Why Do We Have Feelings?
Imagine when we went home from school one day and there was a nice warm delicious pie
waiting for you.
It would make you happy, right?
Now imagine you went home from a bad day at school knowing there was to be a delicious
hot pie waiting for you; only to find out there is no pie.
How would you feel?
Probably quite sad and disappointed, right?
Happiness, contentment, love, bitterness, worry are some of many feelings we have.
To understand why we have feelings, we must first understand, ‘What are feelings?’
Feelings are mental associations and reactions to an emotion.
They are coloured by our personal experiences and beliefs.
Wait a minute.
Aren’t feelings and emotions the same?
Well, they are many times used interchangeably so one might think they are the same, but
the truth is that they are different.
Emotions are involuntary bodily responses like when you’re when you go to school and
come to know there is a surprise test.
Your pulse increases and you feel uneasy in your stomach.
On the other hand, feelings make you aware of your emotions.
So, feelings arise out of the narrative we give to the emotion.
To understand this better, imagine you’re sleeping peacefully at night and suddenly
you hear a loud knock on your bedroom door.
You will instantly experience fear and your heart will beat faster.
You might break into sweat.
While describing this incident to someone, you will describe it as, “I felt terrified.
It was really scary to imagine there might be an imposter in the house.
I felt a sense of panic.”
‘Terrified, scared, panic-stricken,’ are all feelings that are extensions of the basic
emotion of fear.
So, one might wonder, why do we have these feelings?
Isn’t life complicated enough with so many emotions?
Well, feelings might sometimes seem like a burden when they grow intense, like the feeling
of grief or distress when you lose or break your favourite toy or when your beloved pet
gets hurt.
But feelings are important as without them we wouldn’t have been able to build and
accomplish our goals.
Without care, wonder, expectation and a sense of pride; we wouldn’t have developed as
a society.
Even animals have emotions.
Think about a deer caught in headlights.
It does experience fear.
But it stops there.
There is no feeling of horror as animals don’t have the symbolism of language and the sense
to rationalize to turn that emotion into a feeling.
So, if we didn’t have feelings, we would be no different from animals.
It is the ability to reason about the past and future and to have feelings that give
way to action that has allowed us to dominate the food chain.
It has helped us shape the world for our future through inventions and discoveries and the
will to survive.
So the next time you feel distressed or perplexed, know that the feeling is what makes you human
and it will eventually pass.