Are You Emotionally Stunted?

Unaccustomed as I am to sharing opinions that fly in the face of conventional wisdom...    

I think you should know that you are emotionally stunted. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are. And if you are one of the lucky ones who have your emotional baggage well and truly sorted, then I’m sorry to tell you that you are deluded. But please don’t be alarmed or take this personally. Statistically-speaking it is inevitable that you are either depressed; distressed or just stressed. Maybe you are obsessive; neurotic or have an addictive personality. Alternatively you could be apathetic or just plain old pathetic. You might suffer from fear of failure; or fear of success. You could just be a drama queen or a dick or maybe you have Imposter syndrome; Puppet syndrome; Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction syndrome; or my personal favourite…  Acute Brain syndrome. Really, when it comes to emotional turbulence, the sky is the limit. But hey! The good news is, that you are not alone!

Is it just me or are we spending WAY TOO MUCH time focussing on our emotional well-being? The pervasive theory seems to be that if we successfully manage our emotions then success in other areas of our life will follow. But what if this theory is flawed? What if we instead focussed more on the doing than the being? Maybe if we identify with a goal that is meaningful and then work fervently towards it, we would either have more to be happy about – or we would be too tired to worry about whether we were happy or not!

Bear with me for a minute…   I am learning Te Reo Maori and when it comes to possession or ownership, everything is designated as an ‘o’ category or an ‘a’ category, where the ‘o’ category is considered to be superior. For example “I have a brain” translates to “he roro tōku” (an 'o' recognising the importance of my body) but “I have a hammer” would be “he hama tāku” (tools being of lower 'a' status). And interestingly, thoughts and feelings (whakaaro) fall into the ‘o’ category but spoken word (korero) belong to the ‘a’ category. This is because our thoughts are important and an essential part of who we are, but as soon as these thoughts are spoken they are out in the world and able to be interpreted or misinterpreted by anyone.

Contemplating this idea recently it threw the spotlight on two key aspects of the modern era that I think need to be addressed…  1) the tendency to vocalise under-developed thoughts that should have remained in our heads and 2) the opportunity to use technology to protect good thoughts from human misinterpretation.

I think our fixation on sharing random and immature thoughts or judgements, has simply become a bad-habit promoted by leaders and celebrities alike. I believe this habit is really affecting our productivity and success and I think we need to take some personal ownership in turning this around. Instead of investing time dealing with some random emotional doubt; irritation; embarrassment; fear; assumption; guilt; envy etc – why not just park the issue and re-purpose your time into progressing towards a goal that is meaningful to you? 

On the other hand, the opportunity for using AI and other digital advancements to protect us from ourselves has enormous potential but needs broad acceptance. The industrial revolution helped humans work more productively (machines helped us get faster; more efficient; more connected) and the digital revolution will help machines work more productively, addressing some of the gaps caused by human inadequacies. Imagine being freed from the mundane machinations of everyday chores and being able to put time, energy and love into building a better world. 

So…  if you have made it this far, then maybe you – like me – are tired of having a spotlight on our emotional flaws and agree its time to move on. Imagine the possibilities if we just decided to relieve ourselves of the emotional burden that comes with being human and instead embrace the resources available to us and focus on a higher order for humanity. 

I think this sounds like something worth getting emotional about...