Explaining Away
February 2, 2021•177 words
625
A common problem I'm seeing with today's society, but especially with people my age (15-25), is that we tend to explain feelings.
Feelings, emotions, impressions, they are transient. Elusive. Dynamic. Like the proverbial feather from Forrest Gump. Even the greatest artist can only capture an incomplete and twisted rendition of a feeling.
Our logical and epistemology-obsessed world places thought, not faith, nor feeling, at the forefront. I am no judge of the process as a whole, but I can clearly see one of the effects it has on us, especially the young ones, still shaping their identities.
Thought can be elusive, too. But it is clearly more static and anchored in reality than any feeling may be. Science, mathematics, and the like operate on the simplest, clearest truths. There's nothing clearer than a math theorem.
Yet we try to explain why we feel bad. "Because A did B and that influenced C to ask D to do F to me". We look for causality where we should be looking for compassion.
Compassion within our own self.