Emotion and Logic are Strange Bedfellows

Why is it that when we drink our emotions break out? Why do we then entertain thoughts and questions which don’t interrupt our sober moments? I know that when I have a few drinks, late at night and alone, so many unresolved things come to mind – flavored by emotion and they dare me to examine them, relive them and come to some sort of conclusion or resolution. This dilemma confounds me. Melancholy music, particularly Irish music, also turns me into a roiling mixture of taunting and haunting emotions.

 We are, I am, in a constant war between intellect and emotion. My mind tells me what is right and good for me based on analysis and reason, and my emotions free me from logic and consequence. Do what you feel. Ignore consequence and follow your heart – or your pride, or your passion, or your self-serving desires. But who can tell me what path to choose or what compromise I can make? Does my religion, my unperfected belief in God, my secular ethic or my inborn sense of what is right and wrong – conscience - guide me?  I’m at a loss.

 Decisions have consequence. Words, the script of thought, have meaning. Logic and experience tell me so. Emotions follow no rules. Emotions do pull me away from what my mind tells me. Should I risk the consequences that mind tells me will result when emotion pulls me from the “right” path that mind counsels?  But I do so long for the pleasures that emotion’s siren call promises. 

 Is there a reward for doing the “right” thing? But who or what tells me what is the right thing? Is it my conscience that could be the result of indoctrination by well-meaning but flawed people? Is it the Natural Law that could be the unerring foundation of human nature? Is it God speaking to me? Is it simply a charitable desire not to hurt the other? Help!