Journal #8

When an emotional situation appears, it is smarter to approach the situation with a logical thinking. When somebody is emotional they are incapable of making a rational decision by themselves. Thinking in a logical way allows the person to see all the outcomes of their decision and make the best choice in that time. An example of this that is fairly common is when you have a family pet that is old and sick. This is an emotional time in the family because that pet has been around for years and is treated just as if it was part of the family. Making the decision to put that pet down is heart-wrenching. You do not want to see that pet die, but you know that he or she is in pain. An emotional decision would be to not put the pet down and try and do everything possible to keep it alive. Now this would be a good thing, if the pet was not in pain, or if that was not just prolonging the inevitable. A rational decision would be seeing if the pet would benefit from any more treatment, or if it would be the kindest thing to put the pet out of its pain and put he or she down. My family went through this ordeal last year with our dog Luke. He was a large yellow retriever who lived nine years. When he became sick, and was no longer strong enough to walk down our steps outside to go to the bathroom, or walk to his bowl to eat or drink, we had to make the decision to put him down. It was a very hard decision and we had to decide it as a family, and make a rational, logical decision. Luke was never going to get better, only more weak and more sick. So instead of prolonging his pain for our comfort, we put him down. This was a very emotional situation for my family that we were able to handle with a rational, logical approach.