I just know an awful lot about EMOTIONS... at the moment.

Well, I really don't...

In some ways I'm not a terribly emotional person. I can be quite dense, emotionally speaking, when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I hurt people's feelings by mistake, because I'll say things that would never bother me for an instant, and don't even know I've just made them want to cry.

In other ways, I'm an emotional mess. The "other ways" are basically art/music/literature/film/stories of any kind/etc.

So, things that have made me cry include:

UP
Hamlet
Greek pottery (yes, really...)
You've Got Mail
Of Mice and Men
"Porgi Amor"
Till We Have Faces
"The Forest of the Dead"

The list could really go on for as long as I cared to type or you cared to read. Which, in the latter case especially, is probably not very long at all.

I'm not ashamed of it... not really. I am embarrassed when I cry over something that I didn't like, and don't think was really worthy of it... like La Bohème or A Walk to Remember... but otherwise I am pleased that a work was crafted well enough to have elicited my emotion.

The problem is that it takes very little to set me off. For example, I was listening to the most recent Cabin Pressure series finale, and I went through the whole gamut of emotion. I laughed a lot, which is to be expected of someone listening to a comedy show. But about five minutes into it, I started pacing because the plot was unexpectedly tense, and about fifteen minutes in, I had tears in my eyes while the studio audience was laughing. Two days ago I cried at the end of the Harry Potter movie... even though I knew what would happen, and I don't think it was that good of a film. Three days ago I teared up over Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." And this morning, I just asked my mom if an abridged Macbeth she was looking at had the line "All my pretty chicken's and their dam in one fell swoop!" and I couldn't say anything after I finished the line because I'd started crying!

Mind you, I don't mean I burst into hysterical sobs, but I will get to the point of having to stop talking so that it doesn't show through in my voice... and my nose goes really red... a tear or two slide down my face...

So here is the issue--when we read "Dulce et Decorum Est" aloud in class, will I cry? When we study Macbeth and someone quotes Macduff, will I need tissues?

And if the answer to either of those questions is "YES YOU WILL!" then what?

I am very concerned that my students realize how much I love my subject. But how does crying play into that? I know personally, that some people's tears are very meaningful, while others' aren't. Even as I think about pastors I've heard preach, there are some who when their voices begin to shake, carry me along with them, and there are others who make me slightly irritated, because I think... Really? You're crying now? And the factor that makes the difference isn't sincerity. So what is it?

Hopefully I'll have some real experimental answers to these questions a year from now. And hopefully those answers won't be in any way along the lines of "students are totally creeped out by teachers who become teary over what they are teaching, and I get teary all the time."

Ah well...