Recently, I have thought about emotions, and the good and bad things about them. I have thought of the past few days where I couldn't seem to control my anger. Indeed, I had a lot of time thinking about them... Well...It has always been said that traits such as anger and aggression are to be avoided because they lead to the domination of the spirit and mind. Despair, desperation, jealousy, they are all considered our 'Dark' passions. In other words, these are the emotions that would usually lead to unwanted...consequences. Therefore, we should all just spend our lives, working on how to restrain these emotions, so that we could all live a happier life, no one gets hurt, and life goes on. Well, so here's the 'ideal' state of mind that everyone should practise: serenity. Therefore, the definition of serenity, in this instance, would be the absence of passion. However, this leads to a more confusing question. Why would nature give us these traits, such as anger, when they are not useful? In other words, we should not be experiencing anger and such, because they are not useful. This, obviously, isn't true, because anger, agression, all these 'dark' passions, they are everywhere. Therefore, in my opinion, all our emotions, passion, they are all natural response to a particular situation. Take for example, if you see one of your loved ones being beaten up by somebody, how would you feel? Anger? Naturally, you will become angry. Naturally, you will feel like whacking that person. This anger that you feel, can either lead to a positive outcome, or one that is...negative. If you suppress that anger, there can be no outcome, and your loved ones is still hurt. What I am trying to say is, there's no point suppressing all emotion, and it is not desirable. A person who suppresses his emotions are no more than a machine. An unfeeling living thing. Of course, that still does not explain how these 'dark passion' can be useful. Lets take the above example. If that person had used his anger to find out why his loved ones were hurt, it is positive. That positive outcome can only be due to one thing: self-knowledge(I will talk about this later). In a negative situation, that person will probably beat the crap out of the assailant, or even worse; kill him. In that situation, the anger has totally dominated your mind; all reasoning is thrown into the winds, you feel most like yourself, and all you want to do, is to hurt somebody. In that situation, anger becomes hatred, love becomes obsession, envy becomes jealousy. In that situation, you allow the anger to control what you do, what you think. Thus, a useful and natural response is now a 'dark' passion. So, why self-knowledge? what's so great about self-knowledge? How does it deter a negative outcome? Self-knowledge brings about an understanding of your feelings. The reason causing that sudden flare of anger. Only when you understand why you are feeling that way, only then can you control, or even let go of your anger and to channel this energies to produce a positive outcome. When a person let his anger control, or dominate his mind, it is due to a lack of understanding on his part. Why is he angry? What caused him to be angry? An unchecked passion would lead to impulsive and often ill-considered consequences. A person without understanding(an 'unchecked' passion) will lead to despair and confusion. Despair and confusion, eventually, will feed that anger... Thats when a natural emotion becomes 'dark'. That being said, my opinion is this: there's no point suppressing an emotion, nor is it desirable, because it would result in an emotionless person. But to understand the origin of the emotion, that is possible. A 'dark passion', therefore, isn't really that dark. They are emotions. Passion. They are merely traits that humans have. If your anger leads to disastrous results, it is not because of your emotions, but because of your lack of self-knowledge. In conclusion, serenity stems not from the absence of passion, but from self-knowldge.

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