Are We Doing the Best We Can?

Carl

[cite] Carl:[/cite]Sadness is not painful? To my knowledge, all animals that form pair-bond and mate for life suffer deep sadness, emotional wasting away, when they lose their mate.

I neglected to repsond to this.

The def. of emotion says sadness is an emotion but it also says "instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge" which would rule out sadness as an emotion in my opinion, because sadness is all based on reasoning and knowledge. Whereas, getting hit in the face would hurt without reasoning or knowledge.

That was really my whole point.

For all we know, the lack of a mate is the source of "apparent" sadness. In humans, a mate is spiritually (AKA emotionally) and physically essential outside of mitigating circumstances. Dogs I believe have this same basic need. What you see in the dog could be just a biological response to the lack of a mate and not the kind of "sadness" you and I would feel because of the story we have about not having a mate. The only reason I say this is because I feel language is necessary for "sadness" and as far as I can tell, dogs don't have it.

I could be full of crap and there is no way for me to know for sure.

Carl

Of course we all do the best we can. It is thinking otherwise that [chref=71]leads to [our] difficulty[/chref]. Expecting more than we are capable pushes us to expect more of others than they are capable. The result is [chref=8]contending[/chref] incessantly with how 'it' is. When we are not [chref=46]content[/chref] with how 'it' is, we flail around all the more to 'get it right' and 'just do it'. No wonder [chref=48]doing less and less until one does nothing at all, and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone[/chref] sounds so strange. It may sound less odd when you consider that this is not referring to activity per se, but to how we approach life. Taking one step at a time, [chref=64]from beneath one's feet[/chref], has the feeling of doing nothing at all, but ironically, is the most efficient way to 'get life done'. Just ask the other animals on earth!

Lynn Cornish

I read your topic and the first thing that came to mind is I think I am doing *better* than I am capable of doing. That's how low my expectations of myself are. 8)