Emotional Distinctions
So, while trapped in Seattle for two and a half hours waiting for our connecting flight, jic and I talked philosophy a little.
Specifically, we talked about anger and love and the differences in the way we process things (we also discovered a couple more exciting definition differences, where we were using the same word but meaning different things).
I won't speak for jic, but I was thinking that I'd mention some of the things that I figured out about myself.
I like to read, a lot. Right now I'm reading this book called Coming Out Under Fire, which is a study of gay men and lesbians in WWII. Fascinating so far and getting more interesting by the page. Now, seeing as WWII marked the true beginnings of the institutionalized hatred against gays in the military, there is also a lot in the book that pisses me off (reading the words of the people who were starting to define being gay as being a 'sexual psychopath', for instance). But my anger is not... not of the 'I want to hurt these people' kind. It is of the kind where I want these people to come face to face with the human cost of what they did, to have to explain themselves, to bring their bigotry out into the light of day in the hopes that understanding would bring compassion (of course, many of these people are now dead and the rest are very old, so good luck to me on that one).
Somewhere in the discussion, we started talking about emotion in general, about passion, one could say. About emotions that are... bigger than the body (I believe it was discussion of the Lord King Bad Vids that brought this up, actually). While I have a limited amount of trust in people and in my interactions with people, I have no doubt in the power and honesty of my emotions. What I feel, I feel with everything I have and, sometimes, it feels like I'm feeling with more than I have.
I don't trust people, I don't always trust my writing and words to connect me with other people, but I'm bang on with my connection to myself. Whether I'm thrilled or nervous or depressed to all hell, I feel it, though I don't always allow other people to see me feeling things. I have a limited capacity for self-denial, though a near-infinite one for other-denial.
There was more, but I'm starving and have no food and thus must go to the store.