More from the study table

Balance is important. True. But I wonder how many manage to strike one when it comes to emotions.

This is something I have always found a bit of a puzzle. So it was sort of inevitable that my thoughts on this would spill onto my blog sooner or later...sooner, it turns out, because I found a reference to this in a chapter on personality types in one of my books (yes, it's exam time, and I have finally opened my books, which explains the sudden proliferation of posts on such subjects :) One of the contemporary theories on leadership says that emotional stability is one of the Big Five traits that go into the making of an effective leader.

That got me thinking again. People defy classification by virtue of being people, but I'd still say there are four broad categories - those who are extremely emotional and demonstrative, and base everything on feeling, never mind the facts; another set which is afraid to explore the territory at all, or finds it a cumbersome exercise, so consistently maintains an even appearance of general reserve, playfulness, or sarcasm and deals only with the facts; a third lot, which is very aware of its emotions - positive and negative - and chooses to keep them all under restraint, opening up only to a selected few; and finally, the minority that knows just when to be expressive, and when to keep it quiet. These last two usually do a decent job balancing fact and feeling.

Now, I'm neither qualified nor equipped to comment on any of the above, in terms of what causes their kind of behaviour or what the implications may be. There's just one thing that intrigues me: does the second category never feel anything amiss? The high-strung sort - the first category - often get to people because of the constant drama, and I confess their company often leaves me exhausted, dying to get away to where it is quieter. No, it is the second kind that I wonder about. What makes people afraid of their own selves, afraid to speak up even when they know they want to say something...afraid to admit, even to themselves, that there is something they want to say? What makes them avoid such an intrinsic part of who they are? What makes them stick to the pragmatic, the humorous, the sarcastic - even when there is something that has genuinely touched, excited, angered or upset them, or made them happy? It is at times like these that I start wondering whether confronting one's own feelings is actually the toughest, scariest thing to do. There's a school of thought that believes that emotions are for the weak...but there is another that believes that it takes the greatest courage to listen to the heart along with the head - to acknowledge the existence of the heart, to begin with. Because to acknowledge it is to risk potential hurt, betrayal, ridicule, no reciprocation (if that's a word)...but to pretend it does not exist is a sure way of keeping all happiness away, and of falling entirely out of touch with one's own self. To live in a shell is a matter of choice; to live as a shell - is that such a good thing?

And then, I can't help thinking what an enormous paradox it would be for someone to have won over the whole world - literally or figuratively or both - but to be clueless about what to say to oneself.