Thursday

What is a feeling?

May I suggest that it is a response, perhaps pre-programmed, to a given situation. You are given a gift, therefore you feel happy. Someone rear-ends your car, you feel mad. A pre-programmed one may be a feeling of fear when you prepare to walk into an empty house after midnight (I don't know why you would want to, but that's beside the point). If feelings are indeed a response, doesn't that mean we can or should be able to control them? In the Star Wars movies and countless others, people are told to "trust their feelings." However if a feeling is a response, that means it could be different each time a certain thing happens, therefore they are subject to change, and perhaps not so trustworthy. Would you go to someone for advice if you knew their answer would be different if you asked a second time? Hmm.

So can we really control our feelings? There are several places in the Bible were we are called to be self-controlled. I would think that includes controlling our emotions and our reactions to life. Not to say we should never get mad, "Be angry, and do not sin." (Ps. 4:4). It just means we shouldn't meditate on that anger and act on it. But maybe it also means we should be able to choose how we feel about something. We choose to get upset if something bad happens. That's a tough pill to swallow, especially when you're in the midst of a bad situation.

A question though. Can you choose to stop a feeling? Not necessarily like love or something, perhaps a feeling of animosity or loneliness or guilt. Negative feelings in general? Perhaps it's more than just stopping the feeling, it probably has to be replaced with a positive one. That makes sense if you realize that to get rid of dark, you have to replace it with light.

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So that was my post this morning. I almost deleted it because it sounds so sermon-y. Oh well. How's your thursday going? Another normal work week over here, nothing too special happening over here. This weekend will be nice I think. At least nicer than some. Maybe just a little better. At least we get an extra day off. That will be nice.

I guess just not much else to say today, I just felt kind of obligated to post something since I know some of you faithfully check this every day. Thanks for that, and as always, comments are welcome. Later,

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