Emotional Management, Easy Answers and Idealism

I wish there was a pill or a candy bar I could eat to just make all these unwanted feelings and sensations go away. (There is - it's called Prozac. haha) I know what I'm doing when I'm wishing for all these pills or stupid switches to make unwanted emotions dissipate - I'm looking for an easy solution. And I, of all people know that technological determinism is probably not the way to go. These things tend to dehumanise you. Or me, whatever.

It took a while to occur to me, though, that every individual (at least in contemporary society, Marianne Dashwood excluded) is actually equipped with their own internal on/off emotion switch. It's called Emotional Management and everyone uses it everyday. In Sociology of Emotions, we talked about how prostitutes sacrifice their emotional satisfaction for economic enfranchisement. We made the same analogy to service workers. If that analogy holds, then are we not all some kind of whore? We all inevitably sacrifice our idealism to the market (and yes, I have theories about that too) and we all try to manipulate our emotions in some way or another. To convince ourselves that something is for the best, to guard ourselves against inevitable heartbreak, to deal with the inevitable heartbreak when it finally descends...

Emotional Management is necessary in society, we are all expected to make emotional whores of ourselves. Look at Marianne Dashwood as an example of what happens to you when you indulge in excessive sensibility: you end up sick and on the brink of death, inconvening everyone around you and you end up settling for Colonel Brandon instead of the Willoughby who you love, but is a whorrific prick himself. Plus, you end up being a social outcast, having broken the laws of propriety of the Victorian age you live in. heh. See, that's what happens when you put faith in abstract concepts and vagueness and things that were "always implied but never declared" (Austen). Even if they did, for a brief period of time, made you feel that perhaps existence isn't overrated after all and that life had meaning. -shrug- They don't call me Queen of Denial for nothing, you know.

Unfortunately, Blogspot ate up the better half of this post concerning idealism, youth, Blake's Songs and Easy Answers. I think I can recall some of the Easy Answer bit, but there was a wonderfully effusive and emotional motivational spiel which preceded it which I really wish hadn't gotten deleted because it balanced out the whole "Hayati is a Useless Whiner" theme of the post. It was great. ANYWAY.

Easy Answers are a tad like Cheap Chocolate and Fast Food (alliterations are mere coincidences!) - addictive, unsatisfying and will probably contribute to your premature aging/death. I think we've all watched enough movies to know that they don't really answer anything and to quote a line fromo Joan of Arcadia yesterday, "It's not about the answers. It's about asking the right questions." In Scitech lecture last semester, the prof was talking about how good questions are those which churn other questions - to which a (probably lost) Engineering dude asked "Why do Sociologists ask so many questions? Where are the answers?" I guess life is about exploring all possible truths, experiencing all the joy and pain that life has to answer. Perhaps the answer is that there is no answer; you have to live and experience the questions.

Adam Sandler's new movie - Click - intrigued me in a sense. Now, while I don't want to forward my life past the pain, I think it would be nifty to go watch old memories. Then again, it would be just as easy to get lost in the past instead of living in the present, which is what I must learn to do. Still, a Pensieve would be pretty nifty too. :)

See, this embrace of pain is a very idealistic notion. How as youth, we are so willing to sacrifice ourselves to the Gods of Idealism. Blake's Innocent Songs. Imagination. Egalitarianism. Expression. When ideals are mere ideas. Beautiful ornamental ideas. And as we grow up and reality clashes. When little rocks hurl themselves against our idealistic notions and values as the world of real Experience takes over our lives. "He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence." Repression. Rationalism. Reason as teh Evil. When Marianne Dashwood indulges her ideals against the social mores of her time, she almost dies. And then she sells out. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds" (Shakespeare, Sonnet 18?) It's a sweet concept, but when faced with a cheating adulterous spouse, are you going to keep loving him the same way? I suppose there has to be a compromise. Perhaps now it's a little bit clearer why Old John and the Nurse from the Innocence songs - perhaps now I know why they're so revered. It's a matter of keeping that childlike vision, the ability to see "heaven in hell's despite", holding on to what you believe in despite everything else you've seen and gone through. To be able to wield your pain and use it to productive means.

I've always said that if you can't change your situation, you have to change your mindset. At the end of the day, it's all about control. It's true that sometimes, your thoughts can be harder to wield than your actions but if you know how to manipulate them... you could be the most optimistic and happiest person in the world. I just need to learn that skill.

I'm very frustrated that blogspot ate my post. I was proud of it. But see, I never learn from my past experiences. I always get so drawn into the moment of what I'm doing that it slips my mind to protect myself... and my post. I suppose one forgets. And there's always something to be learnt out of everything that happens (or doesn't happen). I know for a fact that I don't want to be like William Blake's The Angel, "shielding her fears with ten thousand spears".

William Blake's The Angel
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.