Emotional Decisions

To the diligent followers of "whattimeisitwhereyouare",

I have three flavors of chewing gum in my desk at work. I open my drawer and, without thinking, choose a flavor. I never regret my choice, and have come to terms with this, despite its lack of logic.

You see, many consider me to be rational thinker, and their rationale is correct. These people, being either rational or emotional thinkers themselves, might tag me as being sensible or heartless, respectively. Likewise, an emotional thinker might be tagged as being sensible or ridiculous.

This age old deliberation reminds of of Frau Holle, whom I met last Spring in my German Fairytales class (yes, it is a real class - a 400 level class at that). Frau Holle lives in the bottom of a well in an enchanted house where she rewards the meek with a pot of gold and the selfish she covers in pitch. And she helped me come to terms with the balance of Romanticism and Enlightenment. You see, the German folk, never having been conquered by the Romans, were ostracized from the scientific renaissance of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries. An 18th century German would believe the story of Frau Holle, because they had no proof that such magic did not exist. Their explanations of weather, nature, and the heavens were equally mystical. But why does this matter? And what does it have to do with chewing gum?

The point is that while believing in witches and talking frogs is no way to live, we enlightened and rational thinkers have been explaining the unexplainable for so long that there is hardly any of it left! Weather is an amalgamation of pressure, temperature and humidity; stars are balls of burning gas; and Elijah's fire from heaven was just a meteor. And while the divine orchestration required to land a meteor on an altar at a precise time is astounding, the Romantic ignorance of having no explanation at all has, unfortunately, been lost.

As I grow to appreciate the mystery and romance of the unexplainable, I am learning to keep an eye out for it in everyday life. Likewise, I have come to acknowledge the value of emotional thought and the wisdom of realizing that not all decisions can be (or ought to be) completely rational. So, like whimsical mysticism adds refreshment to an enlightened world, emotional decisions bring variety to a logical mind, even if they only involve the choosing of one's chewing gum.