so something interesting that the professor mentioned in human emotion is the culturalist view of emotion. this view essentially states that emotions are the way we express them; there's no such thing as an intrinsic emotional state, and that what emotions are are simply a collection of manifestations and action tendencies.
to put it more simply, you're sad if you cry. or to be precise, you are in a depressed state if you are more likely to manifest the symptoms of depression (e.g. more likely to be triggered into crying, more likely to be lethargic, etc..) and you're happy if you're smiling a lot, and you're fearful if you exhibit submission displays (shrinking away, putting up your hands to protect yourself, etc..), and so on.
when the professor said this, it was roundly mocked by the class; part of this was that he clearly didn't believe this viewpoint (as opposed to the other viewpoint, which is that intrinsic emotions are universal, regardless of how we choose to express them.) and i too was skeptical. but i've been thinking more about this and i realize that to some level, it makes sense.
the thing is, i actually don't know what my emotional state is right now. i was talking to someone the other day (okay, okay, my therapist -- it's such a curious experience, which i may talk about in depth, but maybe not), and i said that i was really confused about how i felt. at the end of the session, he said, "you don't sound confused to me. it sounds like you have a goal in mind, and you know what you want to do." and i thought about things, and he's sort of right. i don't know how to get to the goal (becoming more emotionally stable), but i'm not as confused as i thought i was.
if you asked me, i would say that i've been pretty depressed for the past few weeks, not counting this last week, which has actually been pretty happy. but i don't think that's necessarily true either. i haven't been manifesting many symptoms of depression; i certainly haven't been close to crying, i've been laughing a lot, i've been anything but lethargic, i haven't found my mind wandering to sadness in unrelated moments (such as at the bridge table), i haven't suffered from any loss of appetite or anything. so what does it mean when i say i'm depressed? i'm not convinced it means a whole lot.
similarly, i always say that i'm so much happier in a relationship. but is this true? i've been having a lot of fun over the past week (mostly last awesome weekend), and it strikes me that on a day to day basis, this may even beat the emotional stress that some of my relationships include. okay, that's partly because i didn't in the past know how to do relationships (but now i'm convinced i have found the magic bullet common to those failures), but also there is something exceptionally fun about actually being able to act locally and freely. so even though i don't think of myself as being "happy" (probably more "amused"), if you look at how happy i actually am it's possible that i've been much happier than usual this last week. and of course a lot of the unhappiness is brooding over not having found true love, which is meta- in nature.
now, i don't think this is all true to the extreme as i have pictured it. i think i really am much happier when i am under the illusion/truth that i have found my perfect girl and we are going to live happily ever after. but it's really not clear that i'm correct, or that i am the one who's actually in the best position to tell you whether i'm depressed or not. (as an aside, there have certainly been times when i've claimed to be depressed and have been contradicted, and vice versa; and of course this often happens in general, where people don't realize they are depressed / alcoholic / afraid / screwed up by sexual abuse.)
i don't know. maybe it's true that actions speak louder than words about emotional states too. i'm certainly on a local level capable of finding something riotously funny, which maybe is the best indicator of whether or not one is depressed. i wouldn't claim to be depressed internally now, but i would claim to be emotionally unstable (there have been no triggers recently, but i still feel uneasy about things), and maybe that's false too (i haven't come close to going off the farm recently, except for that one night when i didn't want to talk to anyone because i was tired, but that's totally different.)