“Daria, are you always reasonable?”

When is it worthy to freak out?

I was asked this question by a very close person to me, someone who truly saw into me and asked this on several occasions.

One of the situations was when we went ice skating on a frozen lake, ca. 10km long and it was quite windy & cold at the end. It became a bit tedious and unpleasant, so he asked: “Are you never unreasonable?”

Every time he asked, I was very surprised and said something along the lines: “Well, yeah I think I am quite reasonable most of the time, I sometimes get frustrated or a bit angry, but that passes quickly.”

In the ice skating scenario, I explained that I didn’t see the point to get upset, annoyed, throw a tantrum or be unpleasant & therefore ruin the adventure, because it was pointless. So what, that the weather was a bit harsh? We were for about to finish & get pizza… & after all we picked this activity & decided to go for it.

For me it makes sense that I deal with the consequences of my decisions, no matter how unpleasant they are. Generally speaking, I apply that to my whole life. I also don’t see the point to drag anyone else into potential negative feelings of mine & destroy their mood & the atmosphere. To me this is something so normal and embedded inside of me, that I get truly surprised when someone wonders about it.

I am also aware that it might say more about the other person that asks such a question, cos their experiences with people might be exactly in that range of unreasonableness, so much so that they are surprised if someone reacts the way I do in unpleasant scenarios.

Also, he was not the only person who asked me this question.

And of course, I started to think about this interaction and wondered how people are, why they are a certain way and why I am not, and so different with this approach. I have to be honest: I have no clue, it must be a combination of my personality, my upbringing, my social circles, the relationships I have in my life and whatever else.

While thinking, I of course also went into the other direction, what does it mean if I would actually always stay reasonable? Never have a tantrum? Never get super angry or totally freak out?

And I realized, that this is the case most of the time, I rarely explode, feel huge anger and rage, devastation, sadness and grief… this actually feels wrong and I know it is not ideal, because it means that I, at times, just rather suppress my feelings and strong “negative” emotions.

What happens with them?