The Human Condition

Humans as a species are often confronted by a wide array of emotions throughout their everyday life, from birth until death. As an infant, humans don't have the brain development or the mind capacity to be aware of their emotions, and so they are expressed in very rudimentary ways.

A young baby can feel stress such as hunger or arousal and these reactions produce instinctual reflexes such as crying or reaching out to one's main caregiver. Because an infant cannot self regulate ones emotions and thus has little self control over it, the caregivers responses such as holding or feeding the baby serve to bring the baby's emotions back to stability and contentment.

Over the years, the manner in which a caregiver responds to the baby's instinctual cues will gradually provide the young person with the tools to deal with their own emotions as they evolve from pleasure and pain, to love and hate, to pride and guilt. The caregiver teaches the child what to expect from the world, other people, and themselves. So if the caregiver is negligent, overbearing, distant or restricting the child may learn that emotions should be smothered, or that they are upsetting.

A big part of being human is the ability to experience a wide range of emotions. Emotions color our lives and reinforce the vast encyclopedia of memories that only the person that holds them can truly comprehend. It defines the self as a continuous story that is present only for a tiny blip on the timeline of our universe.

It's easy to revel in the positive affects of human existence. Joy, pride, and love are all easy for people to talk about and of course many of us gravitate towards situations where we can easily experience these emotions. For the same reasons, many people suppress and deny feelings like grief, loss, anger, sadness, jealousy and grief.

But isn't denying these uncomfortable emotions the same as denying our humanity? Maybe people think that if you keep these things inside your mind then they'll just dissapear. But of course they don't, they sit and fester like a wound that hasn't been given room to breathe.

Loss is a part of life, the Buddhists say that nothing is permanent and once you fully realize this then you'll be able to experience ultimate bliss. But attachment is a central component to our beings. So maybe it's just a matter of accepting loss as a bittersweet element to life that can serve as a catalyst to growth and self-understanding.