Expression

I’ve always been a big talker. I fondly remember one afternoon in one of my engineering-centric courses, where the topic of the day was personality types. A visiting lecturer on Meyers-Briggs personality types was discussing the difference between introverts and extroverts, and queried the class “Does anyone know anyone who is ‘extroverted’?” I had chosen a seat at the front of the class on this day, and I remember turning around to find a sea of people gesturing quite vehemently in my direction. And their judgment of my nature was quite accurate.

However, just because I’m a talker, and I like to socialize, doesn’t mean I have been or currently am particularly comfortable with expressing myself. Part of this is likely due to a shyness that it might surprise some to know I possess, and other parts are likely due to the fact that why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling is often as much a mystery to me as it is to anyone else.

When I was younger, I tended towards 2 main methods of dealing with and expressing my emotions: video games, and temper tantrums. I certainly wasn’t the only kid he was grumpy, moody, and sometimes a brat, and neither do I believe I was the worst, but the fact remains that, most often, when I was upset, I tended towards lots of loud and unhappy noises until whatever was bothering me either went away, or was fixed by someone who desired my silence. That was the goal, anyway. As for video games, I tended to play those as a sort of way to express my creativity. I loved the thrill of controlling and changing the actions of my little on-screen characters. It gave me something to emotionally invest in that I knew I had control over, which was always pleasant.

As time passed, I mellowed in terms of my moodiness, and my expressions tended to come in less… Obnoxious forms. I have a notebook that I started writing just before my freshman year of high school, and carried through basically up to the present, filled with poetry, half-finished songs, and letters to people in my life, written, but never sent, when I was upset, or angry, or depressed. Some of the entries seem silly, reminding me of pointless fights, and silly moments from my “younger days” while others bring back fond memories, funny moments, and even the occasional bit of sadness for days past.

Still though, this one little book has never really done it for me in terms of being able to get out everything I keep inside. In high school, one thing that really helped with that was my participation in music. I loved being a part of the band community when I was in high school, and playing the trumpet was a great way to let all the emotions I had inside flow out through brass tubing and valves. Not to mention the various pep band games I got to perform at, where screaming at the top of my lungs was not only allowed, but encouraged. Nothing better to cure a little teen angst than screaming at the top of your lungs when someone on your basketball team sinks a couple free-throws in a row.

Lately, however, I’ve lost touch with music as a medium. I still love to listen to it, and that does a certain amount towards pumping me up, or winding me down, depending on the occasion. But I really miss just getting to play around and have some fun. I know that, being in college, there are a number of opportunities technically available to me, but I tend to find the required time commitment, or the bar for the level of skill are outside of what I can provide. Really, I just miss getting to play around, the satisfaction when you play something and it sounds really cool, and the camaraderie of coming together with other musicians to make some kick-ass music.

These days, I find my best method for expressing myself is through writing. I’m in the process of writing a draft for a comic book, I “dungeon master,” for a gaming group at school, which is a process that involves a lot of creative writing and story building, and now, I’m a blogger. And it feels good. I really like being able to lay out my feelings and views on the world, to get out my opinions  and to know that people are listening, whether they react positively or negatively, both of which I’ve seen.

I think today, in our modern world, having your own opinion is very much frowned upon. This is, of course, a difficult topic for anyone to deal with, because it’s complex. Where is the line drawn between opinion and fact? As a man of science, I know some cases are fairly clear cut, and yet are taken in the public eye to be opinion. Other things that people seem to perceive as fact and canon for our world can be found to be very much subjective, if only a small peek behind the curtain is taken. And I believe, because of this complication, many people wish to avoid these conversations entirely.

For me, that’s a bad thing. Whether or not you like or agree is totally separate from the fact that the preceding sentence, the blog post as a whole, and all the ones that have come before it make me feel better to write them.  I gain a better understanding of myself as a person when I get the opinions out on paper, and I can see them in front of me, and I become an even better person when I can discuss them with people, when I can interact with others, get their side of the story, and see the world in a different way than I ever could on my own.

So I say, lets express ourselves. My friends are fond of taking me to task for how much I like to “argue.” What they sometimes are unwilling to believe is that, for me, an argument, and a discussion are two totally separate things. If you wanna yell and scream and call me stupid and fat and ugly, and break me down as a person, that’s an argument, to be sure. But if there’s a logical discussion to be had that can give us both a perspective that we hadn’t seen before, why is it so bad to take time between talk about the weather, and actually try to discover something about ourselves. I don’t think we should be afraid to talk about religion or politics or any of the hard topics. Because we should be able to define ourselves outside of our favorite fast-food restaurant, our favorite NASCAR driver, and the person we pray to when we scratch lottery tickets (That’s McDonalds, Jeff Gordon, and Joe Peschi, for me.)