Recently, Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant featured this column: More and more people are feeling deserted in a certain way. And actually we are indeed. I suppose columnist Danka Stuijver is right. One can feel deserted by many, like family, friends, colleagues, the government or society.
Feeling deserted equals feeling a lack of love (max.) or attention (minimum) from people. It’s unlikely that your pet (eg, cat, dog) will give you a similar feeling. A feeling is an emotion and not necessarily a fact. A Government may claim to help its people but people may not feel it (eg, Groningen).
We all have our mood swings for various reasons, like a lack of winter sunlight a.k.a. seasonal affective disorder. During such mood swings, we are prone to experience that feeling of being deserted. Experiencing summer sunlight will usually melt away that feeling instantly.
Is feeling deserted an emotional illusion? Probably, it is indeed. However, we may not even realise that in hindsight. It feels very real once we experience it.
Are (all of our) our emotions then just illusions??
“Emotional suffering is in the mind and the mind only. The pain we experience exists because there is a dichotomy between what is and what we want. We want something that is not there, or we don`t want something that is there. Therefore we are not happy and suffer.”
Excerpt of a 2014 Karen Wilson blog: Emotion is an illusion
A recent Axios Science article – Moral decline may be an illusion – argues something similar: “Survey data from 60 countries shows most people around the world believe morality is declining — and they’ve thought that for at least 70 years, according to new research published this week in the journal Nature.”
In 2012, I experienced Love for the first time in my adult life. That feeling lasted for only 10 days. Then suspicion took over: who is she really?? Perhaps, Love qualifies as the grandest of all illusions. Nevertheless, I’m fortunate that I have experienced that feeling in my lifetime.
“Spanish essayist Miguel de Unamuno said, “Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.” [ ] Illusions are, by definition, mismatches between physical reality and perception. Love, as with all emotions, has no external physical reality: it may be driven by neural events, but it is nonetheless a purely subjective experience.” Note: markings and URL in quote by LO.
Excerpt of a 2010 Scientific American article: The Illusion of Love
Just an Illusion (1982) by Imagination
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Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless in quotes or stated otherwise
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