What is emotional?

I've had a great final week of freedom before returning to the land of the contributing members of society. Last weekend, totallybrunette (one of my very best friends for almost 30 years now!) came to visit and we hunted down another good friend of ours from high school and had dinner at the restaurant he manages, Twisted Fork. Earlier that day, we went to the mall where I ran into a former coworker and a consultant I worked closely with on a Novell migration eight years ago! We exchanged numbers and promised to reconnect.

The remainder of the week, I had lunch on three days with three different former coworkers and one lunch with my cleaning lady (who I am happily re-hiring!). All in all, it's been great to hook up with everyone one more time.

Of course, everyone wanted to hear about the new job, so I filled them in a bit on what I'd be doing and told them the story about how the recruiter told me they really liked me a lot but were slightly concerned that I appeared unemotional. My third interview was a lunch meeting with several staff members, which I chuckled over because I've done the exact same thing to try to get a candidate to loosen up. The message with the offer was waiting for me when I returned home that day, but I couldn't stop thinking to myself, "My god, do I really come across as THAT uptight?!"

Ultimately, the concern was that the interview was very professional in nature and they wanted to make sure I would be a team fit - that I could play as hard as I worked. Nonetheless, the word "unemotional" kept coming to my mind and I kept repeating the same question to myself, "When did being unemotional in a professional environment become a BAD thing?" I mean, try to find a definition of emotional that doesn't imply excessive reaction or irrational judgment.

Finally, I found an interesting explanation:

"Emotions play a role in situations that result in undesired internal states and cognitive streams to the individual feeling them, which s/he may wish to control but often cannot, or at least produce consequences or thoughts which s/he may later regret or disagree with but during the emotional state, could not control with his/her other principles."

Based upon this definition, I guess I would agree. It is highly unlikely that I could get so worked up about something that my guiding principles could not control my actions. But here is an interesting twist... the vast majority of people who DO allow their emotions to take control (and many, many do) assume that you are exactly like them and thus believe you did act in a manner that was against your core values. They see your response and look for ulterior motives, or they don't see your response and assume it was something different than what it was. Or, maybe they just believe you have no values at all. Right or wrong, I have come to believe that people view others in this way only because they are this way themselves.

Am I unemotional? Perhaps. I'm absolutely passionate about what I believe in, but I'm incredibly unsentimental. I don't celebrate anniversaries, I don't have a baby book for my son, I don't bring up events from six months ago during a disagreement. With very few exceptions, I just don't dwell on the past. When I do find myself dwelling, it is typically because I need to figure something out to provide some resolution or closure before I can move on.

Unfortunately, this was one of those cases. I was driving home the other day when it hit me, I thought I found closure. I decided I was unemotional because a person's emotional make-up was the result of their life experiences and I have had no major life circumstances to shape me into a complex emotional being. My parents provided for my every need, but didn't cave into my every want. My family is still close. I was never abused and have never experienced the death of an immediate family member or close friend.

I was OK with this explanation for about a day when it hit me. My dog was put to sleep while I was at a friend's house, my alcoholic grandfather moved in with us, my parents got divorced with no warning, I became a member of a fundamentalist religious cult in college, married another member of the cult when I was too young to know better, was cheated on with close friends, got divorced, developed a rare chronic illness that requires me to take medication the rest of my life, had a boss that I enjoyed working for and respected for years do a complete 180 degree turn on me and start telling strangers that I was his wife, and I lost my job.

Suddenly, I realized what the answer is. Life experiences don't create your emotional palette, your emotional palette colors your perception of your life events. I've never been one to sit around and feel sorry for myself - I've always been able to find someone worse off. The best lesson in life my parents taught me was "life's not fair." It isn't. The sooner you learn to accept that little truth, the better off you will be. I've rarely looked back at any experience or choice with regret, they've all been learning experiences and have shaped who I am today. So, go ahead and kick me when I'm down, but beware.... I will grow stronger and you will continue to live in toxic negativity.