of feelings and emotions....

Today, more than any other days, I was struck with the naturally obvious realization of how foolish I was.

No, this is not one of those profound and deep insights which from time to time I have no difficulty in blurting out; this is just a plain simple fact without any strings of any implicit meaning attached to it, not one of those statements which works at different levels. It is a direct and straightforward albeit a bit blunt fact that simply stares you in the face, which in this case, tells me that I am a fool.

Besides, what else do you call a person who repeatedly insist on doing something even when the circumstances around him clearly signals to him that such tasks are impossible to achieve? The kind of person who pursue such quixotic tasks, who fails or refuses to see the futility in such tasks?

An optimistic person who use the word 'persistent' while a person which have that attribute in lesser quantities will use the word 'stubborn'; but then again, I think the underlying cause for both traits could - to a certain degree - be attributed to foolishness.

Of course one could also cite other causes for such traits: enthuthiasm, sheer fervour, pure passion, continual motivation etc. but I think at the end of the day, a touch of zeal and foolishness - be it blind foolishness or cautious foolishness - are required as well.

But note that at the beginning of this word, I used the phrase 'more than other days' and this is the crucial point.

Today I realized how dangerous it is to let your feelings to cloud your judgements; to allow your reason be a slave to your reason; and the pain which would befall upon you if you pressed ahead to go along with it.

Paulo Coelho once wrote in his famous book 'The Alchemist' that 'if you really want something, then the whole universe will conspire to help you achieve it'; but is the negative of the statement true? Is 'if you are not meant to have something, then the whole universe will conspire to prevent you from achieving it' true?

I believe that the latter statement is just as true and valid as the first one; I believed that God will guide us in small ways in our daily lives, indicating to us the things which when pursued will bring benefits to us and the things will not, in which case we should do well to stay away from.

Then, it follows from that statement, that it is entirely up to us to either heed or ignore it at our own peril; if that is true, then I could conclude that I was a fool for ignoring the obvious signs for so long; for believing that I could somehow cheat the situation and get something good out of it when it is clear from the beginning that the odds are stacked high against you. And what a blundering fool I was.

I think sometimes in our admirable haste to ensure the happiness and contentment of others, we often forget we are feelings beings ourselves; that in our undying determination to makes others glad, we tend to neglect the fact that we have emotions that needs to be taken into account as well. In short, we forget that we need to ensure our OWN happiness just as much, if not more, than the happiness of others.

I believed that when you start neglecting your own thoughts and feelings, when you place too much importance of preserving the happiness of others while at the same time, paying little attention to your attention, your sense of contentment will risk becoming superificial and transient; it will become a farce.

I am not suggesting that one should always look inward or to constantly be selfish; I am not saying that we should ONLY care for our own well-being without having any care for the charity and well-being of others; it's not a matter with a clear-cut, black or white distinction, rather it is a question of degree.

The bottom line is that when you start paying too much attention on making others happy and too little in keeping your own self happy, you will run into trouble.

But surely, when one makes another people happy, you should be happy as well isn't it? One should be able to derive some satisfaction from the knowledge that one has some part to play in making that other person happy, right?

I guess it depends on your real intentions: what's the real reason for you to make that other person? To steal some of his/her attention maybe? To gain recognition from that person? If these aims were not achieved in the course of the your process of making that other person happy, then no matter how much you tried, you could never gain happiness yourself.

And it also depends on any other external factors such as the presence of an attachment to that person; perhaps you would have expected something more from that person, something that reciprocates the sense of attachment and tender curiosity which you harbor towards that person; when you failed to obtain that, you will be dissappointed, which is contrary to being happy.

In my case, my bets would be on the latter cause rather than on the former.

At the end of the day, maybe we need to sincerely relfect back on our true intentions; I believed that the nature of our intentions greatly determines the outcome of a particular situation, just like the proper initial conditions of a system will determine the nature of the system as time progresses or the suitable initial conditions determining the nature of the solutions for a particular differential equation.

Sometimes I wonder whether things would be easier if I were to dispense all together of my predispositions towards others and treat them like a physicists would treat an experiment: impersonal, objective and utilizes standards which applies universally. I must profess that at times, it is an attractive alternative for me, especially given the fact that I am trained in that field as well. Sure, one might eventually be called cold, intimidating, cruel by adopting those attributes but there will be less damage to one's soul that way.

Or is it?

I believed that we are equipped with emotions and feelings so that we are able to grasp things beyond the range of comprehension which is provided by reason and empricial evidence alone; so that we are able to see colours, rather than components of light with different wavelengths; to hear music, rather than a series of sounds with different frequencies and pitch; to taste and savor something, rather than to perceive it as the response triggered by the detection of different types of molecules trigerring our tastebuds.

Emotions and feelings are there so that we would not ravenously reduce everything into a form of knowledge which is rigidly structured and leaves little or no room for pure appreciation of the aesthetics.

I guess that applies to our contacts with other people as well; emotions and feelings might seemed a bit of a bother sometimes but it is there so that we do not go about trying to rationalize everything that others did to you; so that we should not expect everyone to obediently act accordingly to the last letter; so that we are able to give other people the benefit of the doubt and make allowances for others when something goes amiss.

After all, we are only human beings created by God; imperfection is an inevitable facet of our existence.