“I believe there are two core emotions and they are opposites. One dissipates the other and vice versa. They are Fear and Love. They come in many more subtle forms like anger, sadness, happiness, playfulness, and everything in between. But you asked for the deepest, so I will try to speak to that.

I take your meaning of “deepest” is to feel as much and as hard as possible. Maximum Magnitude!

At one far end, you have complete and total terror. The most Fearful place you can imagine times 1000. A place where you feel, at the core of your being, absolutely disconnect from everything and every one and you are in life-threatening immediate danger.

At the other far end, you have complete and total Love. A place where you feel, at the core of your being, absolute connection to every other being and everything around you. You are as safe and complete, where nothing could harm you and you want for nothing. Loved and connected.

While absolutes are good for academics, our reality is thankfully not so extreme. Feelings flow and ebb and are very fluid. Fear and Love are opposing feelings, but I find there to be much overlap and nuance in the moment of actually feeling them. I have heard others describe these feelings as layers of emotions or several emotions at once.

These include Love and Fear simultaneously in varying degrees.

I have felt these on a few occasions. Like that time I helped my wife deliver our child, yup massive LOVE and FEAR. Most parents can relate. Getting married, duh. First job, first kiss, first … you get the idea. We feel them both often. We call them something else like jealousy or nurturing but its all fear or love, just different ways of going about it with some particular tilt or perspective taken.

If you want to feel the deepest emotions, you will need to get very comfortable with feeling both because you can’t just pick one side. It’s an ebb and a flow. Anyone who has had one of the proverbial “best days of my life” may have also noticed the happiness hangover in the following days. Typically the higher you go and the longer you’re there, the lower you will go and the longer you’ll be there. But I also think the cycle can be embraced and you can get the deep feels whenever you want. It’s one of those simple yet not easy conundrums of life. The best one in my opinion 🙂

Life is an experiment, test your self.”