Necessary evil

Being an engineer, some times, makes your life easy. Engineering education provides you insight into various systems. Fortunately or unfortunately, you start viewing every other thing in this world as a system. This gives you an edge over others while driving home your views, at times.

The reason behind giving this gyan is that when I wanted to write a blog on emotions, my “engineering brain” prompted me to liken “emotions” to a physical phenomenon. Physics calls friction as necessary evil. You need it but only in a limited way, neither more nor less. Literally, friction decides the performance, of a physical system. When it comes to humans, the most vital thing that keeps the mental health in a sound state is EMOTIONS. We can draw a line of comparison between friction and emotions. You can hardly move on a road with loads of friction and you will fall down while walking on a road with very low friction. And coming to emotions, if you are highly emotional, problems become your permanent companions. At the same time not having emotions at all makes life as dry as a desert.

I am an emotional person unless the situation demands me to wear a mukhota. Be it the arguments with my family members or charged meetings with my boss or lunches with colleagues or fun with friends or serious discussions on Sugathi, I will not try to hide my emotions. But many times, I used to feel jealous of the people hiding emotions. The reason is plain: like most of you, I also grew up listening to the phrase(s) “Control your emotions or Don’t be emotional.” In fact, Indian scriptures and shastras also suggest people should keep all the emotions under control. So, I always had a question in my mind. Should we control our emotions or turn emotionless?

Luckily, I got a chance to understand that controlling emotions does not mean to be emotionless. This opportunity came to me in the form of a trip to USA last year. I was there in USA for 3 months. At the beginning, it was a very exciting life because everything was new. As a few days passed, things turned out very boring as they were no longer new. Still, the situation was bearable. After some few weeks, I felt that my energy levels were dropping. Why? Ideally, they should not. I was working well, relaxing well and visiting places on weekends. What else do I need to do to keep myself active? I asked these questions myself. The answer was a big “I don’t knowL” and it did worry me a lot. Anyways, three months got over and I was back in India. Just a week passed in India and I turned as energetic as I was prior to the trip. I was happy with that. My analysis, at a macro level, concluded that it was my people in India who brought all the energy back into my life.

One fine day, I was thinking about earnings and learning from the trip. Then I just compared the life I had in US with my life in India. Surprisingly, many interesting things came out. In US, I was going to office, working at my desk, having lunch with my lone Indian colleague. (Moreover, as my company works in a domain strictly regulated by US federal export control laws, there were restrictions on my movement. I needed an escort to enter the office always.) Except for the weekends, on which I was sight seeing, all other time there was hardly any change in my lifestyle. Obviously life was static and dull :( because during most of my free time either I was roaming alone or web chatting with people in India or doing something which I don’t even remember now. In India, life is very dynamic. Right from the moment I get up from bed till the sleeping time, every second gives a different experience. Naturally, I am more active and more energetic.

Initially, I thought this change is due to people, environment and most importantly my activities. After contemplating on these things for some more time, I discovered a great truth. Eureka !!!! One’s graph of emotions in the day-to-day life is the real key to one’s energy and thus mental strength. In USA, my graph of emotions was a simple straight line. Hardly there was any variation in my emotions and thus the life too was monotonous and boring. But here in India, everyday will be a surprise pack of emotions! Happiness, excitement, anger, fun. What not, I feel all the Navarasas!(Visit http://www.ee.caltech.edu/~gowaikar/rand/navaras.html to know about Navarasas.) And the result is, a Srinath full of life.

Moral of the story:

• Controlling emotions does not neccesarily mean to become emotionless. If you are an emotional person and being emotional is not harming you or others in personal or professional life, just stay as you are. Have a hearty laugh, empathize with others’ problems, show your anger at wrong things, experience all the humanly emotions and finally have a peace of mind, wherever you are. But I’ll tell you again, emotions are like friction. Have them at the optimum level and I bet you will have a rocking time in the long run. Of course, but be careful while choosing "your" optimum level !
• If you are a person hiding emotions all the time, hope the message is clear :)