Not Like Us?
The Ideal Writer would have turned around. He or she would be able to describe to readers every stretching contour on this wife's face as she beamed. Not being the Ideal Writer, or the Ideal Man, I maintained the proper, or habitual, forward-facing attitude of the inanimate rows of classroom chairs. Posture unmoved, the back of my neck still felt warmer.
The wife behind me in Sunday school was describing her husband's tears, but each tear as she recounted it seemed to set ablaze her fondest affection rather than douse it. She recalled her normally calm, cool, and logical husband tearing up as he prayed for people whose needs especially moved him. That kind of emotional expression, she said, was "definitely not like him." She especially treasured the affirmation that his identity went beyond the first few adjectives that usually categorized him. As they approach and are open to experience with other people, the calm can be passionate, the cool can be warm, and the logical can enter and express the realm of affective.
Self-definition and self-expression can deepen both ways. While new challenges invite the terse to show tenderness, the vintage of the voluble can perfect sweet subtlety. Another friend is as energetic as the first is stoic, as ready to confront with an instant solution as the first is reserved against rushing to judgment. This week, the spirit of the prophet was subject to the prophet, as the Scriptures say. My ever-expressive friend held his tongue and his default, ready prescription until I brought up his oft suggested solution. I did see his face. Although he battled force of habit to bottle telling me what he has told me many times before, his expression was not pinched or flat. His countenance was genuinely sympathetic, even though his lips weren't moving. Our emotional expression is a river. It can overflow the self-imposed banks of habit. Where such floods are common and sometimes destructive, disciplined channeling can replace caprice.
Richard Nixon provides an unconventional source for literary support for this week's considerations of maturation in emotional expression. The psychological biography I was reading, Evan Thomas's Being Nixon, shows a man vastly more comfortable with explaining and exploiting the forces of geopolitics than navigating introspection. Nevertheless, the writer shows a deeply flawed man so driven by his sense of mission that he was willing to venture beyond the well fortified castle of his internal calculations and waded into a politician's world demanding an extrovert's excellence. Even as his country simultaneously caricatured his more awkward aspects and reelected him in a landslide, Thomas relates that the President of the United States still scratched notes to himself that his country and the staff working for him needed him to be more positive, more hopeful, and more upbeat. Even those seeking a different legacy than his may find themselves siding with his biographer in looking on his efforts at determined self-improvement with grace. Whether the next week calls for disciplined silence, a timely word to the wise, or backslapping encouragement, we may be surprised at the possibilities within and sympathetic with those around us who refuse the comfort of typecasting.
The wife behind me in Sunday school was describing her husband's tears, but each tear as she recounted it seemed to set ablaze her fondest affection rather than douse it. She recalled her normally calm, cool, and logical husband tearing up as he prayed for people whose needs especially moved him. That kind of emotional expression, she said, was "definitely not like him." She especially treasured the affirmation that his identity went beyond the first few adjectives that usually categorized him. As they approach and are open to experience with other people, the calm can be passionate, the cool can be warm, and the logical can enter and express the realm of affective.
Self-definition and self-expression can deepen both ways. While new challenges invite the terse to show tenderness, the vintage of the voluble can perfect sweet subtlety. Another friend is as energetic as the first is stoic, as ready to confront with an instant solution as the first is reserved against rushing to judgment. This week, the spirit of the prophet was subject to the prophet, as the Scriptures say. My ever-expressive friend held his tongue and his default, ready prescription until I brought up his oft suggested solution. I did see his face. Although he battled force of habit to bottle telling me what he has told me many times before, his expression was not pinched or flat. His countenance was genuinely sympathetic, even though his lips weren't moving. Our emotional expression is a river. It can overflow the self-imposed banks of habit. Where such floods are common and sometimes destructive, disciplined channeling can replace caprice.
Richard Nixon provides an unconventional source for literary support for this week's considerations of maturation in emotional expression. The psychological biography I was reading, Evan Thomas's Being Nixon, shows a man vastly more comfortable with explaining and exploiting the forces of geopolitics than navigating introspection. Nevertheless, the writer shows a deeply flawed man so driven by his sense of mission that he was willing to venture beyond the well fortified castle of his internal calculations and waded into a politician's world demanding an extrovert's excellence. Even as his country simultaneously caricatured his more awkward aspects and reelected him in a landslide, Thomas relates that the President of the United States still scratched notes to himself that his country and the staff working for him needed him to be more positive, more hopeful, and more upbeat. Even those seeking a different legacy than his may find themselves siding with his biographer in looking on his efforts at determined self-improvement with grace. Whether the next week calls for disciplined silence, a timely word to the wise, or backslapping encouragement, we may be surprised at the possibilities within and sympathetic with those around us who refuse the comfort of typecasting.
Win friends. Influence people. Repeat.
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