The Inherent Flaw

Tommy: "Hey, What's your name?"
Helen: "Helen."
Tommy: "That's nice, you look like a Helen. Helen, we're both in sales. Let me tell you why I suck as a sales man. Let's say I go into some guys office and let's say hes even remotely interested in buying something. Well then I get all excited! I'm like Jojo the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet. The pet is my possible sale. Oh , my pretty little pet, I love you. So I stoke it, and I pet it, and I massage it, hehe I love it, I love my little naughty pet... your naughty. Then I take my naughty pet and I go [makes ripping noises as he tears apart the roll]"
Tommy: "Uuuuuuh. I killed it. I killed my sale. That's when I blow it. That's when people like us gotta forge ahead, Helen, am I right?"
Helen: "God, you're sick."
--Tommy Boy

Behold the grandeur of the human condition! We have subdued the world. We can create and destroy. We have been to the Moon. We make choices to better ourselves - to advance ourselves - to empower ourselves.

But what is this thing we call Emotion? It is disruptive, abstract, and powerful. Yet, to some degree we are expected to rely on our vague feeling to understand the workings of God in our life. The faith required for our greater destinies is evidenced upon a series of feelings and impressions that both surge and receed as the tides of the ocean. The emotional segment of our beings has been endowed upon us by our Great Creator with such extraordinary emphasis, that it is entwined with nearly every other aspect of our being. Are emotions tools or goads? Are they designed to propel or to impede? Are we seriously supposed to exercise faith, using the one thing that undoubtedly causes more confusion within the human experience than any other?

As a race we seem driven, at the core, by a desire for love - a desire to experience some connectedness with everyone else. Our emotions can facilitate this connection, with passionate bursts of care. The men of legends past would fight dragons for love, fueled by his hopes and passions. It is among the human ideals. Yet, all too frequently, the painful ransacking of our emotions compels us to become shallow and isolated. With every disconnect from our fellow man, the hurt and pain enforce a sense of saftey in disconnecting with others. How many people do we see casually stumbling through relationships, never reaching out or exercising their emotions for fear of being destroyed by someone else? They kiss and hold and go through the motions, trying to create some facsimile of a true connection. It is an observable characteristic of our society.

We can assume that God would have us seek a connection, encouraging and facliliating those emotions that would establish the same. However, the evidence around us is filled with the pains and sorrows of many disconnections, and with every one we seem encouraged to become isolated, cold, and shallow... hiding our emotions from each other, retracting the force of our connections. It seems ever exemplified that to care is to risk a little death.