“No Emotions Going? I Don’t Think So.”

By Ron Stultz

 13 July 2006

As recounted, recanted, whatever, in other of my writings, I have struggled for years to label my feelings with their correct emotional name as well as to understand emotional combinations. For a very long time, I felt, said, that I had little or no emotional life and to some extent that was and still is true. Oh, I have felt emotions and do from time to time but most of the time, I thought I was more or less emotional dead or perhaps neutral is a better term. However, recently, I have begun to wonder. 

About a week ago, out of nowhere, I was totally overwhelmed by the emotion or mental state of self-pity. Not a little self-pity mind you but 16 tons of it. No sure how long this emotional state lasted but I was totally disgusted by it. I had, have, no reason to pity myself and yet, I could not shake the feeling. It smelled bad, felt bad, revolted me and was totally ugly.  Finally, after fighting it for 1 minute, 5 minutes, an hour, I am not sure, it finally faded away but I was left with this feeling that I had felt self-pity before, particularly when I suffered a depression in 2001. I was also left with this feeling that I have wallowed in self-pity before, if not a very long time ago. 

Then today, for some reason, it occurred to me that I walk around feeling arrogance and self-pity all the time, that these 2 emotions are my base emotional state. God how awful, yet somehow I know it is true.  

Base emotional state. Does the term, base emotional state make any sense at all? 

Totally disgusting to me that my base emotions would be arrogance and self-pity. Honestly, neither is out in the open in my mind, yet I feel they are both there, hiding under the cabinets like dirty cockroaches. Talk about self-delusion. I thought this whole time I was walking around humble, friendly and honest. Now I am not sure of anything.

Am I weird or does everyone have a base emotional state that they live in all the time and are not even aware of it and is hidden from their view by a different but none-the-less similar form of self-delusion? 

Ok, I see that the tire is flat and I proceed to fix it, but what do I do when my base emotions are bad ones? How does one change one’s base emotional state? I wonder, sitting here at the computer screen, that if the mechanism I used to learn how to smile more would work? I mean, what if I think happy thoughts all the time, will that work? And what should I be thinking, feeling?  

I want to believe that the best possible mental state, emotion is one of gratitude. Just so happy to be here, in this place we call “living”. I wonder if I concentrate on that thought, will it push out the self-pity and arrogance or are these so deeply rooted inside of me that I will never be able to rid myself of these revolting pests? 

Arrogance? Certainly, I am self confident as I can and do many, many different things and successfully so or most of the time but I really thought that I did not walk around “shouting” out via my skin, my mannerisms, my vocal inflections, that I am something “hot”, special or otherwise any better than anyone else. Arrogance is a revolting to me as self-pity and to find them both in me recently is certainly depressing but also enlightening.  

Perhaps I finally am making real progress in my exploration of my own emotional world. If one can see one’s own emotional demons, devils, cockroaches, and God help me, change to a better base emotional state, then today has been a banner day.