The name of the game is feelings

[gurdonark]

A nice rainstorm started our day today. This summer has been the best weather summer I have spent in Texas. It's a far cry from the gouging heat drought of two years ago. I finished the second nervousness exchange notebook, and will get them in the mail tomorrow.

Today I attended a function in which two speakers felt the need to make ethnic jokes about Arkansans. I tend to make more fun of my home state than any speaker ever has, so I was surprised when I felt a little tinge of anger at the mild ethnic humour I heard. The jokes were not particularly offensive--incest, Clinton, and ignorance. But they did matter to me, a bit.

It's funny how feelings can bubble up from the shallowest creeks sometimes. I'd say that most people who know me think that I am not particularly showy about expressing my feelings. I don't think that anyone would accuse me of being the "silent type", but I am not much for vivid emotional display, either. I'm much more of the "energetic, passionless debater" type than the "gets angry" type. I am sensitive as the next guy, I suppose. I am always worrying about annoying folks or giving offense. But I certainly am not one who takes deep offense at light humour very often. That's why I was surprised when such little, irrelevant, generalized pinpricks mattered to me. It says more about me than about the people inflicting the minor jabs.

I often say that feelings are over-rated. By this I mean it's so easy to get washed away by emotional reactions, to miss the forest for the trees. Friends then often correct me, and say that feelings really matter much more than I affect to understand. I don't pretend to know much about that, but I do feel surprised when I get angry over something trivial. It's like shaking a friendly hand, and discovering a surprising novelty electric shock buzzer in the outstretched hand. The problem, though, is that I am both shaken and shaker in this analogy. I shock myself, and from where did the buzzer come?

I take great pride in not getting too carried away by my feelings. I don't trust feelings all that much. Even "trusting my gut" tends to me to be a mental process rather than some allegiance to adrenalin or negative emotion.
Feelings can be so wonderful, but they can be horrible betrayers.

So when I feel something so out of proportion to the provocation, I am a bit at sea. Interpreting feelings is a lot like interpreting dreams. I'd rather read the sports page than do either.

Comments

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

So when I feel something so out of proportion to the provocation, I am a bit at sea.

welcome to my world.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes. I can see how that would be, if only with a glimpse.

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

I lived in Italy for five years (in the North) and they are the most hospitable people you cand come across. I was surprised that they didn't think much of fellow Italians who lived in the south. They called them scimmias (monkeys).

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

These deep seated regional things always bug me.
I grew up in south Arkansas, which is culturally much more identical to east Texas than to north Arkansas. But a "Texan" in my part of Arkansas is considered, somehow, more alien than a person who lives in an entirely different subculture, but one bounded by the Arkansas boarder. I dislike all this ethnic hatred stuff. "The earth is one country and mankind its citizens"...Baha'ullah. Even silly jokes, which usually bug me not at all (life is too short if we cannot laugh at ourselves) managed to sting me today.

Monkeys? How odd.

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

Monkeys? How odd.

The north is more industrialised and the people are more 'educated' [*ahem*] than those in the south. They see themselves as 'better' because of it.

[kenmora.livejournal.com]

It's often an irony that the closer two groups are, the more antagonistic they can be. Could it be that part of our "social glue" is to distinguish ourselves from others in order to strengthen the ties of our own group? Or perhaps a case of disliking most in others that which we dislike in ourselves: a sort of group-identity projection onto other groups.

Just out of curiosity, is an Arkansan pronouced (are-can-zen) or (are-can-saw-en)?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, that irony is often apparent to me. I like the historical ironies the best--Israelites and Samaritans, ethnically essentially the same, theologically not radically different, and yet Samaritans are stars of the parable because they are so "shunned".

Arkansans is pronounced Arkan-zens. But it's funny you ask--a credible argument is made by purists that the plural form is "Arkansawyers".
Nobody outside Arkansas uses that one, though.

One nearly entirely true Arkansas story is that a famous speech called "Change the name of Arkansas" was made on the floor of the Arkansas legislature by a a lawmaker opposing a bill to change the spelling to Arkansaw. The debate literally ended with a fight with a Bowie knife.
Who says the Taiwan parliament is the only "hip" legislature?

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

ahhhh, the world of emotions

the realm in which i dwell the most comfortably

and that's after much earnest work to uncover, explore and retrieve them

it is all good information and equally valid and true

the difference is that they are so ever changing, multi-faceted and non-specific

i've learned to view anger as the most informative, espcially those surprising little piques that catch me off guard

not that there's anything do about it at times but i'm certainly more aware of what i don't like as a result

there's an interesting book "Emotional Intelligence" that gives due respect to this most mysterious realm

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think you are right. I must learn to see the message in my piques and angers.