Basket Case

I have decided that I am an emotional basket case. But aren't we all? Perhaps its just the novel I'm reading.

Emotions are a funny thing. We have so many and yet sometimes only few of them seem to matter. They can make things impenetrably confusing or they can bring your circumstances into sharp focus. I can feel two emotions that should conflict with each other and yet I know the presence of both simultaneously, each as strong as the other. How is this possible? I don't know. I'm a basket case.

Sometimes emotions come as a direct reaction to outward circumstances, sometimes they seem to effect the circumstances themselves. Sometimes feelings are a choice, sometimes they guide our choices.

Sitting in this lonely house, as the halls darken with the setting sun, no sounds but the clicking of my keyboard, the wind through the windows and the growing chorus of frogs, it's easy to sink into the melancholy that has been chasing me the last few days. Yet just hours ago I was laughing hysterically with my coworker as we rushed around closing the coffeeshop, full of glinting sunlight, dishes clinking and music like a static background.

I can look at a picture of my friends and feel a deep penetrating sadness, my heart aching to be with them. I can feel a profound joy at having them in my life, if at a distance. I can cry out of my self pity or I can feel tears well up because I am so touched by their friendships.

What are these wild emotions? Why do we have them?

I'm a reading a book set in a world with only one emotion, fear. A world without ambition, purpose or reason. A world where everything is ruled by logic and order, but as I learn more about this world and see how the characters react to everything, I can see that life without emotion is truly no life at all. And so, though our tumult of conflicting emotions seems chaotic in contrast to the characters in this book, they are truly such a beautiful thing. God gave us these emotions for a purpose. Without emotion, we could not know love, or hope or trust. Of course, there is also the danger of greed and anger and hate. If we could abolish emotion, we could perhaps have true "peace". But we would be incapable of appreciating it. And so we take them all. I suppose we have no choice in this present age and so even suggesting it seems ridiculous but I've just been surmising about these things lately and felt like writing...I trust that God's purpose for emotions will prove itself in the end and I'll take the confusion that can nearly incapacitate me over a world with no purpose.

Anyways, I can't believe it's been over a month since I have last posted. The fact saddens me. It seems I have little ambition for.