Keep Your Feelings to Yourself

 When did we become so subdued and expressionless?

Today, I saw a woman carrying a tray of caffeinated drinks in the visitor parking lot of a hospital. A man was coming out of the hospital building to meet her. When he noticed her behind me, his eyes glimmered and slight wry smile formed at the corner of his mouth as if he were trying to hold back his excitement for my sake. They kissed on the cheek and embraced further behind me as I continued into the building. 

 I wondered at his subdued excitement and how it reflected our culture. It is rare to see people express elation or excitement. We are more likely to explode with negative emotions such as anger, frustration, or sadness than positive emotions with the same magnitude.

Negative emotion has a tendency to escalate quickly and force its way out, so people become blind with jealousy or burst with rage. How often does that happen in comparison to being overwhelmed by excitement or happiness? 

Maybe, like the man form the hospital, we feel the need to suppress our joy for the sake of propriety and decency. I'm not saying he should have fallen on her neck and wept happy tears, but it could be that our explosiveness is a response to suppressed joy. 

We don't allow ourselves to express intense happiness, so we fill up with unused raw emotion that spoils like unused milk sitting in the back of the fridge. 

Aristotle wrote about a concept called Catharsis to explain why people went to watch tragic plays. He believed watching tragedies cleansed and converted the viewer's excess emotions into virtuous dispositions. This is why we bring tissue boxes and blankets to watch tear jerkers in the theater. 

Instead, people should be more comfortable allowing themselves to express all of our emotions in healthy ways. Boys and girls are always taught to stop crying or to chill out, but they become expressionless to the point of detonation as grown up. Tears serve a purpose, and it is okay to allow a person the time and space to ride the stream of emotion to the shore. The same is true of anger, grief, and excitement. Those feelings will come out one way or another, so it is better to find healthy outlets for those emotions. Allow yourself to be giddy with elation when something excites you, to cry a river, to say that you are angry or frustrated, and then you can navigate those emotions.