Degrees of Emotion

Well yeah, there’s no degree of sadness. Right when I’m feeling sad for some reason that made me sad, there comes an angelic figure trying to save me from sorrow. It’s good to think like consoling someone in grief, but the way few do it is sick and illogical. “You are crying because of a series that had ended? You know, I fell from a tree once, broke my ankle and guess what? I never cried,” No! That’s not how you console.

Sadness is an emotion, and it’s universal. But the problems are not universal. There are a degree and a threshold in people that maintain the balance of emotions. Once the breaking point is reached, we feel sad. The breaking point varies with people. Some feel sad for losing their pen, and some only feel sad when someone close has expired. The degrees of holding your balance is different. But there’s no degree to sadness, and everyone sad is just sad. There’s no ‘sadder’ and ‘saddest’. I know it feels unfair when I say that a guy who just lost an arm and the guy who lost a pen is on the same level of sadness. You might be thinking of me as an idiot. But what I’m trying to say is that consoling someone by telling them your tragic event as a more considerable degree of sad event and they need to be happy for not experiencing what you have experienced is silly.

Your experiences, your perspective towards them, your balance of emotions, and your emotional intelligence act when it comes to feeling any emotion. 

Similarly, movies try to show you that there are different kinds of Love. They try to draw degrees in Love, and it is stupid to believe that. You don’t and can’t love someone less or more. If you love them, you love them. Again, the degree exists in expression. Maybe you are not expressive, and perhaps you are too expressive. Just because someone expresses Love in every action doesn’t mean there’s a degree in Love, and they love you more. There is no ‘true’ love; Love is Love. If there existed a degree in emotion, something less than Love wouldn’t be Love, it would just be liking. Something beyond Love, wouldn’t be Love, it would be something else.

Even psychologists and their wheels of emotions use different terms to describe greater degrees into emotions. When the degree is changed, it is another emotion. When your joy is beyond limits, it’s Ecstasy, and it’s not called happiness anymore. You can clearly understand the difference in terms of anger. The least intense emotions of such is an annoyance. When you are annoyed, you feel differently. When it’s beyond annoyance, it’s now anger, and you react differently from annoyance. When the emotion has turned more intense, it’s the rage! The extreme point of anger, and at that point, you don’t bow for logic.

Similarly, Love is one of such extremities streaming from branches of happiness, serenity, trust, and acceptance. Love itself is extreme, and there can’t be something beyond it. It is the ultimate emotion you can feel in that particular stream. 

It’s okay if you want to understand emotions and boost your emotional intelligence. If you’re going to console someone, do it logically. If you’re going to empathize with someone, understand their emotions, their perspective towards the event, don’t relate it with your case, which is more intense and tell them to feel okay. Because it’s not okay!

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this:
Skip to toolbar