We all love to laugh in a cheerful response to a humorous situation, word, image, enactment or even our own thoughts.
Some days we don’t seem to be provided with any stimulus where laughter would be appropriate. There are days when we don’t laugh at all. These are also the days that don’t seem to be our good days.
There is nothing so disturbing about our modern lifestyle as the shocking realization that our children are casually playing with the idea of suicide. Not only this, they are also playing out the drama of attempted suicide and seriously drafting suicide notes in preparation for such an action.
But worst of all, we have the statistics of the numbers of young people who go through with it. The critical age group would seem to be from 15 – 25 years. In one year in Australia, in 2003 there were 270 deaths by suicide in this age bracket.
It is not often in early life that we are encouraged to undertake training of our emotions. Perhaps a little restraint over the negative ones and unconscious encouragement of our finer one is the common experience in early home life as we respond to outer circumstances and whatever family life teaches us.
We are not aware of the power that emotions have. They can steer us to future happiness or to damage our healthy intellectual development or interfere with our mental fitness as well as our physical well being.
Although it is the most important part of our representing as it does our direct link we have to our Maker or our spiritual source, most of us have not kept pace with modern neurological science and consequently have limited knowledge of the brain.
We know the brain is housed as a sensitive instrument within the confines of the bony skull. It is shaped somewhat like a walnut, with a division between the hemispheres and all crinkly but much softer in texture than a nut.
When we refer to matters of general insurance it concerns unexpected and unpreventable circumstances over which we have no direct control other than due care.
In regard to health insurance however, prevention is the only real insurance against misfortune and disease of any kind. Only by building our health can we ensure that we do not suffer pain and illness in future or at least minimize any problem. There is no other way. There is no amount of money that can replace our vital healthy state or compensate us for lost ability to enjoy life. We must therefore consider that we bear a responsibility to do our utmost to create and maintain our health.
Just as we have to exercise and look after our own physical health, each of us is responsible for our own emotions – their expressions and restraints.
The emotions are strong and many a time will win in any conflict situation between thought and feeling. So we have to maintain a co-operative team situation in recognition of their mutual importance yet retain the mind in the role of manager.
Our emotions or feelings have a wide range of mood from sympathy, suffering, compassion and affection to envy, anger, hatred and many other less pleasant, negative expressions.
Positive emotions are those that activate our best aspects of our personality or soul. To experience these brings us contentment, happiness, love and peace. All these feelings can inject a special quality into events and experiences. We will all remember the happy moments in our lives when our finest emotions were heightened. Many of these will have arisen spontaneously. Although it is possible to consciously generate certain degrees of feeling, we usually learn that we cannot use our will to bring us a repeat of those feelings. Only an echo of them comes through our memory and we are reminded that it is possible to experience such ‘highs’ again.
