one more comment...

Last week I wrote a post about Hillary Clinton and her emotional response to a question posed to her (link to post) and I thanked everyone for sharing their personal opinions on the issue. I received an email from my dad asking me if it was okay for him to leave a comment with his two cents, not knowing if I was welcoming a male opinion.

After telling him I would love to hear his opinion and his comments are always welcomed on my blog, he said he would gather his thoughts and leave a comment. He sent me an e-mail, with an attached document, a couple of days later saying he thought that what he wrote was too long to be a comment. I can see why he thought this but I was so touched with what he wrote, I asked him if I could publish it as a stand-alone post. He finally agreed to my request and here's what he wrote:

...So I'll attach what I wrote to this for you alone to ponder. Bear in mind that my comments, as they stand alone probably would indicate my support for her politically. But nothing could be further from the truth. I believe we must respect even our adversaries, but given a choice in voting for her, my thoughts go along those of what Mammy T said in your Rays...

Wow, where do I weigh in on all this? Trying to go along with the excellent responses that you’ve gotten from your fellow bloggers isn’t the answer as they’re all good comments yet somewhat disagreeing. I can only offer my opinion, that I doubt that Hillary’s emotion break was staged. Tears come to all of us when we get emotional and particularly when we’re tired.

Men are usually criticized for not showing the emotion any more than they do. Maybe it’s the macho image that they feel they must maintain. And I would imagine that Hillary has tried her best to parallel that macho image with the men. But she is human, and to let out a little emotion at the time she did, I think is understandable.

And casting her tears (such as they were) aside, she really came up with some great, touching words about our country, and who is going to be ready to run it? I would love to know just how she felt about releasing her emotions that way. If we knew the truth of that, we might be better able to evaluate whether she staged those tears or not.

But I can only relate to my own circumstances and history when I’ve let down during emotionally stressful times. Tears have flown from my being many times during my years of living: when I lost a cat during my childhood, I cried; when I had to leave your mother at a most critical time of her pregnancy with Steve and flew off to Morocco during the Cuban Crisis, I cried; when I had to leave Steve over night in the Vandenberg AFB hospital after he fell off the slide there in Lompoc and broke his arm, I cried; when I left you all (family) at the Long Beach airport as I separated and flew off to Vietnam for a year, I cried; when I lost your mom to a divorce and was further impacted by not being able to keep you girls with me when we moved to Colorado, I cried; and when my mom and dad passed away and I saw them for the last time in their caskets, I cried.

And as I get older the tears flow from emotional times even more. Anything patriotic, anyone that I see in church committing their life to Christ, any compassionate act by one human upon another, etc. will bring tears to my eyes, a lump to my throat, and an inability to speak when I only wish that I could. And it’s getting worse with age.

So why do we criticize a politician, a woman at that, for something that God has inbred into us. I don’t think we control those things. It just comes out. Someday, when we’re on the other shore, in our heavenly bodies, we won’t have to worry about emotions. But as for this life, we must accept them, and to criticize anyone for displaying them is wrong. Did she stage hers? I doubt it. She was only being human, and I can relate to that.

Thanks Dad.

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link of the day:
http://tanusha.livejournal.com/785637.html