Hunger is a powerful feeling. While on our way to a restaurant - and in a state of extreme hunger, both of us - my partner was using the phone I was navigating with, and I was anxious to miss a turn. Missing turns will make us get to food later, and will result in more despair. At some point, she exclaimed the next directions: "Turn left at the second intersection, ok?", thereby "passing the baton" to me, while she took the phone from my sight. I stopped her and explained that I don't know this area, and she doesn't either, so navigation mistakes will probably be made.
We got into an argument about it, featuring my control issues and distrust in her taking responsibility for navigation, and her misunderstanding my intention (which was - leave the phone where I can see it!).
This was an uncommon thing - my partner and I rarely have petty arguments like these, and they definitely don't get as emotional as this one got. I recognize that a big factor in this becoming anything more than a misunderstanding was hunger. It taught me how much hunger can affect the intensity of what we feel, and how we might mistake the origins of our feelings.
It would be interesting to attempt this in an authentic dance practice - starving for a little bit before the session, and see how it's different compared to a "normal session", as far as intensity goes.
A lesson from a thing:
I read in an article, or in a book, about how "emotion is just like the other senses, but for what is going on inside" - a sense for the inner world. It really clicked for me. Just as we can sense where we are going, and what is happening in our environment, using touch, smell, and sight, we can sense what is happening on the inside with emotion.
The thing is - emotions really do work all the time, but we don't train them as a sense, we don't approach them as data input, but just as something that happens, that sometimes feels good and sometimes bothers us...but would you ignore a burning smell inside your home? You learned the smell of danger, and you would look into it - how is emotion any different than an indicator for our safety?
Dance video: