Power: One Woman’s Voice

Our simplistic view of emotions

It can be tempting to think simplistically about emotions. We see people expressing emotions and we say, “This person is expressing fear, this other person is expressing anger”. We sometimes make swift interpretations, translating what we see into some familiar and largely fixed categories of emotions we have in our mind. This helps us start understanding, but is this how real emotions are?

It's often more complex than this. Sometimes our emotions can be quite straightforward, but at other times it's not unusual for us to express more than one emotion simultaneously. These can be in combinations we might find recognisable – fear and hope, joy and excitement, anger and fear – but they can also appear in combinations that can seem novel and unlikely. When people do that, we can be moved in unexpected ways

This 3 minute clip is of Erin Schick talking about her unique voice.

Because her message is unique, she brings an extraordinary amount of moving and powerful emotion to what she says; I'd be interested to know in the comments what you see and hear Erin speak.

Many thanks to the people who put this together.

– Tim Hill

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