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| quote: | Originally posted by trancaholic
Taking the debate here because your mammoth post would stand out embarrasingly in the one-liner thread, huh? |
Haha, that obvious, was it?
| quote: | | Anyway, crying as in "having a lump in one's throat and burning eyes" I experience on a fairly regular basis. When I read good books or see good movies, I cannot help absorbing myself completely in the narrative, and laugh out loud and get the crying feeling as the story calls for it. |
Apart from "The First Man", as I mentioned above, I've never really been able to find myself emotionally involved in novels. I can remember getting the "lump in [my] throat and burning eyes" during movies, although I can't remember any specifically atm. ET gave me nightmares for about 3 months when I saw it when I was about 5 though - does that count?
| quote: | | Furthermore, I can't stand funerals, as I usually get the crying feeling when I see how deeply affected those bereft of their life's partner are. That really tears at me, even though I never feel any particular sadness on my own behalf for having lost someone I liked. |
I know exactly what you mean. I've never felt any sorrow about anyone close to me that I've lost (although, apart from my grandparents, I've been lucky enough not to be in this situation too often) but seeing the misery of others - without wanting to sound sound like a bleeding-heart liberal - really does get to me against my better judgement sometimes. 
| quote: | | So, we (my friend and I) was discussing some existential matters, as we often do when we drink casually. |
Yep sounds like me after about 10 beers...
(Only difference is no-one's actually willing to listen to me by that stage. )
| quote: | At some point during the conversation I came to think of my co-worker and how he constituted yet another great proof of the lack of an omnipotent good God, and everything just seemed to click into some flawless mosaic, where I got this feeling of realization of how empty, unfair, and horrorfull this world is. Of course I was intellectually aware of this fact beforehand, but I didn't really get it until that moment. I then stopped talking and tears rolled silently down my cheeks. My friend immediately got upset and started crying himself, because he thought that there was something very wrong that I kept hidden from him, which immediately caused me to feel even worse. So it was a great night. |
Sorry, I couldn't help but crack a smile at that story. It's actually quite beautiful in it's own sort of way.
In all seriousness, though, I do understand the feeling you must have felt, but it's a feeling I've trained myself - if, indeed, one can ever train one's own emotions - to avoid over the past couple of years. I read in what must have been Nietzsche's "Anti-Christ" (can't remember precisely and can't be bothered looking it up ) about pity being the most vile of human emotions, and I couldn't help but agree with him. If you encounter someone who is clearly encountering certain hardships, you can feel pretty certain that the last thing they want to feel is "pitied". To feel pity is, afterall, to condescend to someone and to feel condescended to, on top of all the other hardships they are facing, must feel pretty damn shitty. That is why, even when I encounter someone facing fairly evident hardships - like someone begging for change on the streets, for instance (pretty common in Melbourne, btw ) - I try to greet them with a smile rather than an sympathetic frown. Afterall, people feeling sorry for themselves would much rather sense of hope, I would think, than pity, regardless of how sincerely the sense of pity is intended.
| quote: | Oh, about your father experience: It's been a while since I read my "Introduction to Psychology", but I think that it's quite a common development for boys to grow angry at their father at a young age, and not really restoring a healthy relationship until they grow of age. And then, with the realization that they have been relatively cold to their father, they are hit with a feeling of remorse.
Just something to carry with you till you get your own kid. |
I think it's what Freud described as the Oedipus complex - that is, all boys necessarily feel a degree of antipathy towards their fathers because they have a latent desire to have sexual relations their mothers. While I'm not so sure about the sexual emphasis he places on this theory (I'll let the rest of you decide for yourselves ) or, indeed, all his other theories (I get the feeling that he was the one in need of psychoanalysis for his obsession with sex), I think it does ring true that most boys, at one stage or another, feel antipathy towards their fathers. At least, this seems to be the case amongst most of the friends that I've discussed this with...
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