So there is this series the Queen’s Thief I really like and
the main character Gen is king but doesn’t really like being king so he always
acts unkingly even though he is competent.
One part in the book, assassins attack him and he kills them, but they
leave a gash in him. He was screaming
and complaining as his guards and attendants walked him to his room like he
usually does so everybody thought, “oh he is just being normal it probably is
just a scratch,” but when the doctor looks at the injury, it was almost
fatal. As the character Costis puts it.
“He [The king Gen] should have said something, why hadn’t
he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all
the way across the palace, and they’d ignored it. If he’d been stoic and denied
the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, and Eddisian
soldiers on the move. He’d meant to deceive them, and he’d succeeded. It made
Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to
hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.”
The king didn’t want to cause a panic so he acted normal so
nobody worried. If he acted out of the ordinary then people would note the
difference. It is like having a big sign
saying, “I’m not being normal notice me!” If you really want to hide pain you
act normal and people can’t tell the difference.
In our culture it is taboo to act anything other than happy
with stranger. Only with friends and
family can you act many of the emotions we have. If somebody broke up with their boyfriend or
girlfriend, you don’t go running around in class telling people; you tell your
friends and they help you through it. So
the idea that Costis said that how many people really want to hide by
unsuccessfully pretending to not be a pain is pretty interesting.
The reason this came up is today in class I was just sitting
and thinking and everybody was like “Tomy is quiet” and the teacher asked me if
I was ok. I thought to myself, “If I
really wasn’t ok, why would I disturb class by blatantly acting abnormal? If I wasn’t ok, I would fake being myself and
nobody can tell the difference.” It made
me think that people who pretend to not be a pain are probably calling out to
people to notice that they are being abnormal, whether consciously or unconsciously. Not saying it is a bad thing, but if the
person’s real goal is to hide their feelings from others, then the best way to
do it is to hide in plain sight and act normal, not by being blatantly
different than normal.
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