Hidden Stream

For those who are having emotional conflicts in life, I would just like to let you know that all of us who are living in this 21st century, especially in the urban setting, will always have some troubles that will cause some sort of emotional disturbance in us. Those troubles can come from within us or from the society we interact with. The secret of living a happy and successful life lies in how you manage those conflicting emotions in you.


Aristotle said that to be happy, one must find some pleasurable activity to indulge in, even more so if you enjoy doing it very well and doing it for the good of society. Happiness does not mean you have to feel good all the time, drive yourself crazy by going to wild parties, indulge in expensive things etc. These are all transcient emotions and superficial forms of happiness. You can put up a cheerful disposition but you cannot be forever cheerful and laughing. Genuine happiness is actually a reflective form of emotion. Happiness as in joy is something we all hope to attain in our lives. However, we cannot always reach that emotional high. It is like wanting to scale up the mountain peak everyday.


Each one of us have this thing called temperament. It is a more profound and long lasting emotion which we inherit from our genes and from our upbringing and environment. This temperament or mood is what makes some people to be mild mannered, some to have a wonderful sense of humour and some to be gregarious and some to be depressed. But because I believe our emotions have intelligence and rationality, we can learn to perceive our emotions in the right way, to understand why we feel angry, hurt, embarrassed etc and to make correct decisions regarding how we can manage those negative emotions. We cannot always make the right decisions based on our emotions but we can try. We must also learn to perceive other people's emotions based on their way of life, their culture and language. For example, some Chinese dialects are spoken aloud as if there is a shouting competition and may put off a foreign tourist.

Lastly, human beings are capable of emotions that connect with the universe. Emotions are not just about everyday petty things like hate, jealousy, vengeance etc. Imagine yourself lying on the field and looking up at the stars. You will have that sense of humility in that you are not the most important person in the world. At the other end of the spectrum, you will also have an elevated feeling in that a great God can create an entire universe filled with galaxies and stars and you are part of that creation.