Passion

We use the term 'passion' in a pretty blanket fashion to mean anything one has an emotional conviction for, or even the emotions themselves. Passion and/or emotion is by it's very nature extremely difficult to define in a verbal or literal way. People use descriptions of some of the physical effects of emotion - intense feelings in the stomach/gut, hot-headedness, crying, vocal outbursts - but those are really just the ways that the emotions announce their presence... so that we can act on them. In the end they are just sub-conscious thoughts, or thoughts we don't really grasp with language.

I remember having a conversation about romantic love once where I asserted that it was just a more intense version of standard hunger with a different need... companionship specifically. This goes back to my ridiculous nature to be a very literal communicator. Of course I don't think about it that way when I have experienced love. It is intense, soul wrenching, all-encompassing emotion (and/or like an emotional buzz depending on the particular situation). I have a tendency to want to break everything down into systems and mechanisms... no matter what importance it has in my existence. It's like a sickness ;)

Anyway -- the reason emotions/loves/passions fall into a significantly different category than other thoughts is that they are core to our survival. Through the process of evolution, individual humans (or our various species of ancestors) who had a physical notification of a thought that was important to their survival would have been more likely to react quickly to the situation than those individuals who saw the thought as being like any other and had to 'logically' work out its importance.

Hunger is obviously core to our survival, as well as thirst. Fear of death, well, that's pretty obviously important. Anger, revenge, hatred - not things we tend to promote as core to survival, but they certainly would have been needed in a world without social structure or protection from injustice. Hell, I still hold many of those type of feelings for our current Administration ;)

Familial love... obviously very important. Friendly love gives us our ability to bond and interact with those around us... pretty core to functioning in society. Romantic love - obviously important for establishing pair bonding, which is the only way WE survive.

Here's the tricky thing.

I consider intellect to be ultimately more important than everything I just listed. Mainly because intellect can tell me all of those things. And by intellect I really just mean logic, as that's kind of the core wiring. The tricky part is that as much as it can tell me that I should eat, should drink, should protect myself, should have friends, and should have a companion... it can't make me want to. Want. Physical emotional response is ultimately the reason I do anything... DESPITE my knowledge that it is an animalistic response developed through evolution. Even that revelation does nothing to change it's importance, because that's just how we work.

Ultimately I do everything that I do, including all of my problem solving, babbling, working, etc., in pursuit of the physical emotional reaction that I get from the rewards received from those pursuits.

It's really kind of disheartening, which is terribly ironic.

I think maybe my innate perception of this reality is why I have such a restrained emotional response. I tend to kind of watch my emotional reactions like they are remote events. Not completely mind you... love has still gotten the better of me at many given moments, but very seldomly has it overwhelmed my 'reason'. The reality is that I feel a bit cheated. It's kind of like the 'ignorance is bliss' concept. I feel like I have no choice but to over-analyze everything, which means that only really intense emotional responses really compel me in any way. If I could just experience emotion in a more raw and uncompromised fashion, I would probably FEEL like my life was much more eventful and compelling.

ARgh.

Perhaps I can figure out a way to either A) accept my emotions for what they are and think about them later, or B) coerce my life and situations so that my emotional rewards are coming from the same things that I think are valuable intellectually. Or perhaps I will just continue to feel internally conflicted ;)