(no subject)
I can tell you alot about feelings. I'm sure you can tell me alot too. I can tell you about percieved feelings, actual feelings, repressed feelings, external feelings, internal feelings and so many other hidden forms of expression. I can tell you about stereoptypes based on feelings. I can tell you about society's accpetance of feelings.
I can tell you about a woman (other than me) who's child does not live until birth. I can tell you how her friends expect her to feel. I can tell you how her family expects her to feel. I can tell you how her doctor expects her to feel. I can tell you how strangers expect her to feel. I can tell you how they all form ideas on how she believes she is supposed to feel. I can tell you how she believes she does feel. I can tell you how others see her feeling. And beneath all of this, something she refuses to recognize in herself and the casual observer may not notice, I can tell you how she truly feels.
We all have emotions, formed by not only what we truly feel but by what we are expected to express. Society has confused these feelings, told s how we shold behave
A man goes to his wife's funeral. You expect him to be crying, but he doesn't. You call him heartless. He isn't. But you have made this judgement of him based on the fact that he didn't react the way you expected him to. Once you have made this assumption, your conclusion next week when he commits suicide, leaving a note that reads simply "I can't do it alone" is that he could no longer handle his own life as his wife took care of him. You have already lain aside the idea that he was so upset over her death that you can no longer believe his own death was a result of grief, that he wanted to be with her. Your perception of him as heartless has led you to believe him shelfish as well.
And so the vicious cycle starts.
I have asked, ever so subtly, how I should feel, how I should react. Nobody has told me. I am grateful, but at times I still fear that I am not reacting "correctly." Then I remember the many groups of people that society says I should please, and put them all aside. There is one group society gives lip service to pleasing, but doesn't actually believe in and that is one's own self. I have reacted by putting it aside. When the subject comes up, I gloss over it and quickly move on. But I will not ask that anybody else react the same way.
I can tell you about a woman (other than me) who's child does not live until birth. I can tell you how her friends expect her to feel. I can tell you how her family expects her to feel. I can tell you how her doctor expects her to feel. I can tell you how strangers expect her to feel. I can tell you how they all form ideas on how she believes she is supposed to feel. I can tell you how she believes she does feel. I can tell you how others see her feeling. And beneath all of this, something she refuses to recognize in herself and the casual observer may not notice, I can tell you how she truly feels.
We all have emotions, formed by not only what we truly feel but by what we are expected to express. Society has confused these feelings, told s how we shold behave
A man goes to his wife's funeral. You expect him to be crying, but he doesn't. You call him heartless. He isn't. But you have made this judgement of him based on the fact that he didn't react the way you expected him to. Once you have made this assumption, your conclusion next week when he commits suicide, leaving a note that reads simply "I can't do it alone" is that he could no longer handle his own life as his wife took care of him. You have already lain aside the idea that he was so upset over her death that you can no longer believe his own death was a result of grief, that he wanted to be with her. Your perception of him as heartless has led you to believe him shelfish as well.
And so the vicious cycle starts.
I have asked, ever so subtly, how I should feel, how I should react. Nobody has told me. I am grateful, but at times I still fear that I am not reacting "correctly." Then I remember the many groups of people that society says I should please, and put them all aside. There is one group society gives lip service to pleasing, but doesn't actually believe in and that is one's own self. I have reacted by putting it aside. When the subject comes up, I gloss over it and quickly move on. But I will not ask that anybody else react the same way.