The Appeal of Pure Reason
I entered adulthood believing that emotions were more bothersome than helpful. I remember reading Plato’s Republic my sophomore year of college and feeling an instant kinship with the man. In order to live a good life, Plato wrote, we must subjugate our emotions to the rational part of our mind. That is what I felt I had been trying to do, and reading his classic work bolstered my confidence that I could be successful.
I eventually came to see that Plato was wrong. And also right.
What Plato Got Right
He correctly understood that humans are supremely intelligent beings. In the animal kingdom, we alone can engage in sophisticated thinking and solve complex problems. And so it makes sense that we would use reason to guide our behavior and not squander our greatest evolutionary advantage.
What He Missed
However, Plato failed to understand two important truths.
First, the human mind is far less rational than he believed. Neuroscientists now know that most of our mental life is unconscious. Despite our belief that our choices are the result of rational deliberation, the truth is that most of our decisions are determined by factors outside our conscious awareness. Jonathan Haidt likens the human brain to a rider on an elephant. The rider represents our conscious thinking, while the elephant is “the other 99 percent of mental processes — the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.”
Second, emotions communicate important information. Emotions, we now know, played an essential role in human evolution, providing necessary guidance. Fear, for example, makes us aware that we’re in danger and prepares our minds and bodies to fight or flee from the danger. Anguish communicates that something is wrong and that we need support from others. More than just enhancing our physical survival, emotions also communicate whether our psychological needs are being met, the fulfillment of which is needed for health and happiness.
The Cost of Avoiding Emotion
I didn’t know any of this when I was younger and spent considerable energy pushing away certain emotions. I often knowingly pushed away these emotions, telling myself that there was no point in feeling sad or angry or worried. And I often unknowingly pushed them away, my unconscious mind doing this in an effort to protect me against emotional pain.
I came to learn that, when we push away our emotions, there’s always a cost. Pushing away my feelings of grief, for instance, expended emotional energy that could have been used for other purposes. Additionally, my grief started to transform into anger, and this anger turned out to be a distraction and not beneficial to my mental health. Finally, avoiding the experience of grief prevented me from receiving that emotion’s curative effects. A quick Google search, for example, will yield numerous studies showing the psychological and medical benefits of crying.
Making Sense of Our Feelings
Of course, emotions are not an infallible source of information, and it’s important to use our rational mind to evaluate and make sense of them. To provide one brief example, Leslie Greenberg writes that it’s important to understand whether our emotions are primary or secondary. In my own story, grief was my primary emotion, something I needed to fully feel, while anger was a secondary emotion, a decoy that diverted my attention from where it needed to be.
Living Fully
Being connected to our emotions is essential for psychological well-being. To truly know ourselves, and to truly feel like ourselves, we must allow ourselves to feel. We avoid this because it can be unpleasant, even painful. But the unpleasantness doesn’t last forever — and the reward is incomparable.
Plato was right that reason matters. But living wisely means listening to our emotions, too. They are not obstacles to overcome, but guides leading us toward a more authentic, fully human life.