Have you ever noticed how every thing you see, feel, think comes along with a little positive or negative tag? Some of the tags are like huge, great, big warnings, while others are very subtle and you'd really only notice if you were paying very careful attention.
A few examples:
the sun comes out from behind the clouds when I'm sitting outside feeling a bit chilly - a little burst of 'good!'
the sun comes out from behind the clouds the moment I've packed up my laptop, Kindle and water bottle and returned inside - a little ripple of 'annoyance'.
seeing a big red-brown hare in the fields - a splash of joy and pleasure.
thinking about my boss saying my voice was 'too dramatic' on the second half of the recording - a dash of frustration and self-righteousness.
realising it's not time to eat yet - a sense of disappointment.
reading a comment online about politics - a flare of anger.
seeing the name of a dear friend on my ringing phone when I'm lonely - a flash of relief.
seeing the name of a person I really don't want to speak to - a deadening sense of tedium.
These sensations may relate to aesthetic and moral values, physical concepts of pleasure and pain, a wide variety of emotional memories or predictions. I don't think any realisations, ideas or sense experiences are utterly devoid of some kind of affect.
Once the emotional valence is recognised, we might think a thought like, 'Oh, I'm glad that I feel warmer now the sun is out' or 'Hell, do I really have to wait longer before I can eat?' The thoughts, though, come after the feeling. They are, one might say, post hoc rationalisations of the emotive value we have experienced.
Now, one might associate one's sense of self with the thoughts we have, the sense experiences we are conscious of, the memories or imaginings that fill our mind-wandering and so on. We might feel 'in charge' of these states, feel some ownership over them, some control. That the self is doing it. But what about the little tags? The miniscule (or major) positive or negative coloration that comes along with these states, experiences, concepts? Are we in control of them? Is 'the self' putting them on everything that the self is thinking, knowing and feeling?
I remember spending a day consciously noticing all these little - and big - 'move away' or 'move toward' sensations. It was like coming to terms with a sense - to a very limited extent, to be sure - of the vast unconscious body of the iceberg below my usual awareness.
It's interesting to do this in conversation - to recognise the feelings generated by what the other person says and then to consider: why do I feel like this? Is this reaction representative of how I really want to experience this concept? What is it about that comment - or the way it was said - or the 'way I hear it' - that inspires this reaction?
It might be that this could confer some insights, but what may be more important is that it might encourage a less reactive response, a more considered one, and thus improve the quality of the conversation - and the relationship.
It is time to eat now. Thank goodness.
Cool.