Emotion vs. Cognition

Both of my readers know my position on humans; they're complicated. In an almost uncountable number of ways, with layers upon layers of complex interactions seeking to affect individual parts of your life simultaneously. Unfortunately, sometimes this turns up as a super contradictory jumble of goop.

The main thing I'm talking about is the constant struggle between emotions and logical cognition that your mind carries out every day. The emotions that run through us like a river vary based on context, mood, and immediate situational changes. These emotions tell us how to react to the situations that happen within our lives.
When something goes wrong, we are typically told to be sad, tired, defeated, hopeless.
When something goes well, we are typically told to feel happy, proud, exhilarated, etc.

However, these emotions tell us how to react independent of our logical cognition, which tells us how we ought to react or how we'd like to react. It makes sense to feel happy for our friends' success. We want to feel happy for them, but emotionally, we have the propensity to feel paranoid, scared, jealous, or even angry at them.

Imagine two independent people walking down the sidewalk, parallel to each other. They can walk in any direction they want as long as they are moving forward at a constant speed as well. A lot of the time, there's no problem between these two people. However, in some circumstances, one may cross over towards the other, and when they run into each other, they're completely stuck, attempting to force their way past the other in vain, given their constant and equal speeds. A stalemate occurs. A painful and uncomfortable standstill that cannot be resolved until one or both of the people back down. However, since both are demanding that the body react in a certain way to a situation, without getting that reaction out, it's almost like you've failed to meet the prerequisite for going to the next step (which would be getting over that reaction). Instead, you're stuck constantly trying to have those conflicting reactions.

Emotionally, when there's someone that I want to stop thinking about, I block, ignore, or cut them out of my life.
Cognitively, I don't want to have to do that in order to be able to move on with my life. I think I should be mature enough to acknowledge that I don't always get my way, accept the things I cannot change, and make peace with the reality that is offered to me.

One has to give way to the other, for better or for worse. I think, however, what's important is not necessarily having the ideal or correct reaction, but rather, being aware of the conflict, deciding which reaction you believe is the more beneficial/healthy one, and actively trying to strengthen that reaction until it wins the standoff.
Like lifting weights, it's not being at the apex of the lift that matters, but the continuous process that is truly strengthening you.

It's not an easy or straightforward conflict, but being sure to push back rather than to try to win each time is going to remind you that progression in life isn't like a switch. You don't go from being bad at something to being good at it; there's a continuum that you travel along so long as you work at it.

You and your subconscious are teammates in this fight. Your emotional reactions are sometimes appropriate, and your logical reactions are sometimes appropriate. The goal, I think, is to get to a compromise between these conflicting natures, wherein neither is "leading" or "running" the show, but the two trade-off regularly to maintain a sense of balance and fluidity.

But I might just be completely talking out of my ass. I did write this in like twenty minutes without much prior thought, so.....