O-zone Feel together! Emotions good or bad can be a great comforting factor,especially when shared with others Vinita Dawra Nangia TIMES NEWS NETWORK THERE is a comfort in emotions that is difficult to deny.And the succour that a sharing of emotions provides is indisputable.If you are happy,your pleasure is intensified when someone shares the happiness with you.If you are unhappy,being able to share the pain with others comfort you.If you are angry,venting your fury within a group helps provide cathartic relief.That is what perhaps leads to flash mobs and anti-corruption protests. We are better off when experiencing an emotion good or bad rather than when we are indifferent,and so bored with everything.And,the most pleasurable of all emotions is romantic love.Extra-marital relationships are also the result,more often than not,of finding the comfort of emotional attachment beyond home and whats acceptable. There was a time when we dealt with our conflicting,tumultuous emotional all by ourselves or at most by confessing to a parent,a dear friend or sibling.But today,a generation that has been brought up to believe in individualism and to value themselves,their goals,feelings and idea of right and wrong,sees nothing wrong in hanging its innermost emotions out to dry in public.And social networking sites ensure there is no dirth of such spaces! Years ago,when disturbed at my emotional response to a handsome star of the time,I confessed about my mixed feelings to my mother,she told me censoriously,You must learn to control such emotions. For quite some time,I believed I was some kind of an emotional freak and prayed to be infused with purer thoughts and feelings.Today,all you do is sign into a social networking site and find hundreds of others echoing the same feeling.You not only realise that you are no freak,but end up with your feelings reinforced! When I stumbled on to actor Mohnish Behls Facebook page,I was amazed at the surge of emotions.Followers of the lead actor from popular television serial Kuch to log kahenge,openly talk of their love for him and how they cannot wait to watch him again,how they worry about him (he is currently missing from home on the show),pray for him and end up advising him on the serial.And Mohnish is no youngster he is a married man with a 20-year-old daughter. What amazes me is the passion audiences bring to play on a serial that is obviously fictitious! They react to characters as if to real people,and all thoroughly enjoy the interaction.Housewives,professionals,students all bond emotionally on the same page,finding it addictive as is proven by their multiple daily visits to the page. There is indeed comfort in being part of a group that wallows in emotion. When I mentioned this obsessive community outpouring to my friend Dr Deepak Raheja,consultant psychiatrist and director,Hope Foundation,he said,It is symbolic of regression.People tend to regress when they are very emotional.They let the conscious mind get synchronised with the heart to experience emotion that brings on a surge of feel-good chemicals.In the past,this state was reserved for a very special person you loved or idolised.Today,people have become frivolous in relationships the resilience,coping strategies and mechanisms that are required to balance emotions have worn out.People are more demanding and want to change their loved one.When that doesnt happen,there is sourness and relationships break. Deprived of gratification and contentment in real relationships,an emotionally immature generation transfers its moodiness and hunger onto idols and stars.People get carried away on a wave of emotion and when they find themselves being part of a like-minded group,high emotions help them bond better with others.This gives them a sense of comfort.They start romanticising about idealistic scenarios seen on screen,believing they can live that life too,even if vicariously.It can be a scary scenario because emotions run fast and furious here and the landscape changes in the blink of an eye;the dwellers of this land hate as quickly and intensely as they love,and they transfer reel emotions into real life as effectively as vice versa.Rather than considered and few,relationships tend to be indiscriminate and many.Rather than being caring and nurturing,they are demanding and destructive both,on reel and in reality. Mohnish Behl,who acts in Kuch to log kahenge,may be the father of an adult daughter but female fans are serenading him on Facebook |