Human emotions

In the journey of life, we come across different types of people. Fundamentally, we human beings are selfish. Self-preservation and promotion is the primary goal of life. Yet, there is a very interesting layer of emotions on top of the survival instinct.

As we evolved from wild animals to civilized human beings, we started living in communities. Communities made our life quite secure and easy. As we started living in these communities, our threat perceptions and fears underwent a significant change. Being an outcast from the communities had a significant impact on the chances of survival. Probably that's where our emotional mind started developing.

We have broadly two types of emotions. The first one: that makes us feel secure. The second one: that makes us feel insecure. Love is the most powerful emotion falling in the first category. We love our family, friends, colleagues, and many other members of the society. What does love really mean? One honest answer to a question probably can make it absolutely clear. Is there any person whom we love more than ourselves? Who is that one person, to save him, we can sacrifice our life? If we answer honestly to ourselves, the answer would be none. That's the reality of love. Generally, love is an arrangement whereby we support each other. Parents support the kids when they are young and the kids take care of the parents when they grow old. Two friends support each other in case of need. 

Further examination of the concept of love gets very interesting. The first question is how a person falls in love with the other person. I feel that the foundation stone of love is trust. There has to be a minimum amount of sharing. The duration of sharing is not so relevant as the intensity of the sharing. During these moments of sharing, both understand each other, their framework of life, their mindset, and their likes and dislikes. With this understanding, the mind slowly starts identifying the various needs which it expects to be fulfilled by the beloved. There may be different types of needs such as the need for sharing experiences, discussions on the meaning of life, having fun together, and going for activities such as trekking together. 

The more we have in common and the more we explore with each other and the stronger the bond becomes. With this sharing, we draw certain assumptions about the behavior patterns of our partners. However, sometimes, the sharing was not deep enough to know the instincts deep down in the unconscious mind. When adverse situations come, these instincts surface and we feel pained to see these behavior patterns of our partner. The implicit trust gets broken and the relations go for a toss. We develop emotions like hate. 

There is an interesting point of examination here. Why this emotion of hate takes over? Is it feeling sad due to a bad investment in a person and insecurity about finding a good investment? Or is it about feeling cheated due to the incorrect projection or incorrect reading of the other person? Or is it about the vacuum which has been created in life because of too much dependence on the other person? I feel that honest answers to all these questions help us understand what love is actually.

I feel that the more self-centered we are and the more shallow our emotions would be. This self-centricity may not necessarily be about material possessions. One may define his self in a number of ways. Some may confine their self to their body. Some may extend that self to their family, their material possessions, their ideas, their self-image, or their sense of being right. Self-centricity does not at all depends upon the volume or number of such fixations. It all depends upon the gravity. If the basis of love in any relationship is this strong self-centricity, it can not survive for long. 

I feel that love in the true sense is establishing a connection with the other person beyond the domain of the mind and matter. That can not happen unless the two realize the shallowness of these fixations with self. In that state when a bond is established, the foundation stone is oneness. There is no division. There is uninterrupted compassion. Even if one person sees the manifestation of certain instincts in the other person, coming out of the unconscious mind, quite unpredictable, he observes and makes his partner aware of the happening. With that oneness, the partner also considers that to be an opportunity to understand himself better rather than perceiving it as a fault-finding exercise. Thus both the partners help each other in their spiritual growth, by dropping the fixations and being aware of their true nature.