“Maybe we cannot know the real reason why we are crying. Maybe we do not cry about, but rather near or around. Maybe all our explanations are stories constructed after the fact.”
― Heather Christle, The Crying Book
We’re born with the same thickness of skin, all of us. But as we grow older and face all kinds of challenges, we’re told to grow a thick skin to be able to survive it all with a smile.
Some people manage to do it. They stop letting things affect them. They stop emoting at some level.
But not me. I cry. I cry a lot. A lot, a lot.
We’ve all heard how great crying is for our skin — the gentle glow on the cheeks, the redness on our noses, the soft aftermath of a complete disaster — but we don’t talk enough about what makes crying great for your emotional health.
A friend tells me that her worst nightmare is to cry in front of people. Another friend is a staunch believer of crying being a weakness. And a distant relative doesn’t even wish crying upon his worst enemies because it seems to drain them.
They may be right for all I know. But I truly believe and stand by what I will say next:
Crying is an act of bravery.
Most people think crying is simple. But what they don’t know is that it’s not easy. It doesn’t just happen.
We cry for a lot of different things. I cry when I am sad (duh!), when I feel the sharpness of joy pierce my heart, or a longing for something I’ve always had. I cry when I am angry, when I am excited, when I am nervous. I cry when I have too much energy. I cry just because. I cry wordlessly.
Basically, I cry a lot, about all kinds of things. And I have never once seen that as a shameful act, a nightmare or a weakness.
Because to cry, and cry a lot, it takes courage. It takes courage to acknowledge how one feels and then react to that feeling with an outlet that’s readily available to us.
It takes courage to express how we feel in front of people, especially, people who have told you to grow a thick skin. It’s almost an act of rebellion against those trying to attach shame or worry to what is so completely, wholly and desperately human.
Vulnerability is not weak; it’s tender. It’s fragile as a newborn’s head. It’s soft as your mom’s old dupatta. And what do we do with fragile things? We take care of them, we hold them with caution. That’s exactly what we’re supposed to do with our tears — hold them tenderly, and let them flow freely.
As artists, it’s our duty to collectively cultivate our vulnerability, our tears. That’s what makes us human, which is what makes us empathic. This empathy is what drives us to create something we’re proud of, that makes people connect and ponder. This ripple effect is a by-product of not just feeling your emotions fully, but to express them without shame.
Finally, I’ll leave you with something Brené Brown wrote in The Gifts of Imperfection in the hope that you’ll see just why I cry so much:
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
