Reflection On Emotions

Miha Alam

I personally believe that the fact that can we ever know anything purely through emotions depends on the situation and the complexity of the conflict. Emotions can help us come up with answers for example if a person is sad, we can conclude that the person is going through a bad phase of his/her life. However, we cannot formulate a concrete conclusion. For example; just through emotions we cannot depict what exactly is wrong with the person or why exactly the person is sad. The video mentioned, emotions are something which is just felt and can’t be explained in words. Thus, we should not try justifying things through emotions as they cannot be translated into words. Furthermore, I feel that we can never know anything purely through emotions because without the other ways of knowing, especially language, we won’t be able to execute our emotions. For example, if I am feeling sad, how will I know that I am feeling sad if I am not aware of the other ways of knowing? It is impossible for someone to feel something they haven’t been familiar with.

On the contrary, we can know something purely through emotions because emotions do have logic as they are triggered by the brain. Thus, they are valid to a large extent. However, one can often be mistaken about their own emotions as one might have a mixture of emotions at the same time. For example; there is a girl whose sister is graduating from high school. The girl would be happy for her sister but at the same time she will be sad as the she will be separated from her sister. More complex situations can trigger other emotions and one might not be fully aware of the dominant emotion as one will be engrossed in the situation they are facing. There are saying for instance people say ‘only when one has faced many hardships and they have been sad, only then they know the true meaning of happiness. Thus, knowledge can be based on emotions.