Ambivalent Emotion

I am one of the proponents of the theory that emotion is basically a result of thought. I believe that the quality of our life depends on the type of emotion we have and which is governed by the kind of thoughts we keep. Furthermore, I believe that thoughts are manageable in the sense that we can control even which kind of thoughts to keep.


For the clarity of the view I’m presenting, I must state that thoughts, positive or negative, just come to our minds. What’s manageable, though, is what we decide to keep. It’s worth mentioning at this point that this sort of filtering or managing of thoughts probably demands a minimum degree of intrapersonal intelligence. With training, however, one’s command of his/her own thoughts can dramatically improve. If you enjoy a relatively high intrapersonal intelligence, you can immensely minimise the amount of time you need to master your own thoughts.


Up to this point, I deem that I’ve laid the ground for my contention. However, I still want to add another element. I need to provide an answer to a controversial question: which is more human: to control your emotions, as a result of deliberately controlling your thoughts, or to let yourself experience any sort of emotion, be it positive or negative, and never try to control your emotions by deliberately controlling your thoughts? In other words, would you be acting against your human nature if you tried to control your emotions by watching your thoughts?


My answer is in fact it is typically human to watch your thoughts and control your emotions. I believe that this is a distinctive feature of human beings. Animals just live by instinct without any sort of wilful thinking. Man, however, has will and choice. Any one person would definitely choose happiness, which is not a given, but a choice made when we decide. And when we decide, we are just practising some sort of control over our thoughts; we are selecting, sorting out, deleting and/or refining our thoughts. It is then just relative how much we control our thoughts, but it’s certainly not inhuman.


Many of us – at least once in their life – have experienced ambivalent emotion. At a moment you feel you like something or love someone, but then find that you don’t. It can be frequent in the sense that you keep experiencing the same reluctant emotion towards the same thing or person. Is this something good or bad? It’s neither I would say. It’s something that happens.


I have significantly several experiences in this respect. As I’m constantly trying to improve the quality of my life, I stopped to consider why I have such experience. I discovered without much effort that the feeling I have at a particular moment is but a result of the kind of thoughts I have at that moment. When I think of a person negatively, it’s because I recall negative situations about them. When otherwise I remember a positive situation, I change my mind about them.


But could we keep such ambivalent emotions in our relationships? Absolutely not. Any social connection cannot be healthy enough if that was the case. If we consider marriage, ambivalent emotion can just jeopardise the relationship. So what’s the way out? If ambivalent emotion happens, how can we neutralise it?


Based on my own experience, I can speak of a couple of things: being true to yourself and recognising your emotions, and, acknowledging the imperfection and fallibility of human nature. First of all, one has to be completely true to themselves and honest about their feelings. One should never feel shy about their feelings or reluctant to display them. If you feel you love someone, just acknowledge that and act accordingly without any fear. When you make sure they don’t love you back, should that reverse your feelings? (Probably I can discuss this in another post.) Then you should accept the fact that all human beings make mistakes and that they will continue to make mistakes so long as they continue to live. When you do this, you’ll easily be able to forgive other people’s mistakes, especially when you remember that you too make mistakes and you need people to forgive yours.


Another thing that is probably controversial is about love: is it a value or a desire? To my own belief, love can last forever if it’s a value. It can dramatically change or even vanish when it’s only a desire to own rather than give; when you are centred around yourself and your own wants and think about what you need all the time forgetting about what you can (or should) give.


Perhaps I can elaborate on this later.