Master of my Soul's Tide

Master of the Emotional Whirlpool (Or: How I Learned to Stop Panicking and Love the Reason)

You ever have one of those days where your brain is supposed to be the captain of the ship, but your emotions show up dressed like a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder yelling, “We’re all gonna die!”? Yeah, me too. Constantly. I wake up, stub my toe on the way to the bathroom, and suddenly I’m not just mildly inconvenienced—I’m a tragic figure in a one-man play titled The Agony of the Pinky Toe. My heart rate spikes, my face twists into a mask of righteous fury at the cruel universe, and for thirty glorious seconds, reason is locked in the brig while emotion runs the wheel.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you’re young and invincible: emotions are fantastic employees, but terrible CEOs. They show up on time, they bring the energy, they make the party happen. But put them in charge of long-term strategy and suddenly you’re investing your life savings in Beanie Babies because “they feel like a sure thing.” I’ve been there. My emotions once convinced me that breaking up with a perfectly nice person was necessary because her laugh sounded vaguely like a malfunctioning fax machine. In the moment? Devastating betrayal of my soul’s peace. Three weeks later? Turns out the fax machine laugh was actually kind of charming, and I was the one who sounded like a malfunctioning human.

The secret, I’ve discovered after many years of spectacularly bad decisions, is to treat your feelings like that overly enthusiastic friend who always wants to karaoke at 2 a.m. You acknowledge him—“Yes, Chad, I see you’re feeling extremely passionate about ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ right now”—but you don’t hand him the car keys. You recognize the emotion, give it a little pat on the head, then gently escort it to the passenger seat where it can provide color commentary while reason drives.

Take my morning commute, for example. Someone cuts me off on the parkway. Immediate emotional response? Pure, volcanic rage. I become a method actor channeling every mob boss in history. My blood pressure does the cha-cha, my hands grip the wheel like it owes me money, and I compose an Oscar-worthy internal monologue about the decline of Western civilization. All because some guy in a Honda needed to make his exit. Then, if I’m lucky, the little voice of reason pipes up from the back seat: “Hey, buddy. Remember last week when you were the one merging aggressively because you were late to that thing you didn’t even want to attend? Yeah. Same species.”

That’s the magic. Recognition without surrender. You feel the feeling—fully, honestly, no stuffing it in the emotional sock drawer—but then you file it under “Useful Data, Subject to Review.” Anger might be telling you something important: a boundary was crossed, or you’re overtired, or the world is indeed full of Honda drivers with questionable spatial awareness. But it doesn’t get to decide you should flip the bird and accelerate like you’re auditioning for a Fast and Furious sequel. That part belongs to reason, the quiet accountant in the corner who actually runs the numbers.

I tried the opposite approach once. Suppressed everything. Be a stoic. Emotions are for poets and toddlers. How’d that go? About as well as trying to ignore a toddler who’s discovered the pots and pans drawer. The feelings didn’t go away—they just fermented in the basement and emerged later as mysterious back pain, passive-aggressive sighing, and an inexplicable urge to reorganize the garage at midnight.

The real art is the middle path. You peer inside, as that lovely poem suggests, and trace the cause of the feelings intertwined. Your boss sends a curt email? Instead of spiraling into “I’m getting fired and will die under a bridge,” you note the anxiety, then ask: Is this about the email, or is this about the fact that I’ve been running on four hours of sleep and too much coffee? Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter. The emotion was a smoke detector going off because someone burned toast, not because the house is on fire.

And joy? Oh, we’re terrible with joy. We feel a burst of genuine happiness—maybe the sunset hits just right, or your kid says something unexpectedly profound—and immediately our brain starts the sabotage: “This won’t last. Something bad is coming. Quick, worry about the mortgage.” As if happiness is a finite resource we’re stealing from our future self

. Reason’s job there is to say, “Sit down, you paranoid weirdo. Enjoy the moment. It’s not a trap.”

The beauty of this balance is that emotions become fuel instead of tyrants. That surge of anger at injustice? Channel it into writing the strongly-worded but grammatically correct email. The wave of sadness when life feels heavy? Let it remind you what matters, then let reason plot the next small step forward. Even the ridiculous ones—the toe-stubbing opera, the fax-machine-breakup meltdown—become comedy material later. Which, let’s be honest, might be the most successful conclusion of all.

So today I’ll try, once again, to master my emotions’ sway. Not by ignoring them or being ruled by them, but by giving them a seat at the table while reason holds the gavel. I’ll peer within, trace the causes, weigh each joy and pang with conscious care. And if I fail spectacularly, which I probably will around 3 p.m. when the caffeine wears off and someone eats my yogurt from the office fridge, I’ll at least get a good story out of it.

After all, life’s ardent hill is a lot easier to climb when your heart and mind are at least pretending to be on the same team. United, hand in hand—probably while arguing about the best route. That’s the human condition. And honestly? It’s hilarious.