I fancy myself to be a logical and rational person, using reason as the basis for many of my decisions. But I also realize that I can be a deeply emotional person, at times acting on a whim or based on what or how I feel. Because my emotions tend to be fleeting, changeable, unpredictable and irrational, I am often wary of them. Because reason is what distinguishes me from brute and unthinking animals, I tend to make decisions rationally, Bit I feel I am most human when I am fired with emotions. Love, I love to say, is a decision but it speaks to me in the language of emotions. Anger, the rawest of emotions, can drive me to very calculating and rational behavior in my quest to get back at the object of my anger. My faith is often an affirmation by my intellect and will but it is in the soft area of my heart that I truly encounter the Person in whom I believe. Reason makes me a man but emotions make me human.
We Filipinos are very emotional as a people. Specially during these difficult times we are going through, it seems reason has totally left the country. Many things don’t make sense anymore.
Yet the strange and even tragic thing is that, while we are very emotional, we are very simple and even naive when it comes to our emotions. It seems we only know two kinds of emotions: good and bad. We do not have a good command or understanding of our emotions. It is not uncommon for Filipinos to lump anger, hatred, disappointment, sadness, loneliness into one big bag emotion. And there would only be two possible responses: fight or flight. On the other extreme, all the good emotions are also lumped together and there is only one response – celebration!
I think there lies the reason and the feeling why we are forever in a rut as a people.
The age old problem of looking at our emotions within neat binaries.