in the last part of "thinking, fast and slow" ¹ Daniel Kahneman describes the experiment I'm thrilled to share with everyone I meet: participants were holding their hands in a bath which had water at 14°C - it was doable to keep it there, but it was pretty much unpleasant. they were going through two different cases: in the first one, they held their hand for one minute, and that"s it. in another one, they started the same, but after one minute, the tap with warm water was opened, and participants were asked to hold their hand for 30 seconds more while the temperature in a bath became higher and higher (reaching 15°C in the very end). after time had passed, participants were asked which one case they would choose to repeat, the majority voted for the second one, though it was obvious that "total suffering" for it was more than for the first one - it basically contained the first one fully plus extra unpleasant feelings. together with similar experiments, it resulted in the proposition of the "peak-end" rule ² - we remember and evaluate experience based on the feeling of the peak intensity and how it ended but not as a sophisticated function of all experience time points. this memory compression makes sense through the evolutionary perspective - we would like to know whether this activity led to something good or how unwell it is (meaning we would like to concentrate on the "end") and what is the most challenging moment we need to get through - whether we have enough resources to do so and what do we need to recruit for that (meaning we would like to save "peak" part as well). following this finding, there is clear separation between "me, who remembers" and "me, who experiences". being empowered with the knowledge about the way we function, the greatest implication is that the one who lives right here right now has the opportunity to influence the one who will remember this experience if you want to strengthen the particular association and make it more pleasant.

deep feelings of involvement are not only about making the "future me" love and respect particular experiences, but they are also about the impact on the flow of the things you are dealing with. Richard Hamming notes: "working calmly will let you elaborate and extend things, but the breakthroughs generally come only after great frustration and emotional involvement. the calm, cool, uninvolved researcher seldom makes really great new steps" and then adds, "without a deep emotional investment you are not likely to find a really fundamental, novel solution." ³ from "remembering-self" pov, emotion is a mechanism to highlight important and relevant parts of the experience (think about "peak" moment) in order to make sure we remembered the value associated with the current state in the future. nevertheless, "experiencing-self" has its benefits as well, I can think of the emotional intensity being a bridge between different experience: its evocation will lead to a plurality of neural traces activation representing stored memories. thus, emotion becomes the common ground, serving for memory interaction and being the fuel for combinatorial creativity while stitching together these retrieved parts. moreover, in the recent light of education transformation, the roles of teacher and mentor are exactly about creating a special bond between student and the knowledge through emotion and story; the fact by itself won't be enough to make us care about that (do you remember the previous essay thoughts on everyday knowledge vs objective facts we don't really experience?).

even though emotion is our natural superpower to highlight and to put emphasis on the information, being the invisible tie between stored concepts, it is somewhat uncomfortable to give its corresponding credit in the age of efficiency, which means we would like to have predictable and reliable systems. Donald Braben tells a story about an imagined wizard who comes every century to humanity and gives the feeling of discoveries being made through the following years (he can't name these as we don't have the vocabulary yet to describe them). in this century we received the following warning message: "creativity is the essence of the human spirit, and flowers best when it's unconstrained. if you try to control it for your own ends you must learn that you can get only what you ask for. the unexpected will not arise. unfortunately, your leaders have now decided that wonder is inefficient because it cannot be controlled, quantified, or targeted." ⁴ emotion is like high-risky leverage, it's hard to foresee the outcomes of its action in comparison to a calm step-wise approach, still it is not a forbidden art we can't learn to invest correctly, but at the same time it's crucial to admit that we have no full predictive power over the journey we choose in this case.

note that it doesn't mean you should depart in the emotional rollercoaster to achieve novelty, combined with the power of gentle acknowledging & invitation, compassionate observation, and a pinch of belief in the feelings lead (consider that "feeling is the simplest form of knowledge" ⁵; indeed, it's like a quick aggregated check-in from the internal system and external perception), you become joint partners in crime with your emotions, and the harvest you are about to gather is fascinating! yep, it must not be applied to all the activities; it's crucial to define which ones require a systematic approach (stabilization of currently available best practices) and leave a place for unexpected, high-risk, rewarding deals.