Every human lives in two worlds: the outer world and the inner one. The inner world is often richer—and it shapes how we see the outer world. As we live, we absorb experiences to shape our stories, and explore our emotions. Our emotional palettes shift with time, place, and memory. In the end, what remains is a quiet blend of those feelings—a record of the life we lived. I was recently drawn into this thought after seeing my first opera: Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. It made me reflect on the diversity—and the universality—of human emotion across history.
Exploring the boundary between cognition and emotion
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and of one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others or himself.” — Epictetus, The Enchiridion of Epictetus
There is no inherent good or bad in the world—only events, and our reactions to them. Life is a chain of events, often shaped not by the events themselves, but by our interpretation of them. Our interpretation becomes the lens through which we respond, often setting off a new chain of outcomes. In this way, we try—often in vain—to control our world through perception.
So, what shapes these interpretations? Many things: our history, desires, environment, and the moment itself. But just before we respond to any event, there’s often a brief pause. In that pause lies a choice—a space where cognition and emotion arise. They are not the same, though we often confuse one for the other.
For example, have you ever reacted with anger, only to later realize the anger came from how you felt, not what truly happened? Emotion rushes in, shaping how we think. Cognition, by contrast, can stand alone—it can be abstract. But emotion always needs a trigger; it’s a response and not necessarily to anything external. Our emotional palette is how we engage with the world. Perhaps that’s why people unravel when deprived of sensory input—without emotional cues, reality itself begins to fade.
The many languages of emotions
Over the years, I’ve learned to listen more closely to my emotional responses—enough to know when something truly speaks to me. I spent a decade in Singapore, and while I could list logical reasons why it felt like home, there was always something more—an unspoken pull. I felt the same unexpected connection when I visited Berlin, despite having been to dozens of cities. It wasn’t logic—it was feeling.
If we want to explore raw emotion as a language, we have to go beyond cognition. There’s no formula for great art, music, or poetry. Masterpieces aren’t planned—they emerge. And we feel them, even when we can’t explain why. You don’t analyze great design—you sense it. I know that 2 + 2 equals 4, but I don’t feel that knowledge the way I feel a chord progression or a poem’s final line.
Once, someone played me Brahms’ Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118 No. 2, before I even knew what Brahms was. What struck me most was how deeply I felt them—without a single word. I could hear the sadness, gentleness, intimacy, protectiveness, the longing. The tension within the composition—the way it ebbed with closeness and distance—was like watching a story with no images. It was an experience without explanation.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
This rings true. Without language—be it German, sensitivity to body language, or emotional awareness—we struggle to connect. But music, dance, and color bypass those barriers. They tap into raw emotion, like glucose for the soul.
An opera’s power lies not in the plot alone, but in its ability to reach us emotionally. In one moment, a woman stands trembling before a dead body. She says nothing, but the music amplifies her fear and vulnerability. Her scream closes it. Repeated leitmotifs shape our perception of characters and signal emotional shifts, allowing us to feel something before the mind interprets it. In opera, a single experience becomes multi-layered—music, drama, performance all speaking different dialects of the same emotional truth.
This is why we still perform operas centuries later. They remind us that beyond words, beyond thought, lies a language we all understand.
Stories, Sonder, Submission, and Surrender
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm writes,
“The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.”
This truth is the foundation of much of human society. Throughout history, storytelling has endured—not just as entertainment, but as a way to connect across the gaps that isolate us. Performers have always been cherished because stories let us feel with and for others. That’s why they’re so addictive: they help us belong, they help connect, they help us witness.
Recently, I came across The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, a project that names emotions we all recognize but rarely articulate. One word he coined is sonder — The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. It’s a reminder that behind every stranger is a world we’ll never fully know. Language often fails to capture these subtle inner experiences, which is why humans have long turned to storytelling—not just to share facts, but to transfer feelings.
“Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers… This ability depends on the ability to believe in shared myths.” — Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
We’re the only species that gossips, shares stories, and builds entire civilizations around imagined realities. The desire to understand and be understood is not just emotional—it’s evolutionary.
Stories, then, are more than narrative. They are instruments of empathy. They allow us to experience emotions we may never encounter firsthand—joys, tragedies, and nuances of life beyond our own. Folklore, cinema, opera—these are emotional simulations that stretch our range of feeling.
When we engage with a story—whether through a novel, a film, or an opera—it’s an act of submission. We surrender our rational control and open ourselves up to something larger. We let the story lead. We let it move us. This surrender is what gives stories their power: they bridge our inner world and the outer one, filling that space with meaning.
Watching opera, especially, feels like a profound act of surrender. There’s something deeply intimate about sitting in a room with strangers, each of you caught in the same emotional current. In Wagner’s Lohengrin, for instance, the audience is gradually drawn into Elsa’s inner turmoil. Her unease begins with the slightest frown, building into a burst of rage as she confronts her husband’s mysterious origins. The music magnifies her feelings—gratitude, awe, pride, empathy, frustration, curiosity, pain—each note layered with complexity. These emotions echo across the stage, intertwined with the conflicting sentiments of other characters: Lohengrin’s silent frustration and eventual resignation, Ortrud’s growing manipulation, starting with whispered concern and escalating into calculated goading. In this opera, one can feel Wagner’s ambition for his Meisterwerk—one that explores myth, fate, and human emotion on a multidimensional scale.
This emotional journey is crafted not only by Wagner’s original composition but also by the choices of the modern director — his interpretation. I found myself sondering the director—wondering about their emotional intent, their interpretive lens. How much of what I felt was Wagner, and how much was the director’s vision layered over it? This performance is a collaboration across centuries, where emotion is passed down, reframed, and re-felt.
Isn’t that why we crave intimacy, and even why when we fear it? Why we still attend operas written in the 1800s—to share in a life once lived, to feel what someone else once felt, still feels?
The fear of being known co-exists with the fear of separation
We fear separateness; it influences most of our actions. Yet, paradoxically, we also fear being known. In this fear of being known lies the fear of rejection, and with it, the fear of separation. These two fears coexist, each feeding into the other.
This tension between knowing and not knowing is timeless, and it forms the central conflict of Lohengrin. In the implicit trust that forms the foundation of Lohengrin and Elsa’s relationship, Elsa faces a paradox: How can trust exist without complete knowledge of him? Eventually, her desire to fully know him, to unite with him by uncovering all his secrets, leads to the ending of their connection. The beauty of Lohengrin lies in how it captures the recurring human desire for connection and anonymity, even amidst conflict and separation.
It is unnatural to be separate, and we all long for a safe space where our emotions are witnessed and understood. Loneliness is not merely the result of being alone in one’s experiences; it stems from the absence of people who can share or, at the very least, witness those emotions and hold space. In the tapestry of emotion, we need a counterpoint to complete the picture.
Opera, as a form of entertainment, brings people together through this emotional resonance, offering a powerful antidote to loneliness. True connection comes not only from shared experiences, but from the emotional echoes that resonate between us. And entertainment provides a safe refuge because it allows us to remain anonymous while still offering this illusion of connection.
Crafting our emotional tapestry and universality
For those driven by cognition, emotions can often feel like an uncomfortable subject. This is especially true when emotions arise unbidden, when there’s no logic to explain or control them. Take, for example, the uncontrollable tears during a first experience with a live orchestra. There is no rational reason for the flood of emotion. It simply happens—without warning, without structure, and without control. The discomfort lies in this lack of control, in surrendering to the pure, raw experience of emotion.
In Lohengrin, deeply emotional experiences transcend individual boundaries and temporal distances. The themes of trust, separation, and the yearning for connection resonate universally, not just through the words or actions on stage, but through the music that binds them all together. Wagner’s Lohengrin is more than just a historical artifact; it is a timeless piece that captures the complex tapestry of human emotion.
In this shared emotional space of emotional surrender, at least momentarily (cognitively, about 4.5 hours), to the collective emotional experience — it doesn’t matter if we are separated by time, language, or culture—the music, the narrative, and the performance invite us to experience what it means to feel deeply, to struggle with the tension between knowing and being known, and to embrace the vulnerability that comes with connection.
Disclaimer: AI tools were used to refine the writing and improve sentence structure in this post.