Comments on: The Question that Stumped Freshmen and Freshmen Parents

By: Deborah Wang

Deborah Wang — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:57:09 +0000

This is such a stimulating question. “What emotion in you is the strongest?” The first word that occurred to me was “restless”. Then the part “I am fearful” leaped off the page and stirred an echo in my stomach. When I sensed the leading in my heart to write up a comment, which is the first time adventure in my entire life, my heartbeat sped up: “What if my comments sound stupid?” “What if…” This is a confirmation that one of the strongest emotions in me is “fearful of rejections of man”. Thank you Jennifer for this emotion-invoking exercise. It helps me understand how I should pray for myself. God bless you!

By: Jeff Holton

Jeff Holton — Sun, 16 May 2010 00:31:15 +0000

Not sure how I landed on this blog. …Oh, yeah. I was looking for Matthew Paul Turner’s birthday. Still not sure why that landed me here. But oh well, good post!

I admit that I looked up a list of emotions. Not that I didn’t know the answer, but that I wasn’t sure I was picking the right words to describe it.

On the positive side, it’s contentment. I have very little want for anything, really. I don’t keep up with the Joneses. I don’t worry when something breaks or goes wrong. It’s all good.

On the negative side, I think I nonetheless grapple with apprehension more often than I need to. I’m nearly constantly nervous that I’m gonna get caught, even (and especially?) when I’m not even doing anything wrong. Like when I’m doing the speed limit, maintaining proper distance, and constantly checking my mirrors and a cop pulls up next to me. I hate that.

So I guess I’m content and nervous. Now that I’ve articulated it, I can see that’s a volatile and unhealthy mix, because the obvious implication is that I’m content BEING nervous.

And that’s probably true. …Ok, must go back to the character drawing board and re-work myself.

By: Chris Leonard

Chris Leonard — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:21:06 +0000

Second part first: thinking about this and the process of answering makes me feel awakened but also exposed emotionally. Neither of those are really emotions, but they describe my emotional state.

But to answer your first question, I think that my strongest emotions might be (put positively) include yearning, longing, a kind of strong striving that is very internally motivated. The flip side of that, of course, includes a fair share of disappointment, sadness, and something that just seems hollow. I frequently have to remind myself that the hollow feeling is largely about ways in which the shortcomings of this world leave me longing for heaven, knowing there is something more. But no matter how I think through it, it’s just true that I’m not a guy that “won the emotion lottery.” But my emotional difficulties bring a depth to my internal world in which God (I pray) sometimes has lots of room to move.

Not gonna edit – just clicking the Big Brown Button.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:18:25 +0000

Hmm. Good thought Sean.

Perhaps it’s not that it’s hard to talk about our emotions, it’s just that we’re not introspective enough to know what they are.

I can tell you that reading your comment made me happy to hear from you, excited about the new directions you took the thoughts to, and really sad that we don’t hang out more.

~Jennifer

By: Sean Gaffney

Sean Gaffney — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Hard question — because we not only have to be honest, we have to know ourselves. I don’t know as if I know myself enough. Looking through Parrot’s list of emotions, I’m not finding a primary or secondary that seems my “strongest.” So I’m going with a combination of tertiary:

contentment with delight with melancholy. And maybe a bit of irritation and pride.

And I feel downright anxious about thinking about myself with any level of honesty, let alone sharing such thoughts publicly. And shame that I failed to correctly answer the question…