Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The other day, I went to the bar with a new friend of mine named Zach. He's a graduate student at the university and it's been fun getting to know him. He's a good guy.

We talked a little bit about an idea I've kept with me for awhile now. It's about emotions.

Have you ever been angry, say, in the middle of the day, but had no cause for it? Maybe you're just irritable and people are annoying you. But nothing happened to set this off, you were just in this mood.

Isn't that a peculiar thing? The emotions are coming from somewhere in your brain, but you don't know what it is.

You can't ask yourself, "Why am I angry?" and then get a response. You don't even know what it is. You would think that you would just know what was wrong. But you don't.

It's a funny thing. Why is it like that?

It's like there is a missing connection in your brain. You can't communicate with the emotional side of yourself. You can't send a query that says "What's wrong?" and get it a response. It's just not there.

Our emotional responses are just like this. That's just the way it is. Sometimes, the cause of your emotions is obvious. You find out your partner is cheating on you, that'll be a pretty obvious response. One of your parents dies, that'll be a response.

A lot of the time, we feel like our emotions should have causes, so when we can't explain them, we search for answers. We invent them.

It used to be that when I was feeling a particular way, I would look for the reason. I would go through the day and ask, "What made me feel this way?" And then I would say, "Oh, it must be this." and feel like I found the cause.

But that's not exactly right, is it? I'm trying to deduce the answer, but I can't even check if the answer is correct or not.

I'm always conscious of this now. This is just the way we are.