What if anger isn’t bad—and love isn’t always good?

What if no emotion was good or bad in itself?

UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONS

During a short conversation with a coworker about investing, I realized a simple truth. It surprised me and made me think.

A person’s life is a cradle of emotions. They come and go without us even paying attention to them. If you asked a thousand people how many emotions they felt in a single day, how many would be able to give an exact number?

I was telling my coworker—and I quote myself:

“It is okay to be afraid. It shows that we are at an important moment in our lives, but we should not let fear control us.”

And to encourage him, considering his Christian faith, I added:

“Even Jesus had known fear once, and he still accomplished his mission.”

He answered almost immediately, without hesitation:

“I have never heard that Jesus was afraid. He had doubts, yes, but I don’t believe he ever felt fear.”

(This is not a text about theology)

I wanted to defend my position, but I could not really do it. I answered something, of course, but deep down, I realized my own ignorance.

And a question came to my mind: What is fear? And what about doubt?

Of course, I know how to recognize fear and doubt when I feel them, or when I observe them in others. But at that moment, I could not find the words to clearly define them.

We constantly experience emotions: joy, sadness, fear, doubt… It is natural for a human being, so natural that we almost never stop to ask ourselves:

What is an emotion?

In the dictionary, an emotion is defined as an immediate reaction of the body or mind to an event or situation.

It is brief, spontaneous, and often very visible, because it can cause laughter, trembling, or even a form of paralysis. But some emotions are silent too.

I would say that an emotion is like a rush of adrenaline, or like the energy drinks I take to stay awake at work. It is temporary, but in the moment, it can cause many things—good or harmful. It depends on how we welcome it or how we manage it in that moment.

And as Aristotle said so well: “Emotions are the engines of the soul.”

With a good engine, we can go far, moving peacefully along the roads of life. But if we do not take care of that engine, it can quickly become a nightmare.

Very often, an emotion is the beginning of a feeling.

Or, to put it another way, a feeling is often an emotion prolonged and interpreted by thought.

Emotion comes from reflex; feeling comes from memory and the meaning we give to that emotion.

For example, when something scares us, the body and mind react immediately. Then a feeling of insecurity can settle in, as an extension of that first fear.

The Nature of Emotions

A statement from a philosopher I discovered late—Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century thinker known for his rational view of human passions—clearly resonates with one of my beliefs. He said:

“An emotion is neither good nor bad in itself; it becomes destructive only when it dominates reason.”

I often say that no system is either good or bad. I believe the same applies to our emotions. No emotion, then, is good or bad in itself. Whether it is gentle, tender, or intense, an emotion has no will of its own and no predetermined benevolent or harmful nature.

Take love, for example. We consider it a “good” feeling. The emotions that come from it seem wonderful: attractive, powerful, comforting. When we hear “love,” we usually think of well-being, peace, safety… And yet, some forms of love can hurt.

I know one of my aunts who loves her children so deeply that she refuses to see them suffer. She does everything she can to protect them from the difficulties of life. She spoils them and tolerates their behavior in a way that I find irresponsible—but that is only my opinion. She gives them everything they want without hesitation. She sacrifices herself, empties her savings to make them happy. Taking care of your children is a responsibility, of course. But preparing a child for the realities of the world is just as important. What will happen when she is no longer there to protect them?

If she cooks and the children do not like the food, she gives them money to buy whatever they prefer. In my home, it was different: if you were not allergic and refused to eat, you went to bed hungry. Our parents often reminded us that food did not fall from the sky. They worked to provide it.

And I believe that when we cover a child with too much protective love, we eventually take away their sense of the value of things: the value of effort, the value of others, the value of work, the value of money… and many others. Haven’t you heard stories from people who say they wish their parents had been a little stricter when they were young?

Overprotective love—as pure and sincere as it may be—can eventually hurt the person we love. And there are other forms of love that can be just as suffocating.

A man or woman who loves someone and wants to control everything, who watches the other person, who gets carried away by jealousy… How many people are abused or even killed in the name of love?

I am vindictive. I don’t fight—I find it too exhausting. I get revenge. When I say that revenge is sacred and that it can be a good thing in itself, the response I hear most often is that we should not hold grudges, that we need to learn to forgive, to let go, so we do not condemn our lives because of other people.

Revenge is generally seen as something negative. We imagine that it comes from hatred. From anger or disappointment, yes, but from hatred, not always. The best revenge, for me, is succeeding where others wanted me to fail, accomplishing what people mocked me for, getting what I was denied. It is a feeling born from my anger, my disappointment, and sometimes my sadness. But I do not feel hatred toward anyone. Or perhaps that “hatred” is simply my memory, the reminder that pushes me to take revenge in this way.

It reminds me of a line from Youssoupha, in Le jour où j’ai arrêté le rap: “Thank you to those who refused to help me; they helped me do things by myself.” I find this line deeply true.

Love, considered a “good” feeling, when expressed poorly, can become destructive. On the other hand, revenge born from anger, sadness, or disappointment, seen as “bad,” can become a motivating force that helps us reach our goals.

That is why I believe that no emotion/feeling is good or bad in itself. What matters is how we choose to express it.

Mirror Question:

Which emotion have you always considered “bad”—and what has it actually done in your life?

Support’s Note

Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I always enjoy reading them and joining the conversation.

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With Clarity,
Odel A.
The Mirror Room