The Suspicion of Excitement

Living as if Indifferent, But Not Disengaged

I was a few days away from leaving on a trip, repeatedly being asked if I was excited. When I reply flatly, no, with a shrug, I get the usual eye roll of disdain from those familiar with my lack of lustre.

Why I should be made to feel like I have a problem for not being giddy, I often frame as their problem. But after a lifetime of it, it feels worth examining.

Why does excitement feel so foreign and uncomfortable to me?

Society treats excitement as proof of vitality, but its absence is not a function of age.

My partner is older than me and seen as emotionally alive, whereas I’ve been labelled an apathetic pessimist on more occasions than I care to count.

My framing is different. I gravitate towards these “alive” people, probably out of my own lack, but I also sense something in their vigour that reads as unmeasured. A part of me still assumes that, with time, they will temper themselves.

That assumption says more about me than it does about them.

I think there are layers to my way of being that were never conscious decisions, but have since hardened into something I’m wedged between.

As a kid, I had very serious parents. Emotional restraint wasn’t just enforced, but modelled. A kind of encultured stoicism that made excitement feel misplaced. Getting carried away looked like a loss of control. It looked immature.

So I learned to dampen anticipation. Not explicitly, but reliably.

Restraint signalled reliability. Composure signalled intelligence. Excitement signalled something to be corrected, and impulsivity had no real place within that hierarchy.

I was also prone to letting my imagination run ahead of reality, only for it to be met with soft dismissal. Questions and comments would reframe the excitement into chores, disruption, effort and inconvenience.

Not deprivation, but calibration. A steady message that anticipation often overshot what reality could deliver.

Over time, it made more sense to remove the anticipation than manage the disappointment.

Alongside that was a natural tilt towards analysis. When in control, I convert feeling into thought. Curiosity replaces excitement and moves towards understanding instead.

All these layers of experiential strata took time to form, but eventually they became solidified. I am not an excitable person. I don’t get carried away. I am measured.

That consistency became its own identity.

And once it is identity, changing it starts to feel dishonest.

Like a well-worn hiking path. Others still exist, but they’ve overgrown with lack of use. The familiar route becomes the only viable one.

At this point, it doesn’t feel like suppression but absence.

I’m not holding excitement down. It simply isn’t being generated.

That’s what feels most at odds with others. Not that I resist excitement, but that I don’t seem to produce it in the first place. Especially in situations that appear, to them, to demand it.

A holiday, for example, is not exciting. It is the outcome of planning, expense, and intent. Something to be experienced, not anticipated. Yet when I see my partner’s pure glee that it’s time to go, I feel a void opening up within.

If anything, I work to remove expectation. To set things up well enough that the experience can stand on its own, without needing to live up to a pre-imagined version of itself.

That’s why I can enjoy a week of hiking in the rain, or snowboarding with a broken wrist. These possibilities are already accounted for. They don’t violate the experience, they are part of it.

For someone who values control, I’m acutely aware I have none. So I meet experience with a kind of pragmatism that limits how far disappointment can travel.

From that position, other people’s excitement can feel misplaced. Not wrong, but unexamined. As if the outcome has already been decided in advance.

It reads, at times, as performative. At others, as naive. Both of which I rail against in myself. The undercurrent of uncertainty that pervades my being causes me to remain quiet more often than not, or worse, attempt to espouse words of wisdom where I’ve failed to take heed of my own advice.

But that too is a distortion.

It causes me to wonder what this mode of being has cost me. There are flecks of jealousy within me, a wish to feel the buzz that emanates from others. A longing to be experiencing the moment rather than dissect it.

The absence of excitement is not necessarily a deficit but an orientation, even when I long for a different direction.

Where others lean into anticipation, I lean into immersion. Where excitement peaks early, I hope for something that deepens over time.

Perhaps the misunderstanding of my indifference is that emotional volume is mistaken for emotional depth.

I don’t exist in bursts. I operate more like a slow burn. A sustained attention that can easily be mistaken for disengagement by those enjoying the highs and lows of life.

The absence of visible excitement does not mean the absence of experience. My analytical comparisons can eat away at my own versions of joy, even though that pleasure clearly exists within, or I’d never do anything at all.