-Karthik Gurumurthy
We often imagine that emotionally wise people are those who rarely feel strongly, the calm ones who never seem shaken and never lose their composure. We picture emotional intelligence as a kind of stillness, a mind untouched by anger, fear, or hurt.
But that picture may be mistaken. Emotional wisdom isn’t the absence of strong feelings. It’s the presence of space around them.
Our first reactions are rarely chosen. They rise within us quickly, almost physically: a tightening in the chest, a flush of heat, a sharp word forming before we’ve had time to think. These reactions are part of being human, as old as our ancestors’ need to sense danger and act in an instant. To expect ourselves never to feel them is to expect ourselves to be something other than human.
What we can shape is what comes next. A reaction happens to us, but a response is something we make. Between the two lies a small space, sometimes only a breath or a moment, and in that space our freedom lives. A line often attributed to the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl captures this beautifully: between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our power to choose.
The ancient Stoics understood this well. Epictetus taught that we are disturbed not by events themselves but by the judgments we form about them. The insult, the setback, or the unfair remark may sting, but what we do with that sting is still ours to decide. The Bhagavad Gita describes a similar ideal in the person of steady wisdom, who feels joy and sorrow yet isn’t swept away by either and remains anchored even as emotions rise and fall.
None of these traditions asks us to stop feeling. They ask us to stop being ruled by what we feel. Anger may tell us that something is wrong, but it doesn’t have to decide how we act. Fear may warn us of danger, but it doesn’t have to dictate our choices. Our feelings are messengers worth listening to, not masters we must obey.
The work of emotional maturity, then, is the slow and patient widening of that space between feeling and action. It might begin with something as simple as a pause before replying, a deep breath before speaking, or a night’s sleep before sending the email. Over time, these small pauses become habits, and the habits become character. The space grows wider, and within it we find more room for wisdom, kindness, and clear thought.
Perhaps that is what true composure really is. It isn’t a calm surface with no storm beneath, but the ability to feel the full force of the storm and still choose, quietly and deliberately, where to steer.
Leave a Reply