opposition in everything

..sorry it's blurry...

You know, I've always thought it was a weakness to show emotion. Crying obviously meant that you weren't strong enough to handle the pain, fear showed a lack of courage and stress was the inability to have any inward discipline.  This thinking constantly ate away at me because despite thinking that... I would still cry, become afraid and get very stressed.  I wonder why women constantly feel like they need to "man up", as if men's characteristics was somehow superior to women's.  Being tough, unflinching and aggressive is expectation we create for ourselves, and yet for most women, those characteristics aren't inherent.  I do want to clarify: I am not about to launch into feminine rights here. While I believe they are important, sometimes I wonder if they're carried to the extreme. My point here is to tell myself that it is ok to be a tender woman. I love how she said, "Nothing is more powerful than letting yourself to truly be affected by things".  So what if a song moves me to cry? I experienced an emotion that imprinted a memory onto my brain. If nothing in this life is to effect us, to move us to experience emotion, then what's the whole point of living in the first place? I would rather go through life taking everything in. The good, bad and the ugly because with those experiences I also gain a greater appreciation for the sad, angry and beautiful: the everything in life.