Skip to main content

Feelings are Snowballs

Illustrations by Copilot Designer


Feelings are like snowballs. They make a small start as minor emotions or subtle reactions. Unless they are brought under the control of rational thought, they are likely to intensify as we dwell on them or as new experiences amplify them. It’s just like the snowball picking up more snow on the way and growing bigger. And bigger.

That big snowball gathers greater momentum as it hurtles down the hill. Soon it will acquire an unstoppable energy. Quite the same thing happens to feelings. They become powerful enough to control our thoughts and actions. It should be the other way around: our reason should control our emotions.

Let us consider an example. Nationalism is a feeling. Contrast it with rational truths. A simple rational truth is 2 + 2 = 4. Indisputable. We all learnt at school that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. That is another indisputable truth. Unless you’re living on Kilimanjaro where water boils at about 80 degrees Celsius. On the Everest, it chooses to boil at 68 degrees. Well, so if the Chagga people of Kilimanjaro take up their swords to kill you because you tell them your absolute truth about the boiling point of water, will water become a religion like nationalism? A disputable, relative truth?

You know enough science to tell them that the boiling point of water is dependent on the atmospheric pressure. The lower that pressure, the quicker the water boils. Out there in the interstellar spaces, where there is no atmospheric pressure at all, water will boil at zero degree Celsius. Just get the fire close to it and water will begin to boil there.

Do people make a religion out of such truths, however? Obviously, we know the science behind those variations and so we let them be.

When it comes to things like nationalism and our gods, they too should be considered intelligently if not scientifically. If you think your country is the best in the world merely because you were born in it, well… Isn’t that what nationalism is in the final analysis? If you are intelligent enough, you know that all humans belong to the same species and national borders are merely for administrative conveniences. These borders don’t make anyone great. Greatness has to be merited by your thoughts and deeds, not by your country’s geography.

The same argument holds good for religious feelings too. The other day somebody sent me a WhatsApp forward, a video in which the speaker says: “The problem with religions is that each one claims superiority over the others. My religion is the best, my God is the only true God, my God’s di©k is larger than your God’s….”

There’s absolutely nothing wrong in loving one’s country and one’s god(s). But if your love for a geographical and a mythical accident* makes you hate your fellow creatures, then there’s something seriously wrong. You may be letting your feelings dominate your intelligence. It will be a good idea to put the latter to good use. 


* Isn’t one’s religion an accident? How many people choose their religion? Your gods are given to you by your family, right? Sheer accident of birth. Your nationality? As another WhatsApp forward puts it: "Bragging about your religion or nationality is like taking credit for the Wi-Fi password at a café—you just happened to be born into it, buddy!"

Top post on Blogchatter
Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 7, 2025 at 6:51 PM

    Hari OM
    "Greatness has to be merited by your thoughts and deeds, not by your country’s geography."
    Thank you. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 7, 2025 at 7:04 PM

      Greatness has become, for too many of us, a matter of winning an argument with someone from a rival town!

      Delete
    2. parwatisingariJanuary 8, 2025 at 6:40 AM

      Bang on buddy.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 8, 2025 at 7:03 AM

      Hi Parwati, here after quite a while.

      Delete
  2. magiceyeJanuary 8, 2025 at 7:10 AM

    Nice analogy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Liz A.January 8, 2025 at 8:16 AM

    Yeah, most people keep to the religion that their parents introduced them to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 8, 2025 at 10:24 AM

      Without even bothering to find out what it's really about.

      Delete
  4. peppylady (Dora)January 9, 2025 at 6:57 AM

    Not a fan of nationalism.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CINDY DSILVAJanuary 9, 2025 at 11:53 AM

    Interesting way to put it. Feelings and snowballs. So rightly said. Not sure why people think their country and religion are the GOAT. Maybe it's because humility has rolled away like another snowball.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 9, 2025 at 12:57 PM

      As some writer said, those who have no trace of greatness within find joy in glorifying their god or country.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more