| | Ted, thank you for your post! Insightful is the word that came to my mind as I read it.
To respond to several of your points:
-- Although it is rare, I do cry in response to joyful things. I'm just very selective.
-- I unequivocally understand the pro-tear points. I believe that "to cry" or "not to cry" is a very individualistic trait. Some people cry as easily as I laugh. I don't find this offensive, weak, or in any way inferior as long as the tears are honest (therefore, not fabricated for sympathy).
-- "After violence" crying makes absolute sense to me. Violence is an extreme sense initiator -- physically and emotionally. The adrenaline crash afterwards is by itself enough to make one cry.
--Luckily, my father is alive and well, and we have a wonderful relationship. Almost all of my experiences with the martial arts have been positive and, to some extent, learning to keep my emotions to myself was a benefit as well. The benefit in keeping my emotions to myself is that I learned not to react with spontaneous emotion to every situation. Of course, this is extremely beneficial when defending oneself from a physical attack. Showing your attacker that you cannot emotionally handle the attack is, essentially, an invitation for the continuation of the attack. There has been a great deal of research done on this matter (refer to any work by FBI profiler Robert Ressler). For example, serial rapists look for vulnerability. Confidence and emotional strength often make them turn their attention elsewhere.
Granted, the negative aspect of keeping my emotions to myself from such a young age was that I was not able to differentiate between self-defense situations and everyday life until I was much older. I sort of lumped it all into one category, thereby protecting my emotions all of the time. It took years of self-examination for me to rectify this. Happily, I can report that I am well beyond repressing my emotions.
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