Before learning to talk and walk, most of us had a clear understanding of walking the tight rope of emotions. Most children are very clever in their observation of ways to get what they want from their parents and later from others. I was a clever little boy who watched everything that was going on in my home and constructed mental notes from what was happening on the television. I quickly learned that if I pouted I may be able to get a new toy that I wanted or an extra cookie. If my older sister yelled at me for being naughty, I knew how to make tears stream down my cheeks so that my mother could yell at her for being mean to her baby brother. Today I think of it as Manipulation 101.
I love watching the expressions on the faces of strangers when someone they know may ask, "How are you today?" The answer always seems to be untrue, but always the same response of, I am good, how are you? So you see, we have all been taught to lie. There is no white lie, a lie is a lie, even if it helps you to feel good or helps someone else to feel good.
At a very young age we all learned to pretend and imitate adults, mostly our parents or others. I now realise that we were taught to lie, but with sincerity. For example, if someone gave me a gift as a kid or a slice of cake they baked, I had a very difficult time not responding with the truth. My mother was very strict on being honest, except for in certain situations. Often when an adult asked if I liked the cake that gave me, I would tell the truth and say no, it was dry and not very good. I soon learned after several spankings that the appropriate answer would be to produce a fake smile and rave about the nasty tasting cake. My mother was always proud and smiled although she hated the cake too. When asked why I had to lie about something that was not true, the response left me confused. My mother said, "You must lie if the truth will hurt another person's feelings, especially if they did something nice for you." It didn't make sense to me as a child and it doesn't make sense to me now.
This led me on my adventure of deciphering what is an emotion? Emotion is a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. In psychology, emotion is often defined as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior. Emotionality is associated with a range of psychological phenomena, including temperament, personality, mood, and motivation.
Growing up, I quickly noticed how boys and girls were taught about emotions and how to control it. Girls were always told to stop crying and being so emotional. Boys were told they shouldn't be emotional. Often it was said that girls cry because they are weaker. When girls cry, everyone must stop to console them. When a boy cried he was told to be a man and to suck it up because big boys don't cry, even if they're in pain. How could a young boy act like a man while they are still a boy? Often fathers would tell their sons to stop acting like a girly boy. If a girl was strong, she was normally ridiculed or teased for being too manly. And we wonder why people are so messed up with their emotions today.
As a boy I would sit and ponder why boys were not allowed to show their feelings or emotions unless it was during competitive sports. When playing baseball our coach would encourage us boys to slaughter the other team. Even using rude words to yell at the other players was cheered. For some reason it was the manly thing to do, even for 8-year old boys. I use to watch all the fathers in my neighbourhood to try to understand why their faces were always frozen, unless they were arguing with their wives or yelling at their children. They would go to work, return home from a long day, have a shower, drink a beer and demand or expect dinner to be on the table at a certain time. Hardly ever was there any affection for their children besides yelling at them to keep the noise down or to sit down and stop running around. The lessons I learned from my youthful observation was that men should never show any emotion because it could be mistaken as a sign of weakness. I never saw a man cry, even if someone close to him died. Early on I knew that was not the type of man I wanted to become because they appeared to me as an empty soul. Do you know why boys are not allowed to feel things? If you do, please share those thoughts with me.
Even in families, male children are taught they can do anything they want to do in life because they are a man and in control of everything. Female children, often much smarter than their brothers, are taught how to be a good housewife and a married woman with a goal of having children and starting a family. My sister was very smart and wanted to attend college to become a nurse. In order to attend college as a female in my community, the agreement was to attend college for only one year to grab a man to marry that would be a good provider. Not once did I ever hear anyone talk about romance or being in love. As a strong young woman, my sister rebelled and joined the military as a way to escape. Of the three children, my brother was the smartest and plans were created to send him to college to become a successful business man and find a smart wife. He also refused and joined the military. When it was my turn, everyone had given up on trying to push their children into being something that they didn't want to be. I guess that I was the lucky one.
In 1972, psychologist, Paul Eckman introduced to the world the six basic human emotions: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness. Emotions are complex and complicated yet they play a crucial role in human behavior. Detecting, understanding, and responding to emotions is something innate in humans. This helps me to understand all the different emojis that have been created to describe what we want to feel or think that we are feeling. It has become so easy now to select an image that we think will make others feel good about what we should be feeling. Many of us are so removed from feeling anything, but fear anyone finding out that we may have no feelings for certain things. The emojis help us to share our feelings with others, whether we are feeling a certain way or not. Remember, you can't show real emotions to everyone, or so I was told. The funniest part today is that we can create emojis that resemble our faces and we can dress them in outfits that we connect with in our lives. Growing up in an age of emojis express all emotions, whether we feel them or not.
Without labelling the emotions on the faces, can you identify each emotion?
In the workplace, even today, many men in the leadership role do not believe that women can be great leaders. In my opinion, women may be better leaders than men because they are able to feel and understand their emotions and those of others. However, many women have been eliminated or passed over for key positions. Many of those positions have been given to males who are incompetent and should not have been considered. It's called the good old boy network. Men still believe that women are too emotional to make sound decisions like men. If a woman is strong, she is considered too cold or unfeminine.
When I day dream about many of the people that I have been forced to work with over the years, there is one person in particular that still makes me want to puke. Finally, I have a better understanding of how she became the ruthless, racist, selfish and manipulative person that we all got to see up close. I am grateful for the two years that I had to observe, study and develop techniques to shake the knees of any narcissist in the workforce. Very carefully I learned how emotions could be used to obtain control of the masses or the weak-minded. In management meetings, I would watch my colleague present information based on lies and viciousness. After a while, it became fun to watch how the other managers would get sucked in by all the theatrical manipulation. Whenever she couldn't get her way, her voice would weaken and the fake tears would start to flow. Everyone, especially the men, would run to her aid and stand in her defence, except for me and a few others. I can still visualise the faces or emojis in the room that looked like the faces we use on Facebook or emails when typing about our feelings. I saw emotions of surprise, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. By this time, I had become immune to bullshit and she knew it. From that moment on, her role was to try to win me over, however, without success.
A dear colleague said to me last week, "Honey, even an old dog like you can learn new tricks." She was absolutely correct on both points, I am an old dog and I can still roll over and play dead for a treat. We had a deep conversation about feelings and emotions in relationships, whether married, dating or in long term partnerships. My frustrations are often questioning why someone behaves a certain way in a relationship when they should behave differently. Now that was truly the red flag that alerted me that the issue was my own and not that of my partner, friend or relative. It didn't feel good having that hot spotlight shining in my face. Now, bear with me for a moment, have you ever wanted to take a baseball bat to your partner's head or knee when they behave in a way that you disliked? You don't have to answer that one, but smile to yourself if you have ever had such a diabolical thought.
Over time, I have learned to let go of those angry emotions that were causing me much stress. I learned that we all grow up with parents that model certain behaviours and create rules that each of us must live by in order to survive while under their roof. As I took a walk down memory lane, I realised that the strictness that I encountered as a young boy still exist deep inside of me today. Identifying those behaviours has helped me to let go of so much emotional pain that I was placing on others and on myself. Still sounds a bit cloudy doesn't it?
Well, growing up, us children were not allowed to leave our beds unmade. Simply making a bed would have been easy, but with my mother it had to be made as if we were working in a hotel. Every day she would inspect our beds and if it wasn't done correctly, she would mess it up and order us to begin again. Last week a friend shared with me how annoyed she was that her husband was watching the sports channel with very loud volume while she was preparing for a very important presentation the next morning. As she told the story, I found myself melting into the episodes, sitting in the background watching play by play. The husband decided to grab a beer from the fridge and moved into the bedroom to continue watching the game. Obviously, he forgot to turn the loud television off in the den, so the bedroom television had to be louder so he could hear. The wife exploded with emotions of anger, frustration, disgust, sadness and resentment. She shared that it felt like the husband was disrespecting her efforts to prepare for a very important presentation.
Suddenly, the light bulb turned on in my head. The husband was behaving the way things may have been in his household growing up. She taught me that instead of feeling all of these emotions that could distract from the real work to be done, simply walk over to the television that was no longer being watched and turn it off or not. Another option would be to go into another room, close the door and place your ear buds in your ears to listen to music while completing the task at hand. I discovered that often I take things too serious and work myself into an emotional state of negativity that I in some way empowered to affect my health, my happiness and my joy. So many of my friends have partnered or married people to set out on a journey of changing who they are, with the goal of making them a better person. Who's to say they aren't happy the way they are? No one ever tells the other person their plan is to change them and make them a better person in life. My friend is pleased that this old dog has learned a valuable lesson and a few tricks along the way. By the way, I am ready for my treat.
Overall I have learned it's key to acknowledge and identify when I am feeling certain emotions that may have an impact on my day or the way I interact with others. There are always many conversations happening in my head about a variety of things. I realise that many of those conversations may or may not be based on truth. Often when walking around the neighbourhood, my mind flies around on auto pilot. I am working towards keeping my mind in the present so I can be more aware of my surroundings. The secret to happiness is loving yourself first and engaging in that conversation. Try it and you may notice a change in your life. We can't change people and it should not be a priority. It's simple, we accept or we choose not to accept.
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