Just the other day, I ran into an acquaintance who gave me a disturbing bit of news. He was an auto rickshaw driver, a man I’d known for nearly a year and often relied upon to drive me places. It had been a couple of weeks since we’d last met, so I asked after him, after his life and his family. His wife had been expecting their second child, due last month, so I inquired about the baby.
He told me that his child had not lived for more than a few days after being born. I stood there, listening, as he told me of hospital runs that blurred into sleepless nights, of a wife worn thin with grief and sickness, and of money—more money than a man of his means could fathom—poured out in the hope of saving his baby. Three lakh rupees, gone, and still, the child was gone too.
And yet, as he spoke, there was no quiver in his voice, no tears in his eyes. His calmness wasn’t the absence of pain but the bearing of it. Before he left, he asked me how I was, as if his world hadn’t crumbled just weeks before. I told him, but the words felt hollow against the weight of his own. Then he nodded, the way people do when there’s nothing more to say, and drove away.
His words got me thinking. There is great strength that goes unnoticed in ordinary people. The majority of people carry burdens of almost unfathomable weight — a serious illness, the death of a family member, financial ruin looming on the horizon, a failed marriage, or the dread of unpaid bills and their kid’s school fees. And yet, despite the privations and indignities that life inflicts, they conduct themselves with remarkable steadiness.
It is one of the more curious and admirable features of human nature that most people, even while labouring under such private anguish, maintain an outward appearance of civility. They do not scream, wail, or weep openly in public. They do not disturb the equilibrium of the social order with dramatic displays of their misfortune. Instead, they they engage with life’s demands with quiet resolve, exchanging pleasantries, offering polite nods, and maintaining a semblance of normalcy.
They set aside their sorrows to attend to the tasks that keep the machinery of society running—fixing telephone poles, scrubbing public washrooms, repairing railway tracks, mending leaky taps in strangers’ homes, or collecting trash each morning with clockwork regularity. These are jobs that demand focus and physical labour, performed with a diligence that borders on perfection, so that the world as we know it continues to function smoothly. It is this restraint—this unspoken agreement to confine personal suffering to the private realm—that lends society its predictability, its reassuring sense of order. Without it, the world would be a far more chaotic and less bearable place.
In stark contrast to this admirable restraint is the growing phenomenon of what Theodore Dalrymple famously calls “emotional incontinence”— a condition now celebrated in certain quarters as the pinnacle of authenticity. To many, the notion that one might temper or suppress one’s emotions, even momentarily, is seen as a betrayal of the self, a kind of moral cowardice. This modern creed insists that every feeling, no matter how trivial, base, or disruptive, must be expressed in its rawest form, regardless of time, place, or audience. To do otherwise is, it is claimed, to deny one’s own truth.
This ideology has turned emotional exhibitionism into a virtue, casting those who keep their feelings private as inauthentic or, worse, repressed. The notion that restraint might be an act of generosity—a way of sparing others from the weight of one’s troubles—is dismissed as old-fashioned, even harmful. It is a peculiar kind of narcissism masquerading as courage. This relentless insistence on self-expression introduces an element of unpredictability into daily life, as one can no longer rely on the tacit agreement that public spaces are shared, not claimed by any individual’s private drama. The man who wails in the street because his feelings compel him to do so has made a public spectacle of what ought to be private, imposing his anguish upon strangers who neither caused it nor can alleviate it. The colleague who erupts in anger over a minor slight demands that everyone else accommodate their outburst, as if their emotional immediacy were a trump card against reason and decorum. The resulting chaos erode the boundaries that make civilised life possible.
Worse still, this celebration of emotional abandon undermines the very essence of maturity. The ability to regulate one's emotions, to choose when and where they are expressed, is not a betrayal of authenticity but a mark of self-mastery and respect for others. It acknowledges the reality that life is shared and that one’s emotional weather should not dominate the horizon of everyone around them. To lose this understanding is to regress into a state of infantile self-absorption, where every whim and impulse is indulged without regard for consequence.
This indulgence fosters a sense of entitlement that borders on the tyrannical. Those who refuse to regulate their emotions often expect the world to conform to their whims, mistaking their unfiltered outbursts for strength of character rather than an abdication of personal responsibility. Yet such expectations are not sustainable. A society cannot function if its members are perpetually walking on eggshells, fearful of provoking the next unrestrained display. Nor should it have to. The onus is on the individual to adjust to the social order, not the other way around.
This kind of unhinged behavior, of course, is not without its consequences. One may indulge in the full expression of every impulse and emotion, but such indulgence comes at a cost—primarily borne by the individual who practices it. If one refuses to regulate one’s emotions, moderate one’s impulses or present a well-adjusted front, it is hardly surprising when others, especially those who are productive and conscientious, choose to distance themselves.
People may be reluctant to hire someone whose emotional volatility disrupts the workplace or whose inability to contain their impulses renders them unreliable. Homeowners may hesitate to rent their property to someone who exhibits no regard for the peace and stability of their neighbours. Even friendships can wear thin when one party doesn’t care in the least for social harmony. The truth is, emotional incontinence breeds a form of social isolation. People may tolerate such behavior out of necessity, but they will not embrace it. In the end, society, for its part, moves on without these people.
Our burdens, it seems, are thrust on us. Yet, the one freedom left to us—the singular choice that marks the civilised man—is how we choose to bear them.
Image source: Christ Carrying the Cross by El Greco.
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