Reflections on Meaning and Emotion after a Hot Summer’s Day
In my last blog, I talked about the idea of chance: how our circumstances and identities are formed in large part by a series of random events that conspire together to bring us to the present moment. But these events, while arbitrary, are not devoid of meaning.
Meaning can come from a wide variety of sources, such as being in nature, pursuing personal and professional goals, and connecting with others. In my experience, it often comes from strong emotions.
I write this having just tucked my six-year-old son into bed after a long day of outdoor activity in the sweltering August heat. All parents of six-year-olds can attest that some days are especially challenging. Fun and laughter intersperse with worry and frustration in a blur of Superhero references and exhaustion. Anyway, Max finally fell asleep. I lay beside him as his eyes gently closed as he drifted off, audibly exhaling through his nose every few moments, the corners of his mouth turned up in a soft smile. His body was curled in a position not unlike a reclined version of Eagle Pose. He seemed totally at peace and I felt pure tenderness and affection.
A little later in the evening, my dad sent me a New York Times article by David Brooks. The piece, “You’re Only as Smart as Your Emotions,” is about current neuroscience research on human emotion. Brooks explains that reason and emotion have traditionally been viewed as opposing forces, with reason construed as a higher value and as a tool to squelch our more primitive passions. But modern research teaches us that emotions can influence our rational minds. Properly harnessed, they reveal deep wisdom that helps us make better decisions. Brooks puts it as follows:
… below conscious awareness, your body is constantly reacting to the events around you: heart speeding or slowing, breaths getting shorter or longer, your metabolism purring or groaning. Many of these reactions happen in the enteric nervous system in the gastrointestinal tract, which is sometimes called “the second brain.” There are upward of several hundred million neurons in that system; 95 percent of the neurotransmitter serotonin is there.
He goes on:
Every second of every day your brain is monitoring the signals sent up from your body and rushing to assign a meaning to them … The body kicks into gear and then the mind constructs an emotional experience. It feels like we get scared and start running from the bear. But as the psychologist William James brilliantly intuited over a century ago, it’s more accurate to say we start running from the bear and then we get scared.
Emotions shift our attention in the direction of what matters. For example, indignation prompts us to focus on justice. Anxiety puts us in a risk-adverse mindset. Happiness inspires us to create and be more flexible in our thinking.
When we can understand and properly process our emotions, they can be excellent navigation tools throughout our lives. The mere existence of our emotions is necessary but insufficient; it’s by honing our emotional self-awareness that we can allow them to effectively guide us.
This conception of emotions recalls the final minutes of a podcast interview I listened to between Lex Fridman and Yuval Noah Harari. Throughout their wide-ranging conversation, they discussed human nature, intelligence, power, and conspiracies. And then at the end, as they were nearing the three-hour mark and wrapping it up, Lex asked, “What’s the meaning of this whole thing, Yuval?” Yuval responded: “Life? That’s easy … Life is feeling things, having sensations, emotions, and reacting to them.” He expounded a bit on that idea, but his reply essentially mirrored the research in Brooks’ article: stuff happens to us, our emotions kick in, and then we react. It’s a persuasive argument supported by good scientific data.
And yet when I’m lying in bed with my son, and he’s slowly drifting off into sleep, I have to conclude that the full meaning of life is contained in that one sweet, simple moment in time.