smescrater

First things first oh loyal reader, reports of my death have been somewhat exaggerated. I have been busy it is true, and I have had a visit from the black dog too. Both of these have curbed my normal exuberant self.

Coming out from under the black cloud that’s been following me, I found myself musing today having been dinged once more for not always being a bright ray of sunshine. The model human/employee it would seem has a well defined set of emotions and emotional responses, and there is an expectation that they do not move out of that envelope. Which is fine, I suppose, if you’re good at either ignoring your emotions, pushing them away, or masking them entirely. This is not who I am. I’m an expressive soul, for those who have followed me online in any size, shape or form will have noticed this.

If I am happy, I will share this and share what has made me happy and hopefully bring a little ray of sunshine to others.

If I am unhappy, I also tend to share this (perhaps oversharing, the boundaries are unclear here), and yes I do admit I am hoping for some small comfort in the sympathy received. This is only for some levels of unhappy though. Past a certain point I will withdraw as I work on my pain and accept help only from a select few (you know who you are, and you have my love and gratitude for that).

In person I have an expressive face. I cannot mask my mood at all, my attitude or anything else.

• If I like you, you’ll know
• If I don’t like you, you’ll know
• If I’m engaged and entertained, you’ll know

You get the picture…

I’ve attempted to hide things in the past, and for a while I believed I was doing a good job. I wasn’t of course, everyone saw right through me but maintained the polite fiction until such time as I realised it was bullshit myself.

So, with me there’s honesty in emotional expression. That’s me, that’s how I work, and that’s the person I present to the world.

Being criticised for not engaging did make me question things. It was a work related scenario, and I was thrown. Should I have lied and faked interest? This was no mere ‘oh I’m bored of this meeting’ scenario. This instead was a missed opportunity to engage with me and allow me to contribute from the off. Given I received no agenda beforehand, and no information prior to the meeting as to what research I should do, I found it impossible to contribute as I was flying blind. It was a feeling I’d had for a while on this project and had taken steps to identify how to fix it, just none taken in time for this meeting.

This musing on the journey home prompted me to ask the following question:

Faking feelings, or faking reactions made me very unhappy deep down. It was never a sustainable model for me, and so I stopped faking things. I try my best to be more diplomatic in my responses to things, but I will do my utmost not to fake how I feel to keep others happy. Equally I won’t be blunt and rude about my feelings and upset others though, I don’t think that’s a very good path for me either. In the middle is an honesty of feelings, and a preparation to discuss that reaction and what I am able to do to avoid it in future.

My tweet prompted various responses and an admission from me that I am somewhat sleep deprived, and prone to the maudlin and maudlin tweets when like this. However this response from @Tajasel got me thinking and was the seed for this post.

It’s a quote I’ve seen around before, not one I expected to have quoted at me in this instance though. The idea there is that we’re all unique and have our own individual feelings, responses and ways of dealing with them. On one level the advice is to be true to yourself and not to be anyone else but that. Do not please others, do not be anything but who you are. I have been that person too, and the problem I found is that being true to myself completely meant I could be a very spiky person to be around. My inner self is quite sharp, there are some very rough bits, and try as I might, occasionally myself and others do get cut by those sharp edges. So the ‘yourself’ I choose to be is one that is open an honest and shares feelings in order that they are (hopefully) acknowledged, respected and nurtured. And when I do have periods of melancholy, despair and hurt, I may choose to share those too for the same reasons. I believe strongly in empathy and the sharing of feelings. It’s one of my core beliefs that empathy is a much maligned and under developed trait in the world. I’ll cut to the chase and direct you to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

I’d be fascinated to live in the empathic civilisation and to see what it was like. Would it be utopia? I’m not sure. Would it give us a position to start working towards something vaguely utopia? Perhaps, it’s that thought that gives me comfort when things look particularly bleak (and they do from time to time).

So, I may be myself as the other models are taken, but like hackers everywhere I share the bugs and features, the hot fixes and neat tricks you can do. I’m always looking to improve who I am and to become more aware of the things I’d like to change. These days though there are hard limits I will not cross. I will not be somebody I find distasteful. I will not lie in any size, shape or form, I do my best not to hurt others, and if I do I apologise quickly and honestly and take steps never to do that again. I know I need to work on accepting that other people do not always share my insanely high standards, and equally that I cannot always meet the high standards of others. The list goes on.

Be myself, OK. Everyone else is taken? Well…not quite so much. I’m happy to share and talk and learn and help others learn about themselves in turn. Who I am isn’t a fixed point or a set model. It’s a constantly evolving system and state, and one day I aspire to get it completely right. Until then, bear with me as I keep trying, and if you want to join me as I bimble along on my journey, please feel free.

Mirrored from Tales of the gentleman misadventurer. Please leave comments there thank you!