We can only feel so good or so bad.
Get too close to the limit, and our brains switch off. Say, “That’s enough.”
At one end of the spectrum, we hear of people surviving torture, exposure, isolation. The most terrible privations. And something inside them disconnects. Or they dissociate, leave their bodies, and watch what’s happening from a distance.
At the polar opposite of experience, we have heroin. It feels so good, you'll do it until it kills you.
Our emotions don’t give a shit about us.
They’re there to steer us towards survival and reproduction. More accurately, to steer our genes towards survival. So I guess it’s a mercy that, once they reach a certain intensity, they just throw their hands up and say, “Enough! Nothing more I can do here!”
What’s left, then, is to populate the mid-range with experiences that don’t hurt so much we despair, or feel so good that we sink into addiction and lethargy. There’s lots of potential here. The way a volume knob can go from silence to deafening, and yet in the middle transmit all the music and conversation that ever was.
This is where I get a little crazy, thinking about emotions and how we manage them. How we chase satisfactions that won’t destroy us. We’re looking for a balance that will carry us comfortably into old age, and maybe (for some of us—not for me) pump out a couple of offspring along the way.
Even if we understand that these emotions aren’t there to help us, that they’re something we need to get a grip on and manage and manipulate (deep breathing exercises for stress, moderation in pursuit of life’s pleasures, ritual and community to provide a sense of identity and meaning, &ct, &ct…) the only tool we have to judge our success in this endeavor, beyond the fact that we haven’t blown our brains out or withdrawn into a dopamine coma, is … more emotions.
Which are the things that get us into trouble in the first place.
I have this customer who spent over 30 years in prison for murder.
He’s surprisingly frank about it. “The guy beat up my sister. I lost my temper. And if you lose your temper, you spend half your life in jail. I won’t do that again. Now when I get angry, I just roll a cigarette and think about the trailer I'll buy someday.”
That’s one guy who’s found his emotional middle. But I wonder about the rest of us, trapped inside these meat-brains and chasing our daily pleasures: whether it’s shopping or the next cup of coffee or Tinder dates or church.
How are we meant to know when we’ve gone too far? And why are so many of the things that we love so fucking bad for us?
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Camera divider and signature illustration by @atopy.
