Dear reader,
The notes you will come to discover here are those of introspective musings, of observational narrative and creative outpour – three processes of a different nature united under a theme of crucial importance: emotion.
Demonstrating true and deep emotion, in particular true negative emotion pertaining to difficulty in life, is uncommon. The pre-programmed response ‘I’m fine’ leaves our most introductory question unanswered millions of times each day. Weeping in private is inappropriate public knowledge. Weeping in the company of others belongs in novels and badly written screenplays.
There are drivers to this phenomenon. We inhabit a world which covets rationality and its scientific successes as the single greatest propeller of progress. I am not here to debate the validity of this statement, but to observe how modern conceptions of emotion as a hinderance and pollutant to the force of rationality not only degrade a healthy dynamic between the two forms of intelligence, but also make us myopic to its stand-alone value.
Few disagree that material concerns have usurped a disproportionate segment of our lives, constructing a temporary illusion that inspiration and purpose are substitutable for comfort and predictability. Permitting the excess of that infinite, volatile capacity within is the tool with which to smash this prism, recognising that emotion is what motivates us past the point of sustenance.
The notes to be collected here are an attempt to escape the two-dimensional cage of emotional superficiality imposed by prevailing conventions. In the reality I aim to sculpt, the practice of feeling shines a light on the needs and boundaries of others as well as our own. More ambitiously still, I will attempt to examine the relationship between the emotional and the rational (because the academic inside me has yet to perish) – how emotive responses, the actions they drive and the retrospective reflection that may follow can, taken as a process of separate stages, drive a more constructive outcome than its individual components.
For I maintain that if we feel more deeply, discuss this with others truthfully and perceive emotion and rationality as separate albeit connected elements integrating into a grander whole, we discover inspiration, purpose and meaning.
Yours,
Sia
Notes From Afar 