Vertical Limit – the Business of Intelligent Emotion

It’s a movie. For those who have not watched – Peter rescues his sister Annie, who along with her boss Elliot (villain) is trapped in a crevice, while scaling mount K2. For me the most thrilling scene, is philosophically the most climacteric one. This is when Annie, trapped in the crevice, & freezing to death is forced by Elliot to risk her life for a backpack with medicines that had fallen on the other side of the abyss. Annie has to cross over a dwindling ice-bridge for the backpack. She hooks a rope to her abdomen belt with Elliot holing the other end tightly. Nervously, step-by-step, raising the beats of the viewers she reaches the mid-point of the bridge, only to realize that the rope warranting her security, is not long enough & unhooking the rope from her abdominal belt, thereby risking whole hog is the only way to reach the backpack, carrying life-saving drug. She thinks for a moment and realizes that would she not take the risk, chances of survival are anyway zilch, she unhooks herself, picks the backpack and just while she turns to cross back the bridge gives away, she throws the bag to the other side, jumps to grip the cliff and as in a true thriller catches hold of the rope she had left. The bridge collapses into abyss, but she is saved – hanging on to the rope she caught hold off while falling along with the ice-bridge.

One might wonder, where in this whole thrilling scene is Philosophy!?

It is - the split second, when she thinks, unhooks herself and decides to risk it all-out to save herself & her boss. I thought to myself – would this girl be blessed with exceptionally high intellectual quotient, she would have calculated very high chances of her falling into the abyss and would have desisted from such action. What made her take that final risk that she took?

In life I realized, there comes a point, beyond which, calculated risks are no more an option. It is all about intelligent-emotion. Intelligent emotion is the one, due to which, notwithstanding the damage that a professional boxer’s punch will cause on one’s jaw, one does not shut his eyes, when the opponent swings a punch, but keeps them wide opened to swing, evade or divert the punch. This property to keep eyes open when the blizzard is blinding, and have the ability to take purposeful, informed and swift action is what I call intelligent emotion. Emotion because there is fear, there are reflexes and there is a need to prepare one’s body and brain to undertake the blow and not fall flat on ground. Intelligence, because one can overcome this fear and keep his eyes open, because with eyes shut one is anyway a sitting duck. Intelligent Emotion is the one, which does not reduce reflexes but sharpens them like never before.