Sine Waves of Emotion

This life is a roller coaster. It's nuts. I longboard through Manhattan every day, and with Radiohead blasting in my earbuds, the whole world is just a screenplay. I see many people in perfect emotional stasis on their routine commute, but every once in a while I see a real gem, a diamond in the rough: a tear-streaked face screaming into a cell phone, kicking a wall, falling in despair onto a bench, throwing up their hopeless hands, squaring off to punch a complete stranger.

It's not an ideal moment, for those people. I'm sure they wish I wasn't seeing them. But I'm so grateful I am. They represent a peak in human existence: the pinnacles of emotion. They are overwhelmed with their own humanity. They can't escape their fate as real, sentient, capable beings. They can't hide in clothes or products or ego. They are splayed open, and I'm lucky enough to see inside.

Everyone loves graphs right? Well, I do, and emotions in life similar to a sine wave, which fluctuates constantly between extremes, and returns again and again to 0, but never stops. At either extreme, it does for a moment stop changing (slope=0) so it could be said that that moment of extreme emotion is more real and lasting and tangible than the moment of calm, represented by 0, when in fact the rate of change is at its maximum velocity. Said another way, you have actually arrived at a real destination if you are ecstatic or in despair, but if you are "just fine," you are simply heading toward ecstasy or despair.

Here's the thing though. For all it's moving and shaking, the sine wave has an average of 0. For every moment of rage there is an equal and opposite moment of bliss, and these things can (at least mathematically) cancel each other out. If a person takes a long-term view of his life, he may come to trust this average, and take comfort in the guaranteed return to 0. So even at an emotional peak, he can take a deep breath and say, "I'm gonna be fine; I AM fine," and in that way nullify the peak.

How uncommunicative for his girlfriend! How unfulfilling for the longboarding spectator! How discouraging for neurotransmitters, just waiting to deliver bursts of emotion!

As a side note, I do the breathe and average technique. It's been disastrous for more than one relationship. But I'm working on it. At least I'm blogging about it.