Feelings

I have certain feelings. Emotional response stems from thoughts or actions and I then try to decide how best to respond. How can this be so difficult? Why is it I don’t constantly hear about others agonizing over this process? People seem to know what they think and what they want without endless deliberation and fraught grandstanding. They may not know what choice to make, but they seem to understand instinctively what factors are in play and what outcome they’d prefer. Meanwhile, I’m rolling around in the night and making charts and taking notes and, when I finally assemble all the data, I have no idea what it means.

Maybe emotion is too extreme an example to begin. Those types of decisions can arrive in a charged state and a certain degree of hemming and hawing is understandable. Let’s consider opinion instead. The root issue is similar and potential examples are more readily related.

When someone asks me, “what did you think of film X?” I rarely tell them what I thought of film X. I thought everything about film X. Yes, the actual embedded question is “did you like film X?” but that’s not all that much easier to answer. I liked the following things and I disliked the following things. I alternated liking and disliking the following things. I liked certain things in one sense and disliked those same things in another sense. These decisions are subject to revision, often nearly at once. I’m not even always sure if I enjoyed the experience. Was it good? What sort of scale are we using? How can you compare such things? There is an insurmountable apples and oranges issue inherent in evaluation of this kind.

My typical solution is to select the object features I am most willing to talk about at that moment and use that as a framework. Onto this we stretch sackcloth, dab paints, and affix glass baubles. When you ask for my opinion, this is what I give you. Maybe other people do this, too. I have no idea.