What is a man, devoid of his emotions? Does a human being exist beyond his/her feelings? Human emotions are the fundamental constitution of our being. Life is a conglomerate of countless events, a composite of cause and effects, numerous possibilities, creating probable parallels and planes of existence. Many mistakes have been done in the human history, are caused by those feelings— that many good deeds have happened out of some sheer ‘gut feeling’ or petite hunches. Human emotion— a complex brain chemistry, integrated actions of amygdala— reaction of which is experienced as feelings— is abstract but our actions (or behaviour) are the expressive manifestations of it. Life parades on the world. Every one of us contribute our part on this greater dynamic— an individual life, consisting of family, career, personal and shared spaces and many more goes on and on with different effective factors, from birth to death, thinking the intermediary our own anxiety, we handle it in our ways. Have you ever thought, what if this world itself is the concrete existence and we are the minions of it, the net worth of human contributions depositing decades after decades since the beginning, what is the world really preparing for? The ultimate destruction? Yes! Probably the final saturation is the other name of destruction. But is it the End? No! As they say, with the desolation of one universe, another is born somewhere, some other minions will spring there too, contribute their parts to prepare another finality. Probably…
Coming back to us, human emotion is a trailing silhouette, tagged along with every single one of our thoughts and actions. The basic binary, sadness/happiness— are the black and white in the clusters of intricate human emotions. With the gravest shock, we feel ‘sad’— we purge— then we come to the inevitable ‘acceptance’, no choice otherwise: process of grieving. It calms down, with the healing power of Time, but our memory records several lacerations, one or more wounds might as well get open with the jab of Time. But that too eventually cauterises with other turns of events as time proceeds our life. The strength of the feeling fades, like energy transforms, it only changes, perhaps there is a repository somewhere!
Likewise, you want something, something you aspire for, you work hard for it, your motivation loses, you win it back, you drown in doubts, doubts of your own capabilities, you swim through it and emerge with doubled enthusiasm, you become restless until you reach that ‘destination’ you have marked yourself for… You are sored, sored with words and missteps and frights— emotional turbulences nearly capsize your ship… A ‘journey’ you take and… You have ‘it’. Current of blood rushes through your body. You should be ‘happy’. You have made it, you have reached your ‘goal’. But you retrospect and ponder, you praise the path, the journey that kept you going… A transition from hyperactivity (the preparatory phase and the execution) to the stasis (the apparent completion and anticipation for the outcome) leaves you perplexed. Now that you have reached your assigned mark, you feel that ‘void’, may be momentarily, as again, life sets you for another mark.
Like emotion is the permanent shadow of our being, each emotion is fleeting towards the Nothing. The Nothingness prevails over every preceding emotion/ feeling, in the name of ‘acceptance’ or ‘void’ or that feeling of ‘pit in the stomach’. There is no ‘concrete’ feeling, we just name them upon some discrete traits they carry, like the ‘concrete’ reality is questionable beyond human perceptions, each emotion is a tributary of that Nothingness. At the optimum point we only feel that ‘void’. The Nothing is not the existential nihilism but it is that saturated place, that repository of ‘everything’— the all-receptive conundrum. The epitome is always the Nothing. The Nothing is the only ‘everlasting’.
Cover image: Internet
Words, Meaning and the Nothing 