Emotional Intelligence

I've been pondering the concept of "Emotional Intelligence" lately. First and foremost, I must admit that I'm humble enough to think that I came up with the whole idea of Emotional Intelligence.

Apparently, that's not the case though. I "googled" it. According to www.eqi.org:

[quote]
Emotional intelligence is the innate potential to feel, use, communicate, recognize, remember, learn from, manage and understand emotions.
[/quote]

Anyway, I've been thinking about this topic of late.

Seems to me, no matter how stupid a person is, and I mean they could have like an 80 IQ or a 155 IQ, everyone more or less has a basic emotional intelligence level. People know when they're being laughed at, teased, or made to feel bad by someone else. It doesn't take a genius to tell when someone is being mean to you.

I find this interesting, because as you may know, I've been riding the public bus a lot lately and occassionally I get to ride with some people who are intellectually-challenged. One in particular I have a relationship with and I like him and likes me.

I've noticed this friend, while slightly retarded, is fully capable of feeling the full range of emotions that come with being teased, etc. He's probably been teased all his life, and brutally so, and henceforth has a good deal of experience in this area.

While my friend may not be able to practice integral calculus, I perceive he's every-bit as emotionally *aware* as I am (not necessarily emotionally mature, but certainly capable of feeling the same range of emotions I have).

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that most adults (there are exceptions, I'm sure) all have about the same emotional IQ. We can all feel the same range of emotions and understand their impact on us.

Saying we all have about the same range of emotional capacity brings me to my next point -- I find it interesting how Jesus, in the Bible, told emotion-based stories called parables to teach.

Who among us hasn't received an emotion-wrenching email from a friend about some person with a problem and an very emotional story about other people, etc? How about that story from the early days of the Internet, even before the World Wide Web, where a young cancer patient in England had a wish to get as many postcards as possible. Even now, almost 20-years after the story first circulated via email, postcards still pour in. Said patient is now in full remission and has been for years and an adult.

I think everyone knows the parable of the Good Samaratin.

Regardless, I ponder that perhaps children learn via direct instruction as they're not fully emotionally ready yet. Adults learn best via emotionally charged stories. If you really want to get you point across to an adult, make it a parable-like story and the point will be better made.

Why don't we use this fact more often? I would think politicians would gravitate to this system. Maybe they do but we don't see the stories reported. Why don't pontificators write such stories in the editorial section of the newspaper rather than what I currently read?

For me though, the best thing to remember is that no matter how much smarter I might be from someone else, they still have feelings and an "Emotional IQ" equivalent to mine. I need to ensure I treat everyone well.

That's my thought for the day.