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Feeling down?

Here are some rambled thoughts that I just found. I scribbled them down after returning from Budapest speaking at a TEDx conference. I went to Hungary believing in the intrinsic power of love, and came back a different person. Thanks to Nick Ripley at gt, Prince Kropotkin and others for the illumination.

Feelings, like actions, can be deconstructed.

There have been many times in my life when I have chosen to transform a negative feeling into something else - even something full of love and hope. The example of my dad comes first to mind (that's another story). My feelings, like thoughts and actions, are filtered through my conscience, experience and state of mind. If a negative feeling can be transformed into a positive one, can it have intrinsic value?

A feeling, therefore, is a cumulative expression of a number of different internal relationships. The question of whether, before there is any filtration or relational process, there is intrinsic value, is tantamount to asking the question of the origin of all things. How did creation come to be? From what we understand of science, it was the result of a series of almost improbable relationships combining with each other to create the conditions for life. Of course, many people ask 'what happened before this?' The theists will always continue to resonate while we can't answer this with absolute conviction. It is possible - if not probable - that there is something with intrinsic value that enables life, thoughts, feelings to first come into being, before they are expressed through our cultural lens, stuck in their space and time, and we attribute value to them. But right now, I think the beauty of the relationships that take place to enable life, thoughts, feelings, actions, are beautiful and wondrous enough to be concerned with too much else.

As I sit here, I feel somewhat liberated by the idea that negative feelings have no intrinsic value and that, regardless of how it may seem at the time, they are a construct and can therefore be transformed. There is no intrinsically negative force, some evil power, planting ideas in my heart and mind - this empowers me, through my free will, to deconstruct negativity and apply a different value to it, thus transforming the subtractor into an adder. Maybe this idea is predicated upon my wishing to have control of my own destiny, without extraneous forces with intrinsic value - I am comfortable with that.

To see the talk I gave in Budapest, 'What's better than perfect?' go to http://www.tedxdanubia.com/VideoList.aspx?q=7380b215-18a6-48fa-b236...

Feeling down?

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