Emotional Content
I had a thought that I wanted to take down, so I'm gonna do it. I need to figure out what I want to use this journal for again, but I guess I can do that later...?
These days, I haven't really been sharing myself with that many people, and that's bothersome to me if I stop and think about it. I mean, here I am, some guy with a livejournal who loves getting substantive feedback and talking about my putative 'deep thoughts' (not of the Jack Handy variety, I'm fairly certain), and I'm not taking advantage of one of my favorite communities anymore - the community of people who thought I was interesting enough to read that they decided to be friends with me and read my internet mutterings as often as they were available.
Anyway, here's what I've been thinking since I took that bath this afternoon after I got home from work and stayed up too late playing video games and watching a dvd that I checked out of UVA's Clemons library - where I work - and worrying about the state of my mouth as chewing causes an extreme sensitivity at the base of the left side of my tongue and wondering how that could possibly be related to the green tea that I drank right before the sensitivity occurred, since that's the only major change in my habits of late that I can think of that could possibly account for the sensitivity: human emotions are at their strongest when what is being considered both is and isn't more than is present on the surface of the situation.
Yeah, that's pretty vague. But think of it this way, maybe: when you have the strongest feelings for someone, doesn't it generally arise out of extrapolation? The power of an act of love - be it a romantic Valentine's-cliche sort of evening, or one of those simple things that might continue to make you smile for the rest of your days, doesn't come just from the act itself. What brings forth that wellspring of emotion most of all is the unspoken connection between feeling and action, the transformative thought that brings another's esteem into your awareness, a synthesis bringing into your consciousness a notion of who you are to this other one.
This perhaps primitive ability of the human mind to correlate its contents (cf. 'The Call of Cthulhu' by H.P. Lovecraft, page 1, for whimsical reference) isn't just present in interpersonal interaction, either - though it is arguably so in all the varying degrees of human emotional reactions, and is most especially of note on account of its existence alongside and outside of rationality. Beyond even that, however, interpretation in general has always been a selective process, and the variety of human experience could never be equalled otherwise. But I digress.
Consider the extreme emotional connection itself: whence does it arise? I submit that it is an explosion of extrapolation and interpolation - you love someone because of who they are on the inside, and because of who they will be. These are all interpretations, and here's the most interesting part, for me: they all have power based on being self-discovered interpretations. Or doesn't discovery create our feelings?
Tell me what you think.
These days, I haven't really been sharing myself with that many people, and that's bothersome to me if I stop and think about it. I mean, here I am, some guy with a livejournal who loves getting substantive feedback and talking about my putative 'deep thoughts' (not of the Jack Handy variety, I'm fairly certain), and I'm not taking advantage of one of my favorite communities anymore - the community of people who thought I was interesting enough to read that they decided to be friends with me and read my internet mutterings as often as they were available.
Anyway, here's what I've been thinking since I took that bath this afternoon after I got home from work and stayed up too late playing video games and watching a dvd that I checked out of UVA's Clemons library - where I work - and worrying about the state of my mouth as chewing causes an extreme sensitivity at the base of the left side of my tongue and wondering how that could possibly be related to the green tea that I drank right before the sensitivity occurred, since that's the only major change in my habits of late that I can think of that could possibly account for the sensitivity: human emotions are at their strongest when what is being considered both is and isn't more than is present on the surface of the situation.
Yeah, that's pretty vague. But think of it this way, maybe: when you have the strongest feelings for someone, doesn't it generally arise out of extrapolation? The power of an act of love - be it a romantic Valentine's-cliche sort of evening, or one of those simple things that might continue to make you smile for the rest of your days, doesn't come just from the act itself. What brings forth that wellspring of emotion most of all is the unspoken connection between feeling and action, the transformative thought that brings another's esteem into your awareness, a synthesis bringing into your consciousness a notion of who you are to this other one.
This perhaps primitive ability of the human mind to correlate its contents (cf. 'The Call of Cthulhu' by H.P. Lovecraft, page 1, for whimsical reference) isn't just present in interpersonal interaction, either - though it is arguably so in all the varying degrees of human emotional reactions, and is most especially of note on account of its existence alongside and outside of rationality. Beyond even that, however, interpretation in general has always been a selective process, and the variety of human experience could never be equalled otherwise. But I digress.
Consider the extreme emotional connection itself: whence does it arise? I submit that it is an explosion of extrapolation and interpolation - you love someone because of who they are on the inside, and because of who they will be. These are all interpretations, and here's the most interesting part, for me: they all have power based on being self-discovered interpretations. Or doesn't discovery create our feelings?
Tell me what you think.