Inside Out - Who sits at the center of your console?

Have you seen Inside Out yet, gentle reader?

I hope you have. I hope that, like me, it made you bawl your eyes out. I hope it reminded you of how complex the human mind is, and how important it is to have emotional balance.

Most of all, I hope it made you think; that's certainly what happened when I watched this film.

I could give you a plot synopsis, but that's not really important in following my train of thought here (choo choo).

As you probably know, a big chunk of this story takes place inside an 11-year-old girl's mind. "Headquarters" is populated by 5 emotions: Joy, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, and Anger. When the girl is young, they can only impact her by pressing a simple button on a console, but by the time she's 11, the console has expanded to include toggles, switches, light bulb fixtures, and other whirligigs. The various characters huddle around the console, loosely arranged, but Joy is often dead center; she's the emotion that has dominated the girl's thoughts over the years.

But we also get little peeks into the parents' minds, and their Headquarters are quite individualized. Their consoles are larger. Their surroundings are more functional and less whimsical than their daughter's. In both of their minds, their emotions are more tranquil, seated at their consoles in seemingly random order:

When I looked more closely, though, I began to wonder if the seating arrangements of the different emotions had anything to do with the parent's personality. For the mother, Sadness takes the middle seat. For the father, it's Anger. And while the mom didn't seem extremely sad, and the dad didn't seem extremely angry, I did begin to wonder: do our emotions become ranked as we age?

As I considered this, I became a little bit unsettled. I've never been the easiest person to get along with; I'm opinionated and like to play devil's advocate. I'm overly cautious and not particularly cheerful. Is it possible that Sadness or Disgust is my dominant emotion? Is Joy wayyyy out on the edge of my console, barely able to assert her influence on me?

Maybe it's silly to put so much stock in a movie concept. But then again, this movie has definitely helped others articulate their personal issues and detangle the complicated emotional threads that make up the fabric of themselves.

Inside Out may be a kid's movie, but as an adult, I found myself hoping that it wasn't too late. I want Joy to be my dominant emotion. Do you think it's possible to shuffle the rankings of your emotions? Or, once they take a seat at your console, is it just too late to change things up?