I feel like I've been on a mission this week to make everyone who follows this blog get a headache or something. That being said, I can promise you my dear reader that there is not much in the way of a master plan here, just an emotional week full of questions and self exploration. Of course, if this means that I've taken your mind hostage I do apologize, but then again those who continue to read these posts may be as crazy as me after all, and maybe that's the silver lining here.

Banks, what Banks?

I'm only using the word because I believe it does a good job at evoking ideas like available balance, overdraft, denied transactions, etc, but of course it does not quite work as a banking system either. You might also suspect that I'm down this lane of reasoning simply because my previous post has led me here, and I decided to allow it to do so. Why pull the brakes now, right?

Within the context of my currently exploration and very much connected to the idea of transactions, the concept of investments of course have to make an appearance, and emotional investments are the type that carry as much risk as their monetary counterparts, but of course don't necessarily involve money. Of course there are degrees of risk, as there are depths of investment, but it's somewhat undeniable that emotional investments happen every single day and do make up much of our social fabric.

I remember watching a video at some point in time where the psychologist was talking about the differences between empathy and sympathy, and as he explored what I found to be a fascinating subject, he used a particular expression that caught my attention: "Compassion Fatigue" - Immediately, as my mind began to stray away from the actual presentation, I started to imagine emotions as the work of a smooth muscle of sorts. Yes, as if we were talking about biceps, triceps or what have you.

Of course I know that this is not at all how it works, that the analogies are just there to help us visualize something as abstract as emotion, but there is some undeniable parallels that all of us should be able to trace on our personal logical charts. We do experience something akin to emotional overdraft, don't we? I know I certainly have before, and for all the times I've invested with a smile, I've had a fair share of situations when the ROI went hard into the negatives.

Where am I taking you with this, you ask? I'm not entirely sure, but I do happen to know you've been visualizing your emotional outputs as a finite resource, and if you haven't done so up until now, I just tricked you into doing so.

As I'm getting ready to call it a night, I'm entertained with the idea of an inflation pool of emotions of sorts. One that would explain through another collection of analogies a lot of the dynamics at play here, including emotional devaluation. But maybe, that insanity will be left for another time.