Aren't We All Just A Bag Of Emotions?

Something that has been bugging me for quite a long time has been the paradoxical nature of human actions.

You do or speak something way out of your values and afterwards you feel like, "Why did I do that?"
I never had a rational explanation for that. Just, plain, guilt.

We tend to hold great values and sometimes judge or belittle people when they don't act out of those values, but in the midst of a deeply emotional and critical situation we break out of those values, without an iota of inertia.

I have done this. I have seen people close to me do this.
Situations where people advise us to take the high road, and yet when they face a situation eerily similar, they act in the opposite fashion.
Oh boy, that used to drive me crazy.

I mean, I was someone who was really conscious of how my actions would be perceived by others — I still am to an extent.

But almost always, people doing the exact opposite of what they preach sort of gave me comfort in the fact that you don't have to care about what other people think, as long as you don't harm anyone emotionally or physically.
Maybe it's us growing older and seeing a lot of iterations that lets us subtly internalize the fact that we are just a bag of emotions. Period.

But, that's not a great way to look at things. Is it?

To be honest, I used it as a blanket — sort of like my cognitive dissonance — for a while.
Soon it dawned on me: where's the growth in this? what's so preachy about this? Nothing.

I remember my therapist telling me that wanting to be immune against feelings is like desiring to not feel hungry... or so, I don't remember the exact wording but you get the gist.

That led to the discovery of things like emotional intelligence, setting boundaries. A path of self-discovery.

Emotional intelligence, for me, wasn’t about controlling feelings — it was about learning to sit with them, understand them, and not let them hijack my actions. Just knowing why you feel what you feel can sometimes be the first step toward not being controlled by it.

I'm still walking, albeit slowly.
I'll get there.

I hope you share that path with me.