Emotions - What are they?

The subject of emotions interests me considerably. I have seen some intensely emotional people. 

I can't understand such intensely emotional people or their feelings much. To me they seem to be drowning / swimming in a sea of feelings with little thought to reality and data. To such people, for example, it doesn't matter what the temperature is. That they are feeling very cold or very hot is all that matters. That the temperature is mild and hence doesn't warrant feeling very hot or cold is irrelevant to them.

That everything in life is reasonably ok is irrelevant to them, they might still feel terribly depressed. They love to feel as some people like to ponder. Just like we may not understand people who want to ponder about (why did he do that?, why did she say that?) and understand everything, we may not understand intensely emotional people who want to feel all the time. They revel in their feelings, even if for some such people the feelings are mostly negative, of depression, sadness etc. 

They would hate the idea of doing something to alleviate their negative feelings. Is it because they want to feel bad? I am not sure. But they do want to feel. If removing their problems makes them not feel anything, they probably hate it. Feelings and emotions are like oxygen to them. It's an awful world were they to not feel anything.

Archimedes got a "high" when he discovered buoyancy. Emotional people desire to feel a high constantly. 

I have come across at least couple of such people who are consistently sad (almost ALL their waking hours) and both dislike the idea of any suggestions to remove what seem to be causing the sadness. Both would think me to be stupid if I suggested that they want to feel bad. Meaning my comment to them that I believe that their feeling bad was not an accident for them but a goal.

Neither of them is capable of much reason and logic. Neither can take any stress. Both are very indecisive. Both have a lot of knowledge and mistake it for intelligence. Both would hotly contest this statement (Of course here I am providing my opinion which itself could be wrong). Neither can analyze a subject. Any stance that they take would be based on chauvinism or cliches.

Now, let me make it very clear that I do not mean that most emotional people are very depressed. Not at all. It's just an accident that I know two very emotional people closely both of whom want to feel (sad in their case) all the time. Incidentally both of them are very sweet people. And they live thousands of miles apart.

When the person of reason and the person of emotions talk I would love to watch or at least hear an audio transcript of the conversation. Classic examples would be Hank and his brother Phil / Wife Lilian talking in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". The person of reason would talk of giving what people deserve. People of emotion would talk of giving what people would need and that love means completely accepting a person as he is. A person of reason would shudder at the thought of signing such a blank cheque.

The person of emotions is likely to feel positively only towards those people who need them or whom they need emotionally. They respond to people who can titillate their emotions and make their emotions bloom. Either they feed a parasite or they become a parasite. They are not capable of treating people fairly (meaning giving a person what is right and adequate and not more). The person of reason, on the other hand, is likely to be seen by the emotional person as a machine or a rhyno having no softer feelings.

To each person the other person would seem like talking in a foreign language. I am eagerly waiting for a chance to eavesdrop on such a 2-language conversation.

Having said that I am fairly sure I have made one mistake. That I have put people into two compartments. One that use thoughts, one that use emotions. The issue is not that there could be greys but it is quite possible for a person to be very logical and have richness of emotions. I wonder what drives their behavior and when their thoughts or emotions take control. I do know one such person very well and have heard of yet another from Femmo. This question is irrelevant in cases of emotional people who generally lack thought or logical people who general lack emotions.

Additional reading: 

http://cnx.org/content/m14358/latest/

http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2011/12/ayn-rand-atlas-shrugged-and-fountainhead.html