From: kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle)
Subject: Re: Exactly what I mean by "unattached"...
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 10:58:22 GMT

tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode) writes:

>kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle) writes:
>>your sectret, since so many people seem to have little choice about
>>what makes them feel happy and unhappy.  ...They just seem to have so
>>little control over those pesky emotions.

>Or rather, they have accepted the popular misconception that they have
>so little control over those pesky emotions.  

I have not claimed that it's impossible to control one's emotions (in
some sense.)  But in order to do so, one must discover and changfe the
values that underlie those emotions.  This is not easy.  One cannot
just choose a new set of values and blithely expec the emotions to
follow, one has to internalise those vaules, way down at the level of
sense-of-life (not merely at the level of conscious philosophy.)

>A lot of unhappy people would become happy if they just realized that
>their life already corersponds to what they really want and they've
>just been socialized to believe they want something else; 

Your statement could be interpreted as if to suggest that if you "just
realise"--in other words, if you _decide_--that the situation you are
in is wonderful, you will suddenly become happy.  Doesn't work that way.
If a lonely person "just realises" that his life already corresponds
to what he "really wants", does his loneliness go away?  No, because
what he really wants--what he wants right now, healthy or unhealthy--
is the _cause_ of that loneliness.  The loenliness is a sign that he
does not have what he really wants.  (Perhaps that want is unhealthy,
but that is another issue.)

Attempting to convince yourself that black is white will do nothing
but get you killed on the next zebra crossing.

>What's the "secret" to gaining control of your emotions?  First, you
>have to accept them; second, you root around your psyche until you
>figure out what their bases are (usually a long-term and ongoing
>process); third, you accept those parts of you and decide whether
>or not you wish to change them.

Yes, this is the rub.  What you have just described is not at all
easy.  One cannot just , as marcia seemed to suggest, get rid of the
feelings one doesn't like in a Saturday afternoon.

>mlb@CISCO.COM (Marcia Bednarcyk) writes:
>>It seems to me that you have a choice: you can either spend all that
>>time wishing you were in your "ideal" state and feeling miserable
>>because you are not, or you can be "bloom where you are planted" and
>>spend the time being happy. 

The choice is between working to change your values or not doing so.
It's not a choice between deciding to be happy or to be unhappy in the
same situation.  You can decide that being alone is a desirable state,
and if you really believe it, the emotions will follow.  You can't
simply decide to be happy when you are unhappy because you are lonely.

Furthermore, a person who is not in her ideal state _should_ feel
unhappy.  That's part of the point of emotions-- they tell you
something about yourself and the world.  If you were happy all the
time, how would you ever know that you _weren't_ in your ideal state?

-- 
"The next time you hear a Mosquito humming around your ear, remember
 that certain mosquitoes in Tierra del Fuego are stirct vegetarians."
 ............................Will Cuppy, _How To Attract the Wombat_
-- 
Kiran Wagle                             <kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
P.O.Box 2083 Bloomington IN 47402-2083                  (812) 335-0420