i've got a feeling

"what is this salty discharge coming from my eyes" this is one of my favorite quotes from american pop culture. i think i like it so much because it embodies the emotional expectations (or lack thereof) of men in this day and age...

we all experience emotions, well at least health human beings experience emotions to a certain extent. that being said, the way we experience emotions differs greatly. some people are able to identify and label their emotions while others can't recognize them, let alone explain what they are. some people avoid them while others seem to seek them out.

what does all of this mean though?

i think our capacity to feel emotions is in part what makes us human. a few movies come to mind that support this idea (e.g. the day the earth stood, bicentennial man) but more importantly there are some scriptural differences as well. 2 nephi 2:25 talks about how we exist so that we may have joy. consequently, not only does our capacity to feel make us human, it is also the very reason for which we exist. lehi & nephi help shed some light on what it means to have joy. in their dream nephi partakes of the fruit of the tree of life where upon the angel asks him what it means. the response is that the fruit represents the love of God, 'yea and it is the most desirable above all else.'

so we exist to have joy, and the love of God is the most joyous thing to our souls. well that begs the question what is love? i've had a hard time conceptualizing this until recently.

let me first start by stating where emotions come from, at least according to a secular notion. a couple of different therapy approaches claim that all relational emotions stem from perceived threats to one's self-concept (e.g. self-identity) and attachment (our intimate relationships with others). our bodies' anatomical response to these perceived threats is the fight or flight response that we all heard about in pscyh 101. in other words, there is a perceived threat, our body reacts physiologically, and depending on our experience with our emotions we react to it in different ways. some people suppress it, some react to it with anger, some react with saddness, the list goes on... even how we label these emotions varies greatly. men typically suppress it and can't recognize it. women usually experience the emotion fully and then talk about it a lot.

a lot of therapist spend a lot of time helping people make sense of their emotions and then help create a safe place for each person to express them (usually feelings of being hurt and so forth).

so if that is where negative emotions come from how about the positive? well depending on how intelligent you are you may have figured it out. according to the aforementioned theories positve emotions stem from adding/contributing to one's self-concept and attachment. for example one of my favorite church quotes comes from President Hinckley's wife, she said that President Hinckley had always given her wings to fly and she loved him for it. i take this as President Hinckley did what he could to help his wife individualize, to find herself, build her self-concept, help her realize who she was and consequently she loved him for it. a few posts down in an entry entitled "progress" i talk about our first encounter with God and what that must have been like. this theory would state that the reason why we felt God's love for us for the first time would be because He helped us see who we are and what we can become.

i've also had a professor define love as the following: 'love is the power that binds us to what we are capable of becoming.' that would help us understand why "true love awakens a longing that cannot be denied" -Elder Groberg. when we feel true love from God or from others we get a sense of our goodness, of who we are and what we can become whether or not we see it ourselves.

we can't live a life devoid of emotions. they are the result of living in a world in which we are interdependent upon others. futhermore, they are likely one of the main reasons why we are here on this earth. d&c 93:33 states that there isn't a fullness of joy without an inseparable connection of body and spirit. it is soooooo imporant that we learn about our bodies and our emotions. so much of our happiness in this life and the next depends on our emotions. we must learn how to feel, recognize and label them.

simplicity

as a small child i can remember how other adults caused me to wonder (to think or speculate curiously) about the amazing things they were capable of doing with their minds. for example my father, an electrical engineer, would often come home from work and talk about an exciting new project. whether it was a cool gas analyzer that could simply intake the air from any ambient and precisely tell you what kind of chemicals were in the air or a car that could literally drive itself, i was constantly amazed at what we are capable of doing. i can also remember thinking how wise and all-knowing these people must be in order to accomplish such great things. well, now i am old-er and i ask myself what has come of that childhood wonder?

here's the answer to that question...

everything in this life can be broken down into bite sized bits and pieces to make those seemingly impossible tasks into something plausible and pragmatic. there isn't anything in this life that is too complex or too impossible if we simply start out with the basics and build upon them.

that brings me to the main topic for this post: faith. the other night i asked my friend to define faith for me. he, like many of us would, struggled giving me a clear and concise answer. in the past i have studied the scriptures and other church materials such as "lectures on faith", "articles of faith" etc. but i'm not sure i truly understood it either. i wondered, "how does faith differ from belief? can i have faith by sitting in the corner of my room wishing something will happen? how can so many different religions have faith in God, yet be so different? what exactly is the relationship between works and faith (joseph smith said the greatest works of faith are done by words)? could faith just be some abstract notion too hard to understand? the list of questions goes on and on and on.

well, i recently came across some things that shed some light on the basic building blocks of faith (in my opinion).

first off, faith was not a religious word at its conception. i'll say that again in different words, originally faith had nothing to do with religion. you might ask... "if it wasn't a religious word, then what was it used for?" well, i'm glad you asked. faith was a word used for contractual agreements. to say you had "faith in somebody" meant that you had a contractual agreement with that person.

this contractual agreement essentially had five components to it. they are: specific terms (to the agreement), object (what is being exchanged in the agreement), ratification, assurance and finally, the ultimate fulfillment of the contract.

i think that understanding this sets the foundation for understanding faith, what it is and why the early apostles talked about it in the way that they did.

this is going to be cut short because i'm not sure a blog is an appropriate place to talk about this. i will say though, thinking about faith this way has led to a lot changes in how i understand faith.