PEOPLE WHO AVOID THEIR OWN FEELINGS WILL NEGLECT YOURS

There’s a much-used axiom that starts with “There are two kinds of people. The first… .”

One can replace the “two” with any number. The point? Classifying humankind into simplistic categories.

It sounds like a version of folk wisdom. In a way, it is. Of course, all simplifications miss the gray zone most inhabit.

 

I’m about to reflect on one such and give it credence, because I noticed that in life and also in literature there are two sorts of people. Those who talk about their feelings, sometimes ad nauseam, and those who never talk about feelings (theirs or others’) and view feelings as indulgent and ultimately pointless.

 

In between lies the vast majority of humanity. But I was thinking about one of the extremes today after reading a full bestselling novel from a writer who has written many like it (a popular one that shall remain unnamed here) where feelings or reflections on such were utterly missing. Not the sort where the reader/listener (audio version is also selling well) can surmise the emotional landscape from the actions, but where the main characters neither reveal nor discuss how anything makes them feel, and their audience is going on a wild action ride with nary any emotion beside excitement generated by action.

 

Some writers of commercial fiction write this way. Some people live this way. From life experience I also know that those who dismiss feelings as “messy” don’t stop with their own. Regardless of whether the underlying reason is early trauma or sociopathy, they will make no room for your feelings, either.

 

If you write, think about the emotional landscape. For the rest who just “live,” consider how barren your lay of the land is and how much more alive you could be if you notice and acknowledge feelings as you go about busily doing this, that, and the other.