Fragile emotions

THERE is no doubt that emotions play an important role in our life. Next to
our physical features, they are considered our packaging through which people detect our inner identity and character.

True enough, next to the senses, the emotions are the doors and windows that link us to the outside world, and vice-versa. Thus, we can readily see how important it is for us to develop our emotions well, since our knowing and expressing somehow depend on them.

This should be an abiding concern. Our education necessarily has to tackle this important component that can play a crucial role in our life. We have to wake up to our emotions’ now urgent and crying need for due attention.

A lady senator, notorious for going ballistic in public and for her talent for highfalutin foul language, at least admits she needs to have anger management. I would say it’s not only anger that we should manage, but all the emotions.

There are many of them: love, hope, pleasure, joy, hatred, aversion, fear, sadness and anger, etc. It’s worth noting that Jesus Christ, to Christian believers the model of how we ought to be, felt all these emotions, indicating to us that emotions are at least an integral part of our nature.

In themselves, they are neither good nor bad. Their morality depends on how they are used. They are good when they contribute to a good action, and evil in the opposite case.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes them as “natural components of the human psyche. They form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind.” (1764)

From this description alone, we can understand that emotions are not meant to be on their own. Their life, growth and development, their health and vitality need to be pursued in constant and proper integration with our higher faculties.

In short, proper management of our emotions is a matter of their proper integration with our reason and our will, and to Christian believers, with our faith and charity.

One big problem we have at present is when people fail to distinguish between what is emotion and what is reason. Sad to say, many people have come to me asking about this distinction. This, to me, is a very disturbing phenomenon. I thought this distinction is always a given.

Our emotions and feelings, our sentiments and passions need guidance and direction. On their own, they can not see far and often are held captive by what is simply here and now, by what is mine, by what is material and sensible.

They cannot go beyond what is merely pleasurable to the senses. They are not expected to look for truth, nor to discern the essences of things, nor to abstract from the material world to enter into the spiritual world.

It’s not their job to bother about morality. No, they don’t have the equipment for such tasks. Theirs simply is to feel, to enjoy and the like. But properly integrated, they can add color and drama to abstract realities.

Without the light of reason and the strength of the will, without the influence of faith and charity, the emotions remain fragile, unstable, vulnerable to all sorts of dangerous tendencies, quite empty in spite of the sound and fury they can produce.

Detached from reason, from faith and charity, the emotions simply shed a light that produces a blinding glare, and their intensity is helplessly self-centered, totally incapable of reaching out to others.

They are notoriously short-sighted, narrow-minded, rigid and inflexible, yet at the same time are capricious. With them alone, we can never expect to have any conviction nor sense of commitment.

Thus, we can see how dangerous it is when emotions are left simply to be on their own. We truly need to educate them, to integrate them with our higher faculties.

Only then can we aspire to develop them in their endless possibilities. Only then is life not only lived, but also is felt in its real
richness.