You know, it amazes me when people pretend to be one thing and then act as another. Bear with me - i’ll try and be less vague than that.

People who claim to be open-minded, yet really are slanted, bitter individuals with nothing but ingorance to spread; People who claim to be intelligent/faithful/etc but the second that any emotion creeps into their lives elsewhere, it goes out the door. I guess it could loosely be considered the “fair-weather friend” of human reason.

See, i’m not saying that people are dumb, ignorant or faithless by saying this…i’m just saying that if you claim to be scholarly in a pursuit, but as soon as you’re having a bad day for other reasons you close the door on that scholarly pursuit — what is that all about?

Why can’t people learn that intellect, faith and ego all exist in a seperate realm from emotion? It’s not that they don’t coexist or even mix at times — but we should be aware of when more than 1 thing is present. Case in point:

Student A gets an assignment that seems really interesting and they are actually excited to research it. They are bound to write the best paper ever and dive right into the books. They attack the project head-on, with fervor and zeal — eager to learn and grow.

But the next day Student A has a bad day. They missed the bus, got yelled at in gym class and forgot their lunch. When it comes time to working on their paper, they feel sorry for themselves. They now hate the paper, the assignment and think it’s stupid. They half-ass the research and hand the final paper in without even so much as a double-checking of the grammar.

Now what happened to the first day’s intentions? Were they not true and valid? No, I’d argue that they were…and that that was a prime example of Student A’s real demeanor. Yet Student A let emotion (pity, pride, self-loathing, etc) get in the way of something true, something they really wanted: to learn and to grow.

All in all, it pains me to see people who want to be philosophical/mature/faithful/etc … yet cannot see when emotion has crept in and polluted certain true motives.

So am I preaching the Gospel of Emotionless Living? Hell no. I’m speaking of awareness of where our decisions come from - are they out of logic, reason, emotion or a mix…and what out of those 3 have a right to be there to make the best, most lucid decision possible. In the above example, Student A would probably agree that they should not have let their bad day/emotion get in the way of something that they were really looking forward to AND was going to be a great experience.

Arg. End of rant. Why can’t we all just see which motivation is fueling us at all times? God this was one of the most poorly written string of words in the history of modern language.