changed. With new information, a new understanding, he revised his mental ‘framing’ of the situation, and his emotions immediately followed suit.
Too often we feel that our emotions ‘run away with us.’ They don’t have to. When we reframe how we see the world, our emotions can come into line with our reasonable selves.
Much of Torah life, the Mitzvot and their mindset, guides us toward this goal of corralling human nature and bringing it into line with a purposeful life. Each Mitzvah is its own exercise, bringing us closer to our better selves.
G-d wants us to become optimally-functioning human beings, so G-d gave us a user’s manual for life – the Torah – to help us achieve that goal.
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