I woke up. It was quite dark then. I moved to see the time.

“3:15 am”

Why did I wake up at this hour?
I took a deep and disappointing sigh as I tried, quite frustratingly, to go back to my sleep only to wake up soon after. I squinted and moved terribly again to see the time.

“6:46 am”

Ugh!
My frustration grew vocal.
It is a Sunday!
I shouted in my head.
Why can’t I sleep on the one day I am supposed to?
Frustrated, I went back to sleep yet again only to wake up soon after, yet again.

“7:39 am”

But, this time around I found myself sweating profusely. I looked up at the ceiling fan which stood quite motionless at the moment.
A power cut…
I sighed even more disappointingly then.
At this hour!
Was this necessary? On a Sunday!
My frustration had clearly risen then and went on for about half an hour till the power had eventually arrived. Relieved somewhat, I found myself trying to sleep again but, all my efforts were proven to be completely of vain. And that’s when I knew it without a doubt. I knew that my sleep, once gone, would not come back then.
Great!
Absolutely great!

Finally woken up somehow, freshened up and still frustrated to the brim, I left my room. I had breakfast then. It felt forced, tasteless but, I was helpless giving away to my empty stomach. Then after, I found myself sitting idly, still with frustration and filled with irritation. I needed to do something to alter my devastating mood.
I should practice my guitar!
I said knowing it’s ability to always make me feel good after.
No…
A voice interrupted then.
Not in the mood for that right now…
Okay, maybe I should listen to some music!
No…
A voice interrupted.
Don’t really want to listen to anything…
With two options already out of question I thought of the one thing which I rarely could ever say no to.
Well, maybe I should write something down!
And that sparked some hope in me, enough to let me open up my laptop in front. My head was brimming with ideas and I was ready to write.

No…
The voice interrupted yet again.
Don’t you remember? You are not in the mood!
And I, frustratingly enough, just ended up sitting idly without getting anything written, without getting anything done. I felt incredibly stupid then. After all, I knew exactly the things which would make me feel better but, I didn’t do them. I, for some reason, chose to stay in my depressive and irritation-filled state while not even making an effort to make myself happy. All this just because I wasn’t in the mood.
Ridiculous!
I said then, knowing that I was letting my irritation and frustration win over me. I was letting my emotions take full control over me. I looked dead straight at the blank computer screen in front then.
What if my computer had human emotions programmed within?
I thought then.
What if one day I started typing and it said “I am just not in the mood to take your instructions”?
That would just be plain stupid, wouldn’t it be? It would definitely be a design flaw.
Flaw!
And this word got stuck in my head. Thus, at that moment I couldn’t help but think that emotions were a definite flaw in our system. They were eventually stopping me from doing things that I clearly wanted to do. Of course they felt as if a flaw. But, I realized later that emotions were actually the reason I wanted to do those things in the first place.
Emotions are both stopping me and encouraging me simultaneously…
And that is when I began understanding the contrasting relationship between us and a convoluted entity we call as our emotions.

Emotions are complex, no doubt. But, in simplicity, they can be described as a way devised by our brain to denote value to things and, eventually, to people. If we love something we value it enough to love it and if we hate something, we value it enough to hate it. In both instances, value is being denoted, may it be either positive or negative. And the more we value something, the more emotions we involve. The amount of emotions we have for any particular thing clearly shows how much value we assign to it. And through this, emotions eventually tell us what to do and what not to, what we should follow and what we should not, and in a way, what we should pursue and what we should not. They are designed to be our guide, to be our individual utter strengths. But, then why do they often end up becoming the very thing that stops us?

Why do they become our very own flaws?

There is only one reason why this happens. And that is because, while we do follow our emotions, we end up following the wrong ones. We end up following our anger, our frustration, our irritation and our sadness when we should be following our love and happiness instead.
And why do we do this?
Because it is just so easy to stay sad and angry and frustrated, isn’t it? It’s so appealing to stay in the incredible comfort of our own depressive state rather than to actually work and try to jump to a different state altogether. Because whenever our heart is broken we tend to stay in our hateful and woeful state which we were left in. We don’t look at the bright side, we don’t look at all the happy memories but, we find comfort in our own sadness that we are already drenched in because we don’t want to change. We don’t want to do anything. We are fine hurting. But, in actuality, we are not fine, are we? We are far from it.
And it is in that moment when our emotions, which were designed to be our individual strengths, our ultimate guides, become our weaknesses and our ultimate flaws. They start hurting us instead of helping us. And that is when we start saying to ourselves that “It will be so much better if I just stop feeling things altogether…”
“It would be so much better if I didn’t feel anything at all!”

It has happened to me. And I am sure if it hasn’t happened to you yet, at some point it probably will. And it is the reason why I chose to write upon this today. Because this isn’t supposed to happen. Emotions were never meant to hurt us. They were always meant to help us.

One apt way that I would like to describe our emotions is by imagining them as wielding a double edged sword. When swung, it is equally capable of hurting the opponent as it is capable of hurting our own bodies. But, if we don’t have the required knowledge of how to use it, we will eventually end up hurting our own selves. We need to know which end is pointed towards us and which away from us. We absolutely need to know how to use it. And not just know but, we need to be masters of it so that we reach our goals and ambitions using it rather than just badly hurting our own selves in the process. It is literally up to no good if we only hurt ourselves in the end. We need to know which set of emotions lie on the edge that’s pointing right at us and which on the other.

Controlling this crucial yet deadly sword is the ultimate key to controlling our emotions, and through it, controlling our very own lives. Learn to use it, to control it, to follow the right side of it’s blade. Only then these emotions of ours would become our strengths and our guides as they were always designed to be. Only then we can help ourselves to be the best versions of us that we can possibly be.

Because there is no being more powerful in this world than the one who is in complete control of his/her own emotions.