As I am
sitting in the airport, waiting for the departure, I am often amazed by the mix
of emotions, feelings and affects that are brimming inside me with the start of
a new journey. As a marine biologist, who has a kind of nerdy love for
quantifiable and statistically feasible data, I find it a bit hard to get my
head around these three concepts “emotions”, “feelings” and “affects”. Let me
try to explain. As I walk through the passport check-point, waving a last goodbye
to my family, friends, boyfriend or whoever is standing there, I feel a
slightly bit sad. “Sad” is the emotion I encounter. At the same time, I feel a
tension in my stomach and sometimes I can even feel a few tears gathering
behind my eyes. Those bodily sensations are my “feelings”. The tears are disappearing
easily with some blinking though, and I inconspicuously try to look around me –
a bit embarrassed (an emotion!) – to see if anyone noticed. The tension in my
stomach is also partly due to the excitement and I start to think about the
adventures and new experiences that await me. The plenty of time before
boarding leaves enough time for anticipation, which is an emotion that involves
excitement and perhaps a tinge of anxiety. Will I be in time to catch my next
plane? Will my luggage arrive? Did I pack everything I need and – oh no, did I forget
to pack the charger for the batteries of my camera? A brief moment of chaos and
the contents of my hand luggage scattered over the floor gives me the relief I
was looking for; of course, I had put it in a special pocket to be able to find
it quickly.
“Sad”, “embarrassed”
and “excited” are all a state of mind to which we can give a name: the name of
the emotion. Sometimes we are conscious about how we feel, but there are rarely
moments in which we feel only one emotion. And we cannot always give a name to
our mood or how we feel. Those are the “affects”. When I finally enter the
plane and I feel the small “hop” when the wheels loose contact with ground,
ascending in the air, I can say that I am affectively enjoying all the feelings
and emotions that make a journey such a wonderful sensation.
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| The sensation of starting a new journey becomes bigger when looking out the window and seeing Earth so far below me. |
