The Tough Exterior

 

                                     Image source: Pexels, Getty/iStock images

Dated: 3rd of June 2023

Coffee shop conversations seem to vary, from being light-hearted conversations to deep philosophical thoughts to introspective thoughts about who we are, how we react and what we expect from ourselves when we are alone. Being a writer, most of my thoughts and conversations seem to be either highly introspective or the analysis of the ways people react, so that I may be able to describe human traits in my writing. My friends who share similar interests when it comes to literature, teach and inspire me to learn many things about myself and the world around me. 

Today, I had the ‘deep philosophical’ conversation with my friend, Alisha, and we discussed how beautiful poetry is and what it means to be a writer or a poet. Then, as we conversed we found ourselves focusing on the subject of ‘being tough on the exterior and soft on the inside’, the mere mention of this subject allowed me to delve deeper and try to describe what this means to me. 

Some of us feel emotions and circumstances more deeply than our friends and acquaintances. We are often told that we are ‘too sensitive’ and must be thick-skinned in order to survive in this world. We are told that we must develop a thicker shell to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable when emotions overwhelm us. We refrain from trusting our friendships and other relationships because we fear that we might feel hurt at some point. Even when we are challenged by situations that test our valour, we refuse to acknowledge the strengths of our talents. We become experts at manipulating and controlling our own emotions (forget manipulating others) to achieve our goals in life. I can’t answer if this suppression of emotions is right or wrong. But I can just say that our emotions are as much a part of our personalities as our interactions and behavior with the people around us. This ‘tough exterior’ does not even allow us to express our joys and share it with those around us, we learn to underestimate the power of happiness. We see all life circumstances through a filter, and not in their raw forms. 

We somehow mould ourselves in accordance with the expectations of others. We forget who we truly are. What do others expect? They expect us to be happy for everything and never truly describe how we feel about them. As a writer, who thinks that she feels everything at a deeper level and analyzes every action and word, just because she wants to make her storylines and characters as relatable as possible, I also believe that if all of us accept how we feel, we can transform ourselves. Sometimes, we feel so exhausted by all this, that we express this by our anger and grudges, we fail to realize that all of us are human beings who can be at fault at times. We keep looking for a perfect human being, and end up knowing that we were crafted just perfect with our emotions, it was just us who somehow modified this concept into something else. 

To conclude, I would like to say that our anger, happiness and sadness should be felt. I do not completely disagree with the fact that we should be tough, because that’s how we seem to protect ourselves at the superficial level. But we shouldn’t become so tough that we become plastic beings.