My Epiphany of Rational Emotion...

As time passes and I'm graced with day after day of this life-gift I can't help but notice some interesting trends develop in my mind when I give thought to the way that people work. I tend to have four major points of interest in life; who God is, who I am, how the world works, and how people work. The piece that has been honed a little more in my mind lately relates mostly to the way that people work.

I think, and I mean this with a sense of gracious joy and valued respect, that people are more-or-less weird. Weird in a lot of ways. I can't deny my own membership to that club and won't attempt to here, but I will say that the more I live, the more I can understand why we are so strangely weird.

I can't say with any certainty that I have figured out the root of this trait, but I believe that it has something to do with the battle that goes on inside each of us between our two most human of characteristic tools – reason and emotion.

Now, for a long time I have been somewhat biased in my perception of these two contenders. Due to my own disenchantment with the way that emotions tend to screw with our heads and lead us down the wrong path from time to time I have been a bit hard on that unique side of humanity. Reason, for a number of reasons, has just always weighed in on the more valid and valuable side with me. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with my fear of not being in control – and what a funny fear that is now that I think about it; as if control were even remotely attainable for us.

With that background though, my thoughts have led me to a seemingly contradictory stance of late. And that may be exactly what it is, but none-the-less it is where I am. I must say that I have been convinced of the extreme importance of our emotions and the role that they play in our time here on earth. I definitely believe in God and his design and providential hand in our existence here. So I suppose it shouldn't have come as such a surprise to me when I realized that those emotions that we have are part of his providential plan – just as much a part as our reason.

The thing that I have been working on the past few weeks and months has been how to reconcile to two contenders (reason and emotion) to one another in such a way as to afford us the benefits of both without reaping the damaging side effects that accompany a life tilted too severely in either of their directions. My conclusion at this point in life is this, that reason and emotion are both vital to our experience of a full life on this earth, but emotion is to live in a subordinate role to reason. Its a simple matter of form following function. Emotion can function in the form of reasoned boundaries – and function quite effectively and safely, but reason cannot function in the boundless realm of emotion. That recognition is the hinge on which the argument is raised and the only point needed for me to become convinced of its validity.

Given that precious sense of understanding, I feel a sense of freedom that has, up to this point, escaped me. I no longer have to be afraid of emotion, on the contrary, I can welcome it with open arms. And the tool that allows for that free embrace is the system of boundaries and accountability that our precious gift of reason affords. Therefore, the value of reason and emotion are shared, but the priority and sequential occurrence of the two are distinct in that reason stands as an essential prerequisite for the free and safe experience that emotion has to offer.