Why Some Of Us Are Not So Emotional

image: gizmag.com

I believe being emotional is a skill. It's an amazing ability to act out your emotions. A skill that people like me sometimes find enviable. I still remember how disappointed my Sunday School teachers were when they couldn't get me to correctly act the role of a pastor in a children drama. They tried really hard because I had all the qualities they wanted. I was the church bible quiz champion, I walked gently like a pastor and was perceived as the saintliest among all the kids. The trouble was I couldn't put emotion into my acting. And they tried all they could and even lowered their standards to the minimum emotional gestures required. I also tried but my efforts were imperceptible and made it look like I was too proud to do what they wanted.

I have an all weather face. A year round smiley face. Unlike most people who oscillate between happy and sad, I'm permanently in a state that is between happy and sad. But more to the happy side than the sad side. And I keep a permanently smiling face. Even while sleeping. 

So why are some of us not so emotional? Genes. That's the answer. People like me are born that way. We are not great at expressing our emotions. We might be more perceptive than other people but we still don't act out our emotions. And it's not deliberate. We are just that way. It sometimes makes us look like we're afraid of expressing our emotions or weak minded. But it's not so. It's like being hungry, some people are going to tell everyone around them about the feeling of hunger before going to get food and others will just go get food without talking to anyone about their being hungry. Both had the same emotion. Hunger is technically an emotion, triggered by hormones like every other emotion. One talks about his emotion and the other doesn't. That's a low level comparison but when you project this difference in response onto every other emotions you will come close to the reality. Not everyone is naturally inclined to vocally or facially express their emotions. They are also not being timid or avoiding their emotional feelings, they are just less noisy about it. 

And the one that gets us the most criticism is how we handle our emotional feelings for the other sex. An emotional person is clear about his feelings and constantly expressing them. A not so emotional person might also be clear about his feelings but not constantly expressing them. Then people come with all types of diagnosis. Maybe he is too shy. Or he has no feelings. And many other ridiculous explanations. They forget that both the guy who talks about his hunger and the one who doesn't in the end did satisfy their hunger. And often the one who talked about his hunger will also talk about food much more than the one who didn't, even when he isn't hungry. So it is with other emotional feelings. The emotional one keeps telling everyone about his feelings for them even when he has no plan of being friends with them while the not so emotional one focuses on just the one he wants to be with. 

Being emotional is like every other skill, there is always a workaround that doesn't require any competence in the skill.