Love, Fear & Loathing, Etc.: In The Eye of One Beholder

“Most emotions, and perhaps all—and I posit there are thousands of them, shared to a greater or lesser degree by many sentient beings on this planet—have something in common: they depend on . . . time. On a perception of time, in its several tenses (in its several, perhaps innumerable, perceived tenses).”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

By Way of Being

By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”―C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.”―Mel Brooks

“Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty ‘umble, ‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘so you don’t fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas’ me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat briar-patch,’ sezee.’ ―Joel Chandler Harris, “How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox”

PETIT TRIANON Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—October 2016—Almost always, in my life as a writer, I have written not to extract myself from a thicket (or briar patch) but to describe it.

For the thicket (or briar patch) is my stomping grounds. My bailiwick. I know my way around it. I have the home team advantage.

Of course, the particular thicket of which I speak (given our magazine’s October topic: fear) is the realm of human emotions. It’s a thicket (or bouquet of blooms and briars, if you will) comprising (along any number of continua) the following:  anger, annoyance, contempt, disgust, irritation, anxiety, embarrassment, fear, helplessness, powerlessness, worry, pride, doubt, envy, frustration, guilt, shame, boredom, despair, disappointment, hurt, sadness, stress, shock, tension, amusement, delight, elation, excitement, happiness, joy, pleasure, affection, empathy, friendliness, love, courage, hope, humility, satisfaction, trust, calmness, contentment, relaxation, relief, serenity, interest, politeness, and surprise.

And no, I did not come up with those 48 gradations of feeling on my own. The list mirrors the “emotion annotation and representation language (EARL) proposed by the Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion (HUMAINE).”

I, myself, would add quite a few more categories, or at least tinker with their names as given: triumph, rage, awe, longing, nostalgia, glee, bliss, rapture, spite, depression, remorse, pity, panic, and dread spring to mind, and that’s just in English. (In Greek, I could add still others.)

But most emotions, and perhaps all—and I posit there are thousands of them, shared to a greater or lesser degree by many sentient beings on this planet*—have something in common: they depend on . . . time. On a perception of time, in its several tenses (in its several, perhaps innumerable, perceived tenses).

Without some notion of past, present, and future, there is no grief, just for instance.

Without memory, death has no sting; without some notion of the future, no loss may be anticipated.

And fear may well be hard-wired and visceral in “torsos” of many sorts (Sheer drop beneath my feet! Snake! Earthquake! Mama, where’s Mama!?), but the entire emotional thicket’s at its thickest  . . . around Homo sapiens.

I myself began life in fear and trembling which, if you consider I started out at 6lbs 4oz, was a pretty rational position to take.

I didn’t sleep well from Day 1 and, when I found I could, I had nightmares. Before age six, in fact, I had a full-blown phobia, which has hung in there for over a half-century: hypodermic syringes. (Could have been much worse: could have been water. I have one friend with a water phobia, and she has never been able to shower, let alone face the ocean.)

In truth though, memory being what it is, fear may not have been my first emotion, but it’s my first-remembered.

And I’m not generally fearful. I can relocate spiders and snakes from the indoors out. I can put a worm on a hook. I usually, and automatically, get between nominally scary things and any weaker companions and, brought up by my parents to be, consciously, an “honorary male,” if also taught to help empower my fellow women, I’ve escaped the many garden-variety types of fear by which others are paralyzed.

I’ve boldly gone where I wasn’t necessarily expected to go.

And, from the 6lb-4oz-git-go, I’ve been interested in all the emotions. Afraid of dreams and needles, I learned, very early, that there was a caesura between stimulus and human response; that fear was “just” a human reaction (to something, or nothing) and, if I looked closely (at both scary-something and reaction), and thought about it, I could actually get all the way (well, most of the way) around stimulus and response, and remove some of the intensity.

Fear, dependent on hard-wiring, time, and memory, could be looked in the eye, and stared down (on many occasions).

Now . . . I also look gift horses in their teeth (with a mixture of hope, skepticism, and anxiety), but that’s another story; from another part of the briar patch.

*Please see the writing of ecologist Carl Safina on the rich emotional lives of animals, particularly elephants and cetaceans [https://medium.com/@carlsafina/animal-thought-and-emotion-a-glossary-b15a5c80965f#.7gj5kd816].

Further Reading:

“Tongue and Tech: The Many Emotions for Which English Has No Words,” by Megan Garber, The Atlantic, January 8, 2013.

• See: Gigil (pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute; and Litost (Czech): A state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

“45 Beautiful Untranslatable Words That Describe Exactly How You’re Feeling,” by Katie Mather, Thought Catalog, July 22, 2015.  

• For instance: Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan): The wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to do so; Verschlimmbessern (German): To make something worse when trying to improve it; Schadenfreude (German): The feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail or suffer misfortune).

“23 New Words for Emotions That We All Feel, but Can’t Explain,” by Justin Gammill, I Heart Intelligence, June 7, 2015.

• Just for example: Altschmerz: (n) Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years; and Occhiolism: (n) The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

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