Don't think…Feeeeel
Bruce Lee, my hero in the 70s, had a great philosophical line. I think it came inbetween the line "I'll chop your head in two" and him squealing like a stuck pig as he roundhouse kicked Chuck Norris.
When Bruce was teaching celebrities the martial arts, he would say "Don't think, feeeeel". Very simple idea but often very useful. I especially like the feeeeel. I think to express emotions accurately the word feel needs a few extra e's in it. We should whole heartedly feeeeel our emotions.
We don't want to follow this mantra all the time, of course. When I was a kid and put my tongue on a cold piece of metal, and then tore off shards of tongue, a little more thinking would have done nicely. Boy did I feeeeel pain.
This brings us to the age old question of whether dogs experience feelings or emotions. My short answer is, yes. My long answer is, yes.
To people who think only we wonderful humans are anointed with emotions, I say give yourself a roundhouse kick in the head.
Go ahead and tell me Newman feeeeels nothing when I get home and he comes to life like a muscle car zooming down Yonge Street. And what would that whimpering be when I leave for even 2 minutes?
I think the confusion comes down to language. We have it, Newman doesn't. But, as a Taoist might say, language is not the real world, it's only a description of it. The word "chair" is not the essence of a chair, it's just a name. (Feel free to smoke something strong at this point)
Let's see. I know. Labeling an emotion is not the emotion itself. Describing it with language is not the experience of the emotion. Put another way, I think you'd agree that a person who had no language could still feel emotion. If anything, language complicates and obfuscates emotions.
And language is a sign of what? Thinking. Thinking is obviously very useful but it also tends to separate us from our actual experience of being alive. If I say I feel sad, that is not the emotion. The emotion is inside me and ultimately beyond verbal description. Of course I'll try to describe it in a language, but the words are always an imperfect description of what is happening.
Oh, just remembered another way to say it. The map is not the terrain. When you look at a map, it is an approximation or representation of the actual terrain. So language is like the map. Emotion is the terrain.
Just because Newman can't verbalize doesn't mean he is not feeling. I would say his emotional experience is purer than ours in that it is not "contaminated", or modulated, with language.
Newman doesn't think about it. He feeeeels it. And we humans should do this more often. We don't always have to think and verbalize everything. Sometimes we can just experience it.
Good advice, I think.
