How do we emote!

Most of us, being caught up in the situation around us, are driven by the same to decide as to how we emote! Some of us manage to keep the intensity of emotion under check. We know the devastating effect of anger, we know the size of the hole created in our wallet when we exhibit our anxiety to buy something from a cunning, greedy and alert bargain-seller!
There are a few persons, talented, well stabilized from within who manage to emote at will! An impressive example appeared on a recent TV interview when the legendary grand lady Zohra Sehgal was asked thus: “How do you manage to cry instantly & intensely when a scene requires?” She was known for doing it without the use of artificial means. The details mentioned by her simply amazed me! Briefly, she invoked two of the opposite emotions of laughter and tears from the very same incident that took place in her life!
That made me wonder if we too can do a little more than just ‘controlling’ anger, putting of the use of medicine at times, etc!. Hypothetical situation, quite imaginary, yet logical possibility may perhaps serve as an example to afford a deeper look within. Shall we attempt, with 3 ‘created’ situations, and attempt visualizing them quite intensely, not getting caught into it, retaining the freedom to observe how we would really respond and what happens within us, to our intuitive instincts.
The three situations:
1. A woman with very modest means has eight children of her own, all of them of school going age. During an evening, while she was very busy with household routine, and children engaged with their own activities of pastimes, a neighbour rushes in to inform the sudden death of one of the eight children. The mother is gripped by shock and intense sorrow. She rushes out of her house, and in utter disbelief, looks at the body of her child being lifted out of a nearby well with which the child had drowned, tripping over its inadequately low protective wall, while playing around it. Yet to recover from the first shock of this devastating grief, news comes in within a couple of minutes, informing the death of her yet another child, who had an unexpected heart seizure or so while engaged in a high pitched vocal practice sessions near by !
The child with ‘heart’ problem did have some minor occasional ‘chest pain’ complaints, but it had never seemed to require any serious medical examination. The timing of this serious occurrence was an unexpected blow to the mother. When both the bodies were placed in front of her house, there comes a third body, this time, the body and its appearance explicitly reveals the manner of accidental death to a yet another from among her eight children!. The badly mangled body tells it all !.
How would this woman be able to emote distinctly for each of these three deaths occurred in near succession? Is it not too difficult to embraces all the three at a time!. Each child’s loss creates a deep sorrow enough to intensely suffer for days! How to stagger any two to do justice to one, at a time?
This examples is not about over exaggeration. Our minds are sort of structured to pre-empt almost any routine situation, and an intense situation is perhaps needed to catch it ‘ off-guard’ to afford a genuine observation.

2. Let us try a reversal of emotion this time. Some time or other, we have come across a joke or situation that sets us into unstoppable bouts of laughter. We keeps laughing incessantly causing aches in lower abdomen!
Let us visualize that somebody narrates a brief joke that evokes such intense laughter that we are unable to even avoid the embarrassment for about another 30 minutes, when we do not seem to have any control over it, to appropriately suit the changing outside situation. As we grow into adulthood, such good jokes through intense enough may fail to evoke such uncontrollable laughter! If that is the case, please also visualize ourselves as children, at school, during classes. The joke encountered in the earlier day keeps stimulating sudden bouts of loud laughter in subsequent classes in serene situation. This laughter simply overpowers even the fear of punishment by class teacher for inappropriate class-room behavior! At offices, or counters facing public in queues, such out-of-turn laughter is really an embarrassment!.
Now comes the catch!. Suppose another joke of yet deeper intensity occurs within a minute of the first one!. To which of the jokes do we actually continue to respond with such unstoppable laugher??!!!

3.( A brief epilogue: )
Lest we run into a possible lesser focused attention, the epilogue suits here better, to get the attention it perhaps deserves. The sequence of examples are deliberate. A person who gets caught in the situation of first examples usually skips over the second, but the third one ‘grounds’ the person back. If on the other hand, a person manages in not getting ‘caught’ in the first one, does appreciate the second one adequately enough to now attempt a de-mystification of the third one which is bereft of any external influence.
Third situation :
Yes the third one is very simple, practical, irrefutable and yet has a cloud of mysticism, that some of us do know of and most of us take it for granted as “ oh! It is so “. It deals with sheer physical pain.
We know how naggingly persistent that below the nail puss and swelling is! The half broken-crooked growing nail, with a crevice, infected with puss forming affliction never seems to leave us at peace even for a moment. Whatever else we are required to do, the pain is felt incessantly, reminding us that it is there. People who float and drift away into their day- dreaming –sessions find this nail affliction to be a rare even when they manage to find themselves riveted to ground –realities throughout the duration!
Now the catch. Supppose there is such a pain on the left thumb at present, and our right thumb is brutally chopped off in a single severe blow! We know, the pain caused due to sudden and shocking loss of thumb when chopped off, simply dissolves the hitherto irritating pain at the nail of left thumb! The earlier pain, in our experience, DOES VANISH. Yet, we know, logically, the source of pain is yet intact, unresolved. Later on, we are surprised (we do not have a chance during the painful session),What happens to the earlier pain when the next one overpowered us?
Well then, if this helps us to take a look at our emotions, instead of merely getting caught up with it each time and getting lost in our struggle to wriggle out of it, please do let me know, to reassure that our effort was worth it. At the least I shall be able to refrain being a 4th situation! Ha Ha Ha! An inadequate response, not even the lack of it, is good enough to educate me to refrain from ending up into a loathsome 4th situation for you!
You see, I do solicit many things, but trouble is not one of them!
Regards
PSN ( 6th Oct’08)