Crying is ..........weird
4000 words or so ahead .Reader discretion is advised.
Part 1
There is this singular thread that connects us all in a universal moment of
unity. It intertwines us regardless of who we are and what the world
beats us up to be. Before we are separated into our luscious microcosms of
diversity, into class, race, creed and other archaic human inventions.
It is crying ,as you can guess by the title.
“The Big Waaa Waaaaaaaaaaaa”.
We all enter into this cosmos, with a cry.
Some say it’s a cry for help, a newborn with a birthright of fear, running
through their veins.
Others say it’s a cry against the precipitous change, from the dark, veneered
protection of the womb, to the cold rush of air and insecurity bathed in
searing light, as we are brought into this world, naked and afraid.
Doctors say that the first cry of the newborn is of utmost importance.
It cleans fluids out of the lungs, opens up airways.
And well, the baby isn’t exactly prepared for the sensation that is breathing.
It's like a sharp gust of air being thrust down your throat, your muscles
suddenly are forced to move.
Forcing them to accept this reality of breathing, as soon as possible.
Nature, on the momentous occasion of birth, presents us with the
ultimatum, at the beginning of worldly life, “You either breathe or you die.”
And we’ve got to choose.
Fast.
The decision of life then is instinctual.
We cry .
And with that cry, we win the first fight that life throws at us and face the
consequences of willing to live.
We face the ramifications of choosing to breathe over death itself, at least
for the time being.
Of Choosing to be.
It's almost as if from the beginning itself, we are thrust into battle.
We start from sperm, racing to the homely egg, against our compatriots,
who are all doing the same. All responding to the thirst of life, wanting to
live on, swimming in the anticipation of acceptance and a future. Willing
themselves to live through to the end, or die trying.
If we do survive, numerous battles face us, one after the other, in light and
heavy succession. In birth, in growth, all till our death.
The constant war of being .
Here’s an activity for you.
Close Your eyes.
(Wait you won’t be able to read anything if you close your eyes.)
On the off chance, your eyes are open.
Try loosening yourself up. Notice the sensation of shoulders drooping in a
slump.
Stretch your fingers and toes, and try loosening up
Then for about 10 seconds. Just breathe.
As deeply as you can.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Do all of this while keeping your eyes closed for about ten seconds.
Don’t worry. There’s no rush.
I’ll wait.
How did you feel? What did you notice?
What is breathing to you?
However good your answers may be, I can’t hear you, so listen to what I
have to say about it.
Sometimes ,I think that the process of breathing itself is a battle, this tug of
war, for air.
We gulp in air, those molecules marching in a machinic flurry. Creeping
through our passages, into our lungs. Waiting there for a frozen moment in
time.
And for that single moment, that paused present, we are gratified, fully
quenched for our need for oxygen.
Stasis from the pull and push of inhalation and exhalation,
as they cancel each other out.
No need for more or less.
We’re content, just for this brief moment.
We're Enough.
Alas, you can’t stay here for long.
Soon enough, the whaling, exhaling need builds up, pressurizing us to let it
out, let it fly free into its home before we let in a new wave. Before we set
the continuum back on track.
Slowly but surely, time and time again, we are told, by nature or nurture,
from the Voices that hate and/or love us, that there is always one more
battle, one more war.
And that there are many more to come.
Part 2
Crying is the first language that we speak.
Not speak, not in the literal sense ….is utter the right word?
If we look at the definition, language comes down to 2 things. The tenets
that it is built upon are that of Expression and understanding.
Converting the abstract formless ether that is emotion and
information into a format that is understood and accepted by others.
And in that sense crying is a language is a right? yes, it's primitive, each
instance left up to interpretation, and can barely be held in comparison to
its other contemporaries, who have the upper hand in the game of language
because of syllables and organized value and thought put behind of each of
them.
But as a first attempt, right out of the womb, it is fairly effective for a certain
period.
I cried when I was a child, so did you, so did most of us. It's just how life
works. Nature ordained us with that this innate language. It needs no
syntax, rules or pronunciation, it's the language of incorrupt, innocent
emotion.
And therein lies, to me at least, its power.
Organized language for all its freedom, in its diversity of syllables, words and
sentence structure, can never truly encapsulate and translate our emotions
as powerfully as crying does. Crying, despite all of its well-known flaws,
helps to smoothly emulate uncut, raw emotion, because crying is uncut and
raw if that makes sense.
It's as if crying is one of the truest languages of emotion if the previous
statements did not sound precocious enough.
Our essential needs and wants as powerless beings were ,I think
expressed through this concoction of saline and raw sentiment, spiced in
with a few sounds. As children, we would cry for a variety of needs. From
food to sanitation, fear to attention and even sleep, or more accurately, lack
thereof.
We process pain, anger and joy among an assortment of others' emotions, through
these salt and mucous infused streams mixed with throaty gargles and
vibratos.
It provides this primitive yet most advanced language. Helping us to
materialize emotions, those certain shivering, anxious, thought-spirals
that rattle through our cerebrums day in and out.
Giving us a voice, a space and a contoured, covert sphere of my own ,far
removed from the intangible maelstroms of doubt and crippling fear.
As adults though,we move on to other,more efficient modes of
communication, right?
Odysseus, from the Greek legends, did it and he was commended for it.
In the XVI book of the Odessey, (255-260) the encounter of Odysseus and his
son, who hadn’t met each other in years is described so "Salt tears/ rose
from the wells of longing in both men, /and cries burst forth from both as
keen and fluttering/ as those of the great taloned hawk/ whose nestlings
farmers take before they can fly. / So helplessly they cried, pouring out
tears”
One of the greatest of all Greek mythological heroes, surviving a war, many
treacherous voyages and monsters, praised for his honour and patriotism,
oozing with machismo, was praised, sung about even, for a form of
expression which is looked down upon to a certain degree.
In their case, the expression of such emotion wasn’t seen as a flaw,a source
of shame, or even a loss of masculinity, rather it was seen as a symbol of
fortitude.
Perhaps these emotional outpourings could solidify relationships, even more
than words can ever do between people.
So,When and where did tears change, from this standard of emotional
experience and expression, albeit a very ancient, cherry-picked one, to a
shameful one?
I don’t know.
Part 3
What are your first impressions of someone who is crying or someone who
is very prone to cry? What do we or you specifically, characterize them
under?
Is it that they are weak, often swept in a wave of feelings, unable to control
it, unable to anchor themselves down, to a calm, cold, logical reality?
That they are fragile for letting their emotions rule them, instead of the
other way around?
This is a rhetorical question because I might not get an answer from you. I
don’t expect one.
But I hope that you’ve thought about it now. Even if it is for a little while.
For a long time, at least in popular culture, whether it be movies, shows and
books, crying is shown to be a sign of weakness.
A scene that comes to mind is from the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 ,Earl the police officer reacts to the preceding scene (no spoilers) by saying "This is enough to make a grown man cry ,but not this man .Get back in there ,tear "as the muscles in his face jerk that tear back in ."
This scene was played out for the laughs and in the context of the movie it is mildly funny , but the additional context of the phrase "Enough to make a grown man cry", is worrisome ,is it not ?
Over time, I do not know when, nor do I know why, but a certain stigma was
built around it. It was weaponized for the glorification or vilification of
others in terms of comparison.
To cry was to be perceived as a weaklin, you are called a girl or a number of other insults . As a result, there's a certain air
that ranges from hesitancy to shame, which prevents us from crying.
This public hesitancy slowly crept into our private lives too.
Because monkey see, monkey do.
Thus, Letting this natural coping mechanism become demonized, restricting
it to certain age groups and/or genders which further deepen scars, that
people try to seek refuge from when they cry.
Ohh the irony .
The social taboos of letting tears flow begin from the assumption that
tearing up an age-restricted thing. That it is a child using a primitive
language. That it is not appropriate at all for a teenager, adult or geriatric.
It’s seen as a sign of immaturity, unreliability, leaving most of us no option,
but to,” Suck it up","Be an adult “or the more popular, sexist version of it
“Be a man “.
Essentially, cork it up like a fine wine, till all you can see in the world is your
ache. Hoping that you’ll forget all your wrongs, all the misdeeds done to you
and you have done to others and trudge along like a zombie in this world as
time goes by.
With the little knowledge that I have about this subject, I understand that
tears don’t always indicate weakness but they help in portraying the
fullness of emotion which words fail to capture, even if such emotional
displays would be seen as weak in contemporary culture.
The act of crying as said by Dr. Recalcine Leaf, is considered to be three
things. A sign, a call and a release.
It’s a sign to us and those whom we trust enough to be vulnerable, no,
honest with, that we are experiencing an emotional whitecap. That we need
all the time, patience and the help that we can get to ride this wave out.
It’s a call for introspection, for us to look into ourselves, the mistakes we’ve
made, the time we’ve lost, the joy we share and partake in, and come out
the other side, a better human being
And finally, it’s a release. Physiological response to pent up emotional and
psychological pressure. Giving that sense of temporary catharsis and clarity.
The briny hug that our tears seem to give, whispering,” it’s okay, it’ll get
better. I know it will, I know it will, I know it …...
So that when the tears are finally wept away, we can see, if only
temporarily, a sign of hope, this unrelenting sense to live, to get up and
continue to fight the next battle, the march in the next war. Sometimes,
many temporaries can stretch to a lifetime, and maybe that itself is enough.
Or is that line too cheesy?
Tears serve a cleansing purpose. Not just in the physical sense (tears do help
in the sanitation of our eyes), but to remove, no, process this sudden or
gradual excess of emotions that may or may not be inappropriate to voice
out loud, like grief over a lost friend, bitterness, or regret of past misdeeds.
All the good stuff that makes us human.
Then again, I'm no expert. I don’t have PhD in crying. This is, after all, A
controlled embellished ramble of my surface-level understanding of things.
Am I Contributing anything new to this conversation? Am I making a net
positive, giving more than I'm taking, or is it something else?
I don’t know
I don’t know.
Part 4
There are a lot of times in my (admittedly, short, relatively inexperienced
and sheltered with a dash of privilege,) life, where I feel that anything that I
do, just seems to hurt.
It's not physical pain. Usually, those have a definite source and a natural or
artificial, known remedy. If I get to scrape my knee, I'll put turmeric powder
on it. If my Stomach aches, I might have an antacid.
So on and so forth.
Instead, it's this, well familiar concoction, of mental and emotional strains,
pains and agonies, all in a class of their own.
It's that knot in your stomach, it keeps getting tighter, till it reaches a
sustained peak of a feeling that I can't seem to describe, overwhelming you
to a high degree that you can’t see anything else, feels anything else. and
you can’t get through yourself to change it, to ease the pain.
So, all you can do, and all you do is to bear it till passes by.
Those times in life, where you feel that it hurts to be human.
Those times when you feel that you bear Atlas himself on your skeletal,
screeching back as you rummage through your surroundings, trying to make
sense of it all.
Those times when you feel so sore from the kicks and slips in life,that
getting up doesn’t seem to be a viable option anymore.
Those times where the light at the end of the tunnel flickers in the wind, and
your slink, turns to a saunter, then to sprint and then a scramble, bumbling
in a vague assurance that you’ll reach in time, when suddenly in a flash, all
seems to be lost. This journey that you were traversing on with all your
heart and strength, seems futile now. The light at the end is expunged and
worse, the light inside seems to follow suit.
What do you do then?
Can you start over?
Should you choose to suck it up, move along, not addressing it all?
Letting it fester, burn and rot within you, till you let it out in a toxic eruption,
wounding yourself and worse, those around you?
Or do you cry?
Knowing that these saline streams, flowing down your aching body, won’t
inherently free you from your gloom?
Knowing that this human nature of yours would be considered immature
among those who you respect, admire and dare I say, love?
Knowing that the only haven to do so is with locked doors, eyes and hearts
so that no one can see your shortcoming, not even yourself?
Do u still do it?
Would it ultimately matter?
These are just a few questions that pop off in my head, kind of like hydras, in
some ways. You cut one head off, and two more will promptly take their
place. Doubly loud, doubly intrusive, doubly doubt inducing, and doubly
potent. Over and over again.
Part 5
Whenever I have the chance to travel by air, I am always replete with this
sense of amazement.
Amazed at how a long aluminium can with wings that don’t flap, can.... fly.
How lifetimes worth of journeys, across seas, oceans and deserts are
covered in mere hours, something that Solomon and Alexander couldn’t do,
despite their immense wealth and Greatness, respectively.
Setting aside the collaborative wonder of the plane, the other compelling
aspect of travel in an aeroplane is the view.
Large skyscrapers, roads and trees, all seem to be shrunken, left on display
like neatly organized building blocks in a child’s room that go on to infinity.
They seem so close that I can almost touch them, as if they’re just one push
away, one flick of my finger and one draught of a breath, before the blocks
that make them, tumble into their deeply symmetrical hunks of plastic.
While the plane ascended to the clouds, it got me wondering. How much
does a cloud weigh?
I know, it seems like a dumb question, something which only annoying 7-
year-old children would ask in a series of questions like what does this do,
what does that do, why does this exist, what’s the meaning of life ?, that kind of stuff.
Well, it seems logical not to ask the question simply because. Because, well,
it floats in the sky, so it must be light, right?
To my surprise, I was wrong. Very wrong. With a quick search online, I found
out that they were heavy.
That these fluffballs, the abode of angels, creatively moulded into
trampolines in the sky, weighed as much as elephants do .11 of them to be
kind of exact.
On average a single cumulus cloud can weigh up to eleven elephants, or 1.1
million pounds or roughly 500,000 kg.
On the surface, they seem so light, like a floating feather. Yet the truth
often resists definitive simplicity.
In a slightly similar yet overthought fashion, I come across my friends,
family, who seem to be able to do it all, who in some ways reminds me of
clouds.
They have high expectations, full of hope and energy and achievement.
One plans to be a doctor, another an entrepreneur, another a musician, all
“successfully” juggling their social and personal lives, while trying to be good
people.
The “ideal “child a
parent could wish for, so to speak.
Yet they too undergo pain. They too hurt.
They too have their cumbersome clouds, wafting in their heads, floating
about ominously presence.
There are times when I'm lucky or unlucky enough to be able to capture a
glimpse of these clouds that hover in their atmosphere.
Sometimes it's in between certain light-hearted conversations about the
latest trends or books or something of that sort.
Other times it’s these scattering solitary moments as they seem to stare at
the window. Not the scenery Outside of it. Or the chalky mess suspended
within it, but the window itself. As if it is the subject of certain profound
interest, that they are right on the cusp of universe redefining discovery.
But I don’t think that the window is what they are peering into. Maybe it is
the person staring back from it.
They seem to swim in the depths of silence when the echoes of the
cacophonous crowd dissipate out of a room, when the silence amplifies,
whatever seems to be inside.
This silence, these clouds, they stay there for a split second, spreading its
foggy, protracted arms, to their faces.
Wrinkling a smooth cheek, into the old familiar home of despondency, as it
wriggles to their depths, like a railroad maggot to an apple.
Inch by inch.
Row by row.
Till it decisively reaches the eyes. The last crowning piece to this puzzle of
terror and what seems to be despair.
And then, it dissolves. Goes back to this seemingly fabricated state of
simulated calm, now overstretched because of this panic of recognition and
judgement, as if they are trying to convince any accidental onlooker that this
short-lived petrification didn’t happen, that it never does and maybe even
trying to convince themselves of that very lie.
I’ll never know whether these moments are rooted in mortification or dread.
Hatred of a past self or fear for an unknown future one. Or if it’s completely
something else. These are, after all, my perceptions of a frozen moment in
time. They may even be misconstrued by my starved Muse, eager to devour
any narrative that inspires, regardless of the truth.
All I know is that most, if not all of us have our clouds, Anchoring us to the
fathomless pit of self.
Creating this claustrophobic version of reality. And only those under their
clouds will truly know its gravity.
Far from what an amateur romantic can even describe.
Sometimes farther than their own words can put through.
Clouds that hang up in the sky for too long can make the earth gloomy and
in the same way. It can make anyone feel suffocated, like screaming in a
glass jar.
No escape, no response, just echoes, all while you’re on display, as you
slowly wither away, for lack of air and the want for something else,
something more.
Part 6
I think Tearing up, crying, bawling in its many forms is like rain.
At the worst or the best of times, it soaks us, down to the bone, before we
can change.
Starts with a mist, a foreboding cloak on our eyes, brimming up in a convex
wall, simmering in a frequency of its own, till it bursts.
It streams, forging its miry path, settling and dancing onto the delicate,
contours of our face, before the first fall.
After which it’s a flood. An all-consuming flood.
Rain has been represented as a carrier of renewal and rebirth in nature and
literature, the catalyst for spring, a symbol of hope, despite the disruption
that it represents and is.
They seem to dissolve the many pains and aches that hang suspended in our
atmosphere, and let it go, from mist to stream to flood, carrying the grime
and dust, and cleaning the crevices that exist or are constructed to be
hidden from everyone else, till nothing is left untouched.
But Clouds slowly dissipate or drift away when they are spent. And that’s
where I envy them.
It's usually not that simple in the case of human beings.
Unlike nature, our clouds seem to remain in our own atmosphere, long after
the rain has passed.
Sometimes, after my clouds seem to give up all they have and more, in the
numerous bouts of heavy sobs, I wonder or I hope, that it's all clear now.
That maybe after I open my eyes, wipe off the excess, a celestial clarity of
thought and action will somehow dawn on me, at least to a certain degree.
That Even though I am not excessively clear about everything, that maybe I'll
get candlelight, a fistful of flame, enough to light up the immediate future,
to warm up the gripping present.
To go on.
Then I open my eyes and look up.
The clouds are still there.
It’s all there, and a little more.
More imposing than ever.
A mountainous weight that doesn’t seem to go away.
They say that “The rain goes away eventually. That the sun shines brightest
after the storm rolls over.” That’s usually a metaphor for,” Don’t worry, it’ll
get better soon. Just Wait, happier times are coming “
What we are not told is that sometimes those clouds don't simply go away,
they pile on. When the clouds of our worries, inadequacies, sense of
hopelessness cannot possibly get farther, thicker and heavier, it just does.
Dimming our vision with each layer, sucking out any light that comes from
inside or outside till it's all pitch. Everything including you.
Sometimes the way to weather the storm, the way that works for me
sometimes, is to make a ladder with your own hands, high enough to reach
the sky, so that you can tackle those clouds, these puffballs in their territory.
They seem so innocent, so frail, yet they are the ones that turn into the
storm.
The journey is arduous and unrewarding, but it must be done for us to grow
It must be done for us to see the sun again, to tie up our shoes and walk on.
Through the thorny bushes, seas and deserts.
Conclusion
I’m not saying that crying has no inherent value. It's just that it's part of the
process. It’s a means to the end, its part of the climb, not the summit itself.
It's the acceptance of being scared, of being happy, being on this cusp of
growth and change.
It helps to put to rest the cognitive dissonance of emotion and logic, helping
one finally, even if or a few brief moments, reach stasis. It's kind of similar to
the act of breathing as I discussed before, an oasis. We stay there briefly
before moving forward, gives ourselves rest, time and hopefully
understanding.
That’s how I imagine it be
And yes, I do not think these exact things when I cry. When I cry, I get
consumed by the emotion that I have, happiness or otherwise.
This is just a retrospective, me looking at the act of crying to understand it,
myself and hopefully others too.
Hopefully, this essay does not come off as a snake oil sales tactic for
crying, where I say that your tears will erase all your problems and pain
away.
It won’t.
Because if it would, we would all have been transported to a perfect world,
the minute we entered, after our first cry. But I want it to help stress the
importance of crying in the process of grief, emotional processing and as I
mentioned, being human. It's not an innate solution, yes but, it’s a
significant part of it, at least in my eyes.
So don't be afraid when the tears come on. Don't be scared to open the
floodgates because this is part of what makes us human. Part of what helps
us get up each morning. That's important.