Under the Skin: In my youth we were all expected to keep our feelings under control if not under wraps

Frontispiece for the 1638 edition of Anatomy of Melancholy; a book by Robert Burton, first published in 1621

I just read a quote from Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall among other books): "Life is sentimental ... The biggest things in people's lives is (sic.) their loves and dreams and visions, you know."

Not for the first time, I wanted to shout, "Hear, hear!" Like most of my contemporaries and I suspect most of the young, sentimentality is embarrassing at best and nauseating at worst. Yet, who could gainsay the truth of Mr. Harrison's remark? I have a notion that the imperative to appear untouched or minimally moved by emotion has to do with an innate fear of showing weakness.

Of course, that idea leads to a question about what constitutes weakness and its opposite. There's hardly a soul qualified to read something on this site who hasn't been exposed willy-nilly to countless situations requiring restraint. The imperative to hide feelings has always seemed to be mostly for the male of the species until the twenties or thirties. A Victorian lady was allowed "the vapors." In my youth, however, we were all expected to keep our feelings under control if not under wraps.

If we're lucky, we've been given opportunities to let loose too — to have the relief or joy of openness when we felt safe enough (or were completely hidden from view). Just think of the people we all know whose fear of allowing emotions to be revealed have tied themselves in psychological and emotional knots, or who have succumbed to psychosomatic problems.

Maybe what is required is for our culture to teach us how to know when the occasion legitimizes a free response. Tears still are the most common, even the most allowable demonstration of emotion, and nowadays some men can let them fall without feeling utterly shamed. On the other hand, joy, gratitude, tenderness, empathy seem to have built-in limits even now. Unfortunately or not, heritage and mores historically restrict those expressions mightily. Yet what goes on in hearts and minds demands recognition. Thankfully, here come the arts to help, especially the literary and dramatic ones.

Readers of history, biography, literary fiction, poetry, plays are the lucky ones whose emotional landscape is laid out for unfettered exploration by anyone willing to look it over. Most of us are familiar in differing degrees with the chime of recognition that fills our marrow with warmth when we read something that we not only recognize, but see clarified, revealed, often amplified because it seems to have let something out into open air that identifies us absolutely as part of all humanity. I'm not suggesting we should 'let it all hang out,' but I do wish that when something earth shaking in our personal worlds occurs, we need not feel we need to hide our reactions.

There is ample evidence of symbolism from prehistory to the present day that relates one human being to another, and distinguishes us from 'lower' life forms. Even the cave dwellers bothered to embellish their tools and their homes with signs they selected to prove what they understood. No culture lives without music, drama, oral traditions, and mythology. Life happens, as the young say (when they’re being polite) and it does get under our outer layers. Should we be ashamed if we let on when bruised, made to itch, infuriated, devastated? Everybody should try writing it down once in a while.

I recently saw a remark made by Arthur Miller to the effect that a writer's best work is always what he feared was something that might make him regret exposing himself. He said it's an artistic mistake to pretend to lack strong feelings. He implied that it's the job of the arts to show how to let them out.

Making statements is not the way to go. To help your fellow travelers as well as yourself on the journey of experience is by allowing tears to show, or offering a hand. Drafting a note or poem can demonstrate that something penetrates beneath the skin. Too many need thinner skins. We need to learn that awareness is not a weakness. Lecturers like to refer to 'the human condition' — something we’re all heir to and we can't afford to forget it, if progress is our aim.

Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, Theater and Film, Literature and Poetry, Senior Women Web, Articles, Sightings, Joan L. Cannon, Authors, What's New Add comments

Under the Skin: In my youth we were all expected to keep our feelings under control if not under wraps

More Articles