Connective Cube

As many people know, I am not a fan of relentless positive psychology and thinking. Perhaps it has something to do with my suspicion of binaries in general. I also don’t like it when people tell me to smile, diss people who are quiet, and generally link positivity to success and a happy life.

Those are loaded statements, and my opinions about such things are reactions to the same judgmental people who do not acknowledge the diverse range of human experience. Telling someone with breast cancer that ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘this will make you stronger’ doesn’t acknowledge the sheer terror that someone feels when they are potentially decomposing very soon.

Silencing pain is a form of terror. If someone covers up someone’s pain with an empty positivity platitude, then they may mean well. The intent of kindness does not mean it silences a deeply felt human emotion.

That aside, when I am animated and comfortable, I am expressive. When I am unfamiliar or uncomfortable, the wide eyed stone face emerges. Since I was a kid, I have a resting face that appears stoic, expressionless and mute. I wouldn’t call it resting bitch face, but rather resting aloof face. On the same note, I am not someone who likes to put all of my emotions on the table to just anyone. Maybe that makes me a snob, but I like to think that I don’t clutter other people’s lives with unnecessary emotions.

People who are very emotional and expressive tend to have plenty of judgments about this type of expression – apathetic, long-suffering, unconcerned, indifferent. You get the picture. That is, the what you see is what you get types just think you are a major jerk or anti-social.

How do erasing pain and judgmental talkative emoters link? I guess the point I am trying to make is that extroverted and expressive people erase the existence of stoic people when they call them cold or rude. Why would anyone who is called that based on a simple facial expression want to open up to people who throw such judgments? And why would anyone want to discuss their feelings when someone shoves a bunch of ‘everything happens for a reason’ around the conversation? I think the people who make such judgments and statements are the ones doing the distancing.

More on this another day.