PDE*

i've written blogs before in which i have expressed my abhorrence toward certain public displays. showing love, fear, embarrassment, pain, gratitude, anger, panic... whatever - in public is perfectly ok and perfectly normal. people who claim that displaying these in front of others is wrong are either completely morons, thinking you can just switch them off, or else emotional cripples who understand neither the strength of spontaneous emotions, nor the tension that constantly hiding your feelings creates. just a personal opinion, that is.

however, putting on a whole show for the public is an entirely different matter. parading your feelings in front of others, showing them to make a point, to spite, to shock, to impress... that is completely not what feelings are about. because feelings are a personal thing. it concerns you and whoever else is involved - which is most certainly not the entire population of your town or the crowd in the street or in a room or whatever.
and this thing goes for 'positive' as well as for 'negative' emotions. i'm fine with PDA. i'm not fine with ostentation in a bus. i'm fine with being scolded (well, as far as fine with that can go), i'm not fine with being yelled at in a room full of people. i'm fine with people not holding back their tears (again, as fine as it gets). i'm not fine with people crying, yelling and tearing their hair out in the streets.

i resent gestures and attitudes whose sole purpose seems to be "hey people, look at me, i'm so in love/angry/hurt right now". because, hey, guess what: we ultimately don't fucking care. or i don't fucking care. maybe i would if you didn't try so hard to make me. but when you put on a show, i've labeled you either fake, or gross or else a nutcase or whatever.

now, what sparked this blog was a glimpse i caught on tv. there's this stupid tradition in this country of the "mourners" at funerals. losing someone dear is a terrible thing, i agree. but the way i see it, you mourn and cry for them in private. because it is something you have within yourself and maybe with the soul of the deceased, if you believe in such. it is normal that traces of pain will show. but to cry and yell and tear your hair from your head and your cloths from your body just to show others how much you suffer and impress them with your pain... it grosses me out. it grosses me even more out that women are hired to do just that at funerals. it's tradition, they say. well, it was perfect for the year 1200, to appease the spirit of the deceased and prevent them from returning from the grave to punish the living and the likes. it is not okay in 2007 in europe. with the risk of repeating myself: G.R.O.S.S.

same thing goes with the public display of religious beliefs. and when i see people making huge crosses when they pass a church and staring at you horrified for washing on sundays and saying a prayer when you say you don't go to church, not even on easter and christmas... i would like to remind you that it was jesus who said that when you want to talk to god, do so in the privacy of your chamber, not parading your belief in front of others.

*PDE = public display of emotion