EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY: A SYMPTOM

There is a spectrum. A spectrum which ranges from emotional unavailability to emotional vulnerability and in the middle of both lies emotional intelligence. First of all, I do not agree with the managerial definition of emotional intelligence. What is this to manage emotions? Everything is defined here in order to cater a specific productivity-oriented way of handling emotions. If the core reason of handling emotions is to just enhance productivity of man, then it is all an utterly capitalist paradigm. 

Let's think about man in its entirety. A man is what his surroundings and his conditioning has made him. Most of my friends have grown up to be highly emotionally unavailable people. Their surrounding comprises of high unavailability of emotions. So, seldom do they express themselves fully. No issues with that. It is in this assumption that this is itself emotional intelligence is when the problem starts. This is the perversion of EI.

The most common complain of emotionally unavailable people is that no one understands their emotions. But the problem lies in the fact that they do not express it enough for the other people to understand them. They do not express because they have cringed on these emotions so hard, the perceptions of people opening up in front of them is so bizarre that they cannot picture themselves being vulnerable. 

I see a direct correlation here between the average Indian household and its youth being emotionally vulnerable. My thesis here is, the reason why the Indian household is so emotional unavailable to its adults is because, our stories teach us about the illusionary nature of life and how only God is worth all the emotions. See, our stories are all filled with extra over the top expressions of any sort of emotion. And our public ethic is guided by a strict Advaita philosophy. 

You will see highly emotional people in India. But they are emotional about religion. They are emotional about their gods. This is the case of misdirected emotional outflow. When the society condemns you to openly express your feelings, openly say, "I love You", Openly embrace your loved ones, your mind tries to find some place where you can be openly religious. I have seen people crying on Ganpati visarjan, Dusshera visarjan and other avenues.

To cry for a God is like crying for your highly unemotional life. You cannot cry holding your father tightly. Do you understand how hard one's life is if one has never hugged his father and cried. So, you have the scene of Dashrath crying over Ram's departure. This gives so much relief to a youth and to the father who never expressed his love for the youth or his son. 

You never openly said I love you to your wife. See, how hard it must have been for you and for her. So, is the scene of Rama crying like a child when his wife is taken by Ravan. 

Every wife wishes that one day, my husband would cry over my demise like this. Every son wishes his father cries over his journey. 

See, we do not just enjoy our parents be happy. We also sometimes enjoy them being sad and miserable and crying. We like our partners crying when they cry about us. These stranger desires of human beings are often hidden under the garb of civility and nobility. But we have some sadistic elements like these. All of us. 

Religion, a fully mature man-sized religion, becomes so totalitarian that it starts fulfilling these desires of individuals. Hinduism is such a mysterious religion. You wish to reject a woman's offer. You have Surpankha being rejected by Rama and Laxman. We not only enjoy people asking for our affection, but we also like to reject affection to some. This boosts our ego. 

At last, to understand emotional intelligence at last is not easy. It becomes simplistic and stupid when Managers and Administrators wish to define it because their whole focus is to make the individual more productive, and the system works. But Man is a highly twisted creature. His desires are very much alien to himself. What do you want emotionally should be the first question you ask yourself. Then, you should concur that paying no heed to your emotions is not the answer. Vulnerability is sometimes the solution and that is intelligence. Knowing when to give up on it is intelligence. But, just expressing does not work. What is that you want emotionally should be the priority.