Let the feeling overtake you...

It has recently occurred to me that culture and society seem to place too much emphasis on delicacy and restraint of one's emotions, especially in public. Our entire lives we face a dichotomy of attitudes with regards to how we feel--"Let it out," "It's a shame to have a tantrum," "Tell me how you feel," "That's too much information," and of course, the ever-popular "Express yourself!"

Why do we support the full expression of one's emotions, but never in a way that might make someone else uncomfortable? Is it because we are all too self-obsessed to want to see deeply into someone else's heart if we don't know them? --Or even if we do know them? All my life I've been in situations where someone who is crying or vehemently angry or upset is sent away, told to wash their face, put out of sight and mind until they have restored their emotional balance. Only then can they be re-admitted to our supposedly polite society. Is this practice really necessary? Are we all so disturbed by someone who is crying that we cannot accept their presence without trying to make them stop crying? Why is so much effort placed on trying to stop negative expressions like crying or shouting? You know that the alternative is to keep things bottled up, stifled, locked away in some secret storm-chamber of the heart until it will all burst at some point. Everyone does this, and we all KNOW it's unhealthy! Why do we continue to support it?

There is nothing inherently permanently emotionally damaging about crying after a major disappointment or injury (physical or mental). Retaining all your disappointment and sorrow is what is damaging. I know what it's like to cram as much unhappiness as humanly possible into the abandoned back corners of your mind. It isn't pretty. It festers and grows, taking over other parts of your life, until everything around you can swirl with negativity. I honestly think that this over-emphasis on total restraint and calmness, especially among others, is at least partly responsible for all these people with depression. I can only imagine how much worse things must have been in the even more repressed Victorian era. No wonder they drank those "cordials" all the time.

Calmness is an illusion. Restraint is a figment of the collective imagination of society. We are truly emotional beings; why should we spend so much time denying that? I challenge every person who is reading this to go a day wearing your heart on your sleeve. Don't deny your impulse to tell the person you love that you love them! If your heart is aching because something bad has happened, let yourself be troubled for once. It's very possible to let your feelings out without it interfering with your productivity or whatever else you might be concerned with. There are logical limits to things, but the restraint shoved on us by the people around us is artificial and less than your logical limit. Hug your child. Cry when your heart tells you to cry. Let someone KNOW when you're upset. It'll do everyone a lot more good than keeping it all stifled inside.

Oh, and sorry, but I figured that to increase the number of people getting my messages, I need to increase the traffic on my site, so I'm succumbing to the need to link to something that will get me more traffic. http://bestestblogofalltime.blogspot.com
I'm sorry, but it was the only way I could think of. I'll try not to do this too often.