The root of all...

In life I think that there are only two base emotions that help to determine all of our thoughts and therefore our actions; Hope and Fear. If you look at all the other emotions that we commonly experience love, hate, greed, peace, joy, loneliness, etc. you can find a base for all of them in either hope or fear. Many have told me that they think that Love, not hope, should be the opposite of fear. While I can see their argument and agree the two are very closely related, I don’t know that it’s possible to feel love without having hope first. Alternatively, I think that you can hope without love, even if it’s merely the hope of finding love.

So what’s the point of all this? Everything we choose to do is based on one of these two emotions. Many times we allow the wrong emotion for the situation to determine our thoughts and actions. Or at the very least we allow the right emotion to lead us to the wrong conclusion because we don’t understand exactly why we are experiencing it. If we are honest with ourselves, we can begin to question why we are reacting to situations in the ways that we do and then hopefully fine tune our emotional responses. doing so will allow us to grow and develop better and stronger than before. As a creator this has particular value as fear is a powerful dam against creativity.

The question then becomes, if emotion is the root of choices how do we change the root? By understanding that even those emotions are the product of a decision no matter how subconscious it may be. Usually it is not until after we have made a choice that we become aware of which emotion led us to making that particular decision. However, with effort we can begin to recognize them earlier and begin to analyze why we are feeling which particular root emotion. When we do this we naturally begin to make alterations to our thought process and take more responsibility for our actions. Hopefully this will lead us to make better choices which will benefit not only us but those around us as well.