The Philosophy

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
           -- Gustave Flaubert

The other day I was talking to a friend and described to him how I was shaken after witnessing the wreckage of a car accident the previous evening. The friend, who is an Indian but was born and brought up abroad, has certain amount of fascination with yoga, meditation and of course, Indian Philosophy. His response was on the line: "You have to control your emotion. The accident was beyond your control so what's the point of being stressed about it. You can't get emotionally involved in everything around you. You should do more meditation and let the stress go." 

I am not sure I agree with this philosophy. Of course, the accident was beyond my control but not to be shaken by wreckage of car accident will be quite inhuman, numb. It is but natural for a human to be moved by other human's suffering. What will happen to this world if all of us stop caring about others? Feeling sad, angry or any other negative emotion is also part of life. To deny that or to say that we shouldn't stress about it is negating those feelings. We all can't be happy at all time. The key is not to be consumed by such emotions at all time -there are a lot of problems in the world not to be. 

Years back, I read an HT editorial titled why Anger is better than Love. The author argued unless people get angry about issues, no changes will happen in the world - we will become stagnant as a society. Love is one of the most selfish emotion as it pertains to only you. We usually become quite selfish when we are in love as that one person or people are the only one that matters - even at expense of others (paraphrasing the editorial as I remember it). 

Point being - negative emotions are not necessarily a bad thing. We just need to have balance between the positive and negative emotions - like everything else. Extreme of anything is never good (अति सर्वत्र वर्जयते - extreme should always be avoided). There always has to be a balance like yin and yang.

This also leads to idea of being focused on task at hand at all time with no digressions, no distractions. Imagine Newton not getting digressed by falling of an apple but simply focused on eating the apple instead or Archimedes not getting digresed while taking bath - what happens in those scenarios? Thinking outside the box requires people to digress, to be curious, to get distracted. Focus and digression are part of same yin and yang - two faces of same coin. They both are useful.