listen to your heart 😌

[parrygripp]

"Can You Handle Your Emotions?"

Emotions are... eh. We all have them, whether we want to or not. Some people have control over their emotions, and some people let their emotions control them. Where does your character fall on this spectrum? More importantly, what's their relationship with their emotions like? Do they bury everything deep, deep down inside, or are they the first one to cry over a sappy movie? Do they even know how they feel about what's going on inside? Pretty meta stuff.

• No blank top-levels.
• Instead, characters are to respond to the proposed question: can you handle your emotions? / are you in touch with your feelings?
• Get deep. Look within. Hear, think feel... or don't.

Comments

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

It's the pragmatic thing to do sometimes.

[zsaszy]

Aside from the fact that it feels like conforming to a world built for everyone else, is repression control?

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

I would consider it a measure of control. I consider it to be two choices where I could linger on those things or I can push it down and go forward. What's the saying, the only way out is through?

[zsaszy]

Interesting interpretation of Robert Frost.

I'm not the kind of guy who mocks someone for repressing their emotions, I simply pity them. It's like a pressure cooker with a bad release valve.

I don't see it as control.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

Dante doesn't turn around in Hell.

My release valve is pretty well controlled. I'm a functional member of society and all of that jazz.

[zsaszy]

What naughty thing are you repenting for?

Functioning isn't the same as venting pressure. It just means the cooker hasn't failed yet.

I guess the difference is that I don't care if I do function in society, it implies participation in a system with values I reject.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

We all have our sins.

It's been tried and tested so if it was going to fail, it would have by now.

I find value in where I fit in society and the things that I do within it. I could reject values or I could do something to functionally make it better.

[zsaszy]

Only if guilt is universal.

People say the same thing about bad habits.

Then your sense of purpose is relational. You measure yourself by what you contribute to something larger than you. I don't object to it. I just don't believe systems improve because good people stay inside them.

They improve because someone pays the cost and it's rarely the system itself.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

We aren't always the ones to judge our own guilt.

I don't consider it a bad habit to break.

I don't disagree with that assessment. I don't look at myself as being more important than the whole and my entire life tends to be in service of things bigger than myself.

Some of us have paid plenty of cost and that doesn't change the system. At least it's doing something instead of waiting for the world to change.

[zsaszy]

Society is very good at doing that for us.

Because it feels necessary. And that, I don't understand because I don't repress my emotions. Probably because I don't fight with them to begin with.

We operate on two different instincts, there is the instinct to nurture and the instinct to reject weakness. You're remarkably nurturing for someone so repressed.

Some of you are willing to pay a cost even when the return is negligible, because doing nothing feels immoral.

I don't fault you for that. I just don't share the instinct. You're a good, respectable, egg, but I exist within an amoral frame.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

I'm Catholic so my feelings on who judges us are slightly different.

Not all of us have the luxury of being able to put those emotions on front street and not have repercussions as a result.

I care about people. It doesn't get much more complicated for me than that and if that's the standard for nurturing, that feels lacking.

My feeling has always been that standing by when I can do something is its own kind of sin. Inaction is inexcusable at times.

[zsaszy]

Non-practicing Jew, but we don't talk about that.

It's not about luxury, it's about chemistry, I'm not built for emotional repression. But I can control when and how they are expressed.

I think about nurturing like the bird allegory, it's a kind of predisposition. You come across a wounded bird on the side of the road and your first thought is that it's vulnerable. What do you do?

I'm not going to say you're wrong, you're barometer is different, but I disagree with the foundation. "Sin." Sin is burning fuel for guilt which is a conditioned emotional response based on a belief system. It's not a bad way to be if that's who you are, but it's not evidence that action is required.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

Noted.

If you can control it, wouldn't that be a minor form of repression all its own? Everyone does in some ways and it's just a matter of degrees.

I don't understand how that's a question. I help the bird, obviously.

I don't necessarily mean sin in the eyes of God but there is something of a social sin as well in the idea that I think there's an inherent selfishness not doing what we can when we can. Recognizing that personal circumstances are limiting, if people have the means, they should help the bird.

[zsaszy]

It depends on your point of view. Repression is denial, control is selection and I view it as discernment not repression. You're right that people modulate themselves but the why is the distinction. Restraining yourself because you should and restraining yourself because you choose are not degrees of the same thing.

And that instinct is just as as viable as the primal rejection of vulnerability. Others might ignore or crush the bird to eliminate weakness.

I'm not opposed to helping the bird, but I consider the circumstances.

[thedevilsworkisneverdone]

I would argue that the choice of it all is what makes it restraint. You can choose how to let those things out and the time and place and maybe the determination is that there is no appropriate time or place.

The primal rejection of vulnerability feels like a rejection of some measure of humanity. The destruction of an innocent thing simply because it's weak feels sociopathic to me.

Sure, there are circumstances. If the bird is dangling on a ledge of a skyscraper, there are things to weigh but ultimately if there is no cost, then the decision not to be kind is condemning.