Emotions and life

What is the role of emotions in our life? They make us happy, sad, fill us with glee, rage and the like. You get used to some of the emotions and start craving for them.

According to one school of thought, it is not good to be emotional, because emotions are not "realistic" enuff. They work in their own world and the clash between that world and realistic world leads to problems for the host. These problems always remain because your wants grow faster than the real world can provide them. But imagining a life without emotions is also not easy. Wat do you live for? Isn't the need for recognition, the feeling of elation upon accomplishment of doing something worthwhile(etc, etc) an emotion in itself?
Getting attached to eating "tasty" stuff isn't dat an emotion, i just want to eat a veg mc aloo ticki burger coz it tastes good. It makes your eating experience nice, but might not be very good for the physical self.

Another school of thought says that disregarding emotions is not the right way. At various points of time in life, you go through various "emotional" cycles, it is nice to experience those emotions and fulfill them. As they get fulfilled, others will arise, this satiation of different emotions at the time of their arousal is the key to "healthy" living. But even dat is not also not possible, you live in a world that is shaped by powers other than ur mind and your mind cannot influence external entities to make this always possible. Sometimes the result is severe and you get trapped in an emotional cycle dat takes some coming out of. Is dat also an experience to be worth had?

Both the theories are consistent with themselves, but none of them seems to be a clear winner. The former gurantees peace of mind irrespective of the world outside and the second provides you an "exciting" life. The trick seems to be to use a balance of both worlds(is the search for absolutes an emotion of the logical mind, isn't balance a compromise and hence vulgar, or is the term compromise too cliched hmm, digressing too much here)

One more aspect to the puzzle is living in the present, past and the future. It is said that worries are not in the present, but only in the future and the past. If you live in the present and totally focus on the task at hand, there is no more rewarding experience than the relaxation that comes as a result. But even excesses of this are harmful as you might not be aware of the side effects of your actions, while you focus on the task at hand. It might be too late to remedy the affect of these effects when you realize them. A corollary to this is that philosophers are never happy and the very act of observing changes the system, and hence confounding efforts for arriving at a solution(Heisenberg's law comes to mind)

A common benchmark that is used to determine "happiness" is that of a child. He shouts and cries when he needs to and is happy and content when well fed. What is it that we are missing that the child is not? I guess he is very clear about what he/she wants, while we get overwhelmed by the world around us and the preachers who tell us what we want. He lives in the present and is happy.

I guess then the trick is to stay mostly in the present experiencing as much of the present as you can and being emotional about the present if you want to and be in some kind of equilibrium with your sorroundings.