From: mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: All mind and no heart?
Date: 11 Apr 92 03:58:47 GMT
Reply-To: mbr2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <12137@tamsun.tamu.edu> scm3775@tamsun.tamu.edu (Sean Malloy) writes:
>COAN writes about his apparent inability to be emotionally affected :
>[...]
>> Shared pain lessened, shared joy increased...  but I have nothing to
>> share but confusion.  Confusion and a calm familiar inner quiet where
>>I'd rather be rage and storm.

My apologies, folks- many have taken this phrase of mine to mean that
apparently I can't be emotionally affected.  This was not exactly my
intent.  My meaning was that, in light of the motto of the Place, I
have neither joy nor pain to share in this communication of mine.
Into my life enters joy and wonder and occasionally pain as well, but
usually I am feeling something well before I realize it, if I realize
it at all, and my growing suspicion is that there is much feeling of
mine that I DON'T realize.  Is this a bad thing?  Empathy seems to
require a lucid conscious experience of one's own feelings.  What of a
person whose feelings are there but usually not consciously
expereinced?  Is this necessarily bottling-up?  Or could it be that,
as I've surmised, they're just so well woven into my experience of
life that I haven't learned to pick them out?  What if my heart and
mind are the same?

>CD walks up to COAN's table and sits down without waiting for 
>an invitation.  

None necessary, good fellow!

>[...CD relates his own emotional experiences...]
>"You want questions?" he asks rhetorically.  "Okay.  I've got 
>but one.  It's deceptively simple, but might be tough to 
>answer."
> 
>Staring COAN straight in the eye, he asks "Do you love her?"

Yes...
  
>Quietly, [CD] adds, "Why?"
> 
>"I realize that I'm an outsider, and that I can never hope to 
>know the situation as well as one in the middle of it, but 
>this is my advice.  Ponder on that question for a while.  
>Then, when you think you know the answer, tell Judie.
> 
>"Who knows?  It might not help, but I don't believe it can 
>hurt."

Four months ago I did ask myself that question, CD.  I did a lot of
brainstorming and came up with a fair bit.  Put poetically it was
quite a romantic presentation when I finnished it.  She squeaked and
squealed!  Ultimately I left the question only partially answered,
because reasons didn't seem to encompass everything that caused love
to be.  I don't think love CAN be explained fully by reasons.  But it
was happy and healthy to find SOME, nonetheless.

Thanks for the advice, though. It would be well to remind her.

Back on the topic of rediscovering emotion- all of the people who have
described to me [often similar] accounts of how emotion came back into
their lives talk of a great pain they experienced or remembered that
opened the gates.  Is it axiomatic that every single human being has
experienced some really significant injuries, emotional or physical,
by my age [20]?  I mean it's probably a good guess if you know nothing
else about a person, but what's to say that a person can't be really
lucky?  The greatest pain I've experienced in my adult life was at a
time when no matter what I did something TRUE of me was simply hurtful
to someone else (this was real stuff- I was broken down to tears,
heart wrenched, etc.).  I don't believe I've buried this pain- I can
recall the hurt and what I learned from that time (this was
pre-Judie).  But I'm told that this doesn't cut it in terms of
character-building injuries.  Haven't I been hurt in a way that makes
me feel vulnerable?  Not that I know of.

Does anyone have a tale of how they returned to the emotional life
without experiencing or remembering an emotional wound of some kind?

If you'd be willing to share such a story with me, it might prove very
helpful.  Thanks.
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