We are emotional beings. Emotions dominate us, they are what determine our reactions, sometimes angry, tearful, dramatic or otherwise sensitive. We are like this and we cannot avoid it, we can only repress it a little consciously, even if the real agitation dwells inside.

Let's try to look at photographs from the past and see what it triggers on us. Let's go by a place where we once were. Let's listen to the name of a person or a song randomly on the radio and experience the return to a precise moment in our lives. Everything is connected to that trunk of memories and sentimental nostalgia.

Emotions are everywhere, and any experience can awaken them. Be it a painting in the Fine Arts Museum, a perfume. Who hasn’t turned around walking down the street because they have felt the fragrance of their loved one and have remained sniffing the air as if they could reach it? A bit romanticized, but is there a more emotional moment?

Surely you drew all these examples in your mind as positive. You thought of living happy moments meeting a friend after a long time, discovering the smell of coffee and remembering with its flavor the house of your childhood, returning to your youth with the first chords of “Nothing else matters”, and so much more. But the same happens in the other sense, with negative moments that unleash hatred, sadness, everything, and sometimes, even “for the sake of it”.

Yes, because in addition to what is related to memories, with what we really know happened, sometimes it also happens that a person seems repulsive to us just by looking at them, hearing their voice, without delving into their personality or behavior. And in this superficial way we make a judgment. This also has to do with emotions, with what we learned in the course of life, what we understand is right or wrong, although it’s a mistake jumping to conclusions.

The same happens with a place that seems dark to us, or with many more contexts.

But that’s how we are, sometimes instinctive, basic, and we make mistakes with some perceptions without being able to explain them and they take us to extremes. Emotions, then, modify our behavior. Not only awakens in us what we have experienced, it drives us to act accordingly to the stimulus received, but it turns us into fortune tellers and we guess, with few elements, what we have in front of us, as if that power could really exist.

The only reason rests in emotions, which, without a doubt, guide us through life, sometimes correctly, hitting the nail on the head, other times with a high dose of improvisation according to our learning, concepts and appreciations.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff