"Parties, parades, wakes, obituaries, births, old age, change, remembrance, each one providing the swell of life's tides - the ebb and flow of past and future collects in the here and now. We celebrate to remember, to let go, to move on, to laugh, to dance, to mourn. And always our heart is noting where and when and how we celebrate as it marks the passage of our days and gathers the vibrations of our quickening and our waning, all the while tracing the fragments of our celebrations into a map of peaks and valleys - the topography of our inner terrain.
When your heart celebrates your life, it calls upon the syntax of expression and a lexicon of resources that are quite different than the expression and the choices made by your head. Your heart celebrates by valuing castoffs; by noticing gestures; by casting an ancestral net; by remembering the unforgettable; by relating to what matters", (Reeves 2003: 157, 158).
Ok Haris, I have a question to pose to you....why do people have emotional affairs? Is it for indulgent purposes...is it to appease a narcissistic personality..or does it have to do with the inner child in us that hungers for acceptance and love? or do you believe that one cannot truly love just one person? Why do men and woman reach out to another, knowing she/he is already with someone ? I cant wait to hear your response!!!
Oh... that was a hard one! I sincerely believe that the scope of this question is beyond what we can grasp, i.e. its claim for universality - for indisputable definiteness, just stretches beyond what we can know. Spontaneously, I would first like to comment on the axiomatic nature of question and counter with another question: "How spread is the phenomenon?". Do everybody really have emotional affairs? I know that the phenomenon exists and I am also fairly sure that is doesn't belong to rarities when it comes to human endeavors - but still, the fact that not everybody throw themselves into emotional affairs says at least something of the complexity of this particular issue. But for all of them that do engage in emotional affairs - well, I guess that answers are many - all of them above that you've already listed, seem to me like possible reasons and I'm pretty sure that there also are many more. In fact, I believe that there is a multitude of various reasons behind each persons act - and this goes also for emotional affairs. Culture, socialization, class, gender, background, general outlook on the world, embodied values, rules and norms, etc all build together a complex set of propelling factors determining whether and why one act certain way. Perhaps, to begin with, we ought to recognize the difference between reflexive and inattentive experience. Reflexive or attentive experience stands for wide-ranging conscious dealing with everyday life, i.e. co-ordinating and manipulating the tension between the self and the world using the verbal forms of thought material, i.e. that which can be expressed with words. Inattentive experience, on the other hand, although by no means less real, denotes the all encompassing sedimentation of, until that time cognisant, alert and directly accessible knowledge that at present time makes but a large and shady background of nonverbal and momentarily less accessible thought material: “It is too difficult for attention to cover all the terrain of thought that may be activated by varying circumstances […]”, (Reddy 1999:271). In no way should this inattentiveness be understood as a passive form of being in the world. On the contrary, it is experienced and enacted upon through the conception of emotions as “[…] attempts to translate into words […] nonverbal events that are occurring in […] this background”, (Reddy 1999: 267). So, emotions are performed, or should I say acted out, in a twofold manner that seems to be caught in a loop – it is a simultaneous search of an idiom to control and modify our emotions and search of emotions to control and modify our actions, (Reddy 1999: 264). It is to feel-think, (Wikan 1989: 296) and it is double-anchored – to the individuals sense of the self on the one side but always also to a given, necessary yet not sufficient, sociocultural platform on the other, some kind of social institution or a relation (friends, enemies, kin, lovers, strangers, colleagues, settlement, municipality, community, society at large etc) without which emotions wouldn’t be possible. So, why some people do some stuff is just too large, albeit significant, question.
I hope you didn't fall asleep half way through this long and insufficient attempt to an answer.
No, as a matter of fact, I read and reread it...wow, you I love how analytical you become when someone poses a question..I'm very inquisitive...and there arent too many people that can actually appease some of the things that I question, with a satisfying answer...I really enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions, you make me feel as though you really know how the hell things work...and that is somewhat reassuring...for example, you know how when your driving somewhere, and you have no directions and you get lost, but somehow you manage to find someone who has an idea of where your going and gives you direction...and at that moment, when you realize that they know where your heading, and are familiar with it, well, its as if you've been saved from your own troubling thoughts of being lost...the feeling of being saved from a situation is one of the most complex emotions and it just doesnt encompass one sheer feeling of exhilaration, its also sadness, anger, relief...all those things....and so for me, I found that you give me a sense of relief, you answer my questions, in a way that makes me feel like I'm not as crazy as I think I am...that I am still human, and thats ok....I wish you had an email address where I can reach you...your such an interesting person and it'd be cool if we could be friends. thank you for answering my question...and believe me, there will probably be more in the future, for my well of inquisitiveness has no bottom.
I am glad you find my comments interesting and that they can offer you, and I hope to the other ones reading this blog, comfort or relief and such. As for email address - I wouldn't want to be rude but that would be too personal and thus inappropriate. I wouldn't want to dismiss friendship but the fact is that I prefer devoting myself to those I already know - it's really hard to find enough time for that. I recommend you to see this blog as a fiction - a cartoon if you will. There is nothing real beyond it. It is an air castle, an escapist safe haven for pause and reflection. Nothing else! But I sincerely hope that you can get something - anything - here and that you will bring that back and share with the ones you already know. Take care.
Oh, and btw, I hope you dont think that I had any personal interest in you, I in no way wanted to contact you in an inappropriate way, just to thank you for stopping by my POD blog from time to time...but after rereading what I'd written earlier, I can see how you might have misunderstood....anyways, thanks for the interesting conversations! :-)
"Parties, parades, wakes, obituaries, births, old age, change, remembrance, each one providing the swell of life's tides - the ebb and flow of past and future collects in the here and now. We celebrate to remember, to let go, to move on, to laugh, to dance, to mourn. And always our heart is noting where and when and how we celebrate as it marks the passage of our days and gathers the vibrations of our quickening and our waning, all the while tracing the fragments of our celebrations into a map of peaks and valleys - the topography of our inner terrain.
ReplyDeleteWhen your heart celebrates your life, it calls upon the syntax of expression and a lexicon of resources that are quite different than the expression and the choices made by your head. Your heart celebrates by valuing castoffs; by noticing gestures; by casting an ancestral net; by remembering the unforgettable; by relating to what matters", (Reeves 2003: 157, 158).
Ok Haris, I have a question to pose to you....why do people have emotional affairs?
ReplyDeleteIs it for indulgent purposes...is it to appease a narcissistic personality..or does it have to do with the inner child in us that hungers for acceptance and love? or do you believe that one cannot truly love just one person? Why do men and woman reach out to another, knowing she/he is already with someone ? I cant wait to hear your response!!!
Oh... that was a hard one! I sincerely believe that the scope of this question is beyond what we can grasp, i.e. its claim for universality - for indisputable definiteness, just stretches beyond what we can know. Spontaneously, I would first like to comment on the axiomatic nature of question and counter with another question: "How spread is the phenomenon?". Do everybody really have emotional affairs? I know that the phenomenon exists and I am also fairly sure that is doesn't belong to rarities when it comes to human endeavors - but still, the fact that not everybody throw themselves into emotional affairs says at least something of the complexity of this particular issue. But for all of them that do engage in emotional affairs - well, I guess that answers are many - all of them above that you've already listed, seem to me like possible reasons and I'm pretty sure that there also are many more. In fact, I believe that there is a multitude of various reasons behind each persons act - and this goes also for emotional affairs. Culture, socialization, class, gender, background, general outlook on the world, embodied values, rules and norms, etc all build together a complex set of propelling factors determining whether and why one act certain way.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, to begin with, we ought to recognize the difference between reflexive and inattentive experience. Reflexive or attentive experience stands for wide-ranging conscious dealing with everyday life, i.e. co-ordinating and manipulating the tension between the self and the world using the verbal forms of thought material, i.e. that which can be expressed with words. Inattentive experience, on the other hand, although by no means less real, denotes the all encompassing sedimentation of, until that time cognisant, alert and directly accessible knowledge that at present time makes but a large and shady background of nonverbal and momentarily less accessible thought material: “It is too difficult for attention to cover all the terrain of thought that may be activated by varying circumstances […]”, (Reddy 1999:271). In no way should this inattentiveness be understood as a passive form of being in the world. On the contrary, it is experienced and enacted upon through the conception of emotions as “[…] attempts to translate into words […] nonverbal events that are occurring in […] this background”, (Reddy 1999: 267). So, emotions are performed, or should I say acted out, in a twofold manner that seems to be caught in a loop – it is a simultaneous search of an idiom to control and modify our emotions and search of emotions to control and modify our actions, (Reddy 1999: 264). It is to feel-think, (Wikan 1989: 296) and it is double-anchored – to the individuals sense of the self on the one side but always also to a given, necessary yet not sufficient, sociocultural platform on the other, some kind of social institution or a relation (friends, enemies, kin, lovers, strangers, colleagues, settlement, municipality, community, society at large etc) without which emotions wouldn’t be possible.
So, why some people do some stuff is just too large, albeit significant, question.
I hope you didn't fall asleep half way through this long and insufficient attempt to an answer.
No, as a matter of fact, I read and reread it...wow, you I love how analytical you become when someone poses a question..I'm very inquisitive...and there arent too many people that can actually appease some of the things that I question, with a satisfying answer...I really enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions, you make me feel as though you really know how the hell things work...and that is somewhat reassuring...for example, you know how when your driving somewhere, and you have no directions and you get lost, but somehow you manage to find someone who has an idea of where your going and gives you direction...and at that moment, when you realize that they know where your heading, and are familiar with it, well, its as if you've been saved from your own troubling thoughts of being lost...the feeling of being saved from a situation is one of the most complex emotions and it just doesnt encompass one sheer feeling of exhilaration, its also sadness, anger, relief...all those things....and so for me, I found that you give me a sense of relief, you answer my questions, in a way that makes me feel like I'm not as crazy as I think I am...that I am still human, and thats ok....I wish you had an email address where I can reach you...your such an interesting person and it'd be cool if we could be friends. thank you for answering my question...and believe me, there will probably be more in the future, for my well of inquisitiveness has no bottom.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you find my comments interesting and that they can offer you, and I hope to the other ones reading this blog, comfort or relief and such. As for email address - I wouldn't want to be rude but that would be too personal and thus inappropriate. I wouldn't want to dismiss friendship but the fact is that I prefer devoting myself to those I already know - it's really hard to find enough time for that. I recommend you to see this blog as a fiction - a cartoon if you will. There is nothing real beyond it. It is an air castle, an escapist safe haven for pause and reflection. Nothing else! But I sincerely hope that you can get something - anything - here and that you will bring that back and share with the ones you already know.
ReplyDeleteTake care.
No problem...:-) on to the next interesting topic.....
ReplyDeleteOh, and btw, I hope you dont think that I had any personal interest in you, I in no way wanted to contact you in an inappropriate way, just to thank you for stopping by my POD blog from time to time...but after rereading what I'd written earlier, I can see how you might have misunderstood....anyways, thanks for the interesting conversations! :-)
ReplyDelete