Cry for Me

A single tear could be seen to possess a quality of the emotion from which it came, and could scald a cold heart just as easily as cool a raging fire within. Tears are such curious things. They are sometimes given generously, and at other times they are illusive, as if held in contempt or else in jealous contrast to the concept of a gift to oneself or to another. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, they are ever so curiously an offer of entrance to one's emotion, and at an alternate time or from an alternate person they can be perceived as given too freely, as if to belittle their meaning. They can be only for the benefit of others or perhaps to be shared with those others. They can be the result of pain or pleasure or even both at the same time. One simple tear, burning as virulent acid on skin, can emerge from a person's dark side into the light to sear straight to that being's soul. Like a Templar applying his covert art, the simple alchemy of a gentle, healing tear emerges from the same duct as the last, but who among us can explain this phenomenon? To whom does one turn to explain the relative freedom of a person to release tears with abandon, and who might divulge the truth behind an altogether different human being who abandons the display of a tear in favor of some other, more internal mechanism? The truth behind the tear is a difficult one, and it is so difficult as to encompass emotional truth. To simplify, however, emotions are the most basic elements of character. They are base responses to input, as are the uncontrollable impulses to shed a tear in reaction. They come from joy and from pain, but joy is the obvious favorite.

I am so often pleased by the display from others of tears of joy. Heartwarming and sentimental, joyous tears are a celebration of life. Just as the easy happiness of a long awaited birth brings elation, the warmth and glow of happy tears seem to entice others to share in the sense of community that comes from the mingling of such tears. They seem to have a bonding effect on families and groups that are knit closely enough to share their feelings with one another in their deepest, most emotional moments. Coupled with laughter and celebration, tears of joy and gladness are so precious and yet are offered so freely and completely that they are best shared with those who will cherish them as much as if the moment could be bottled and drunk in a single sitting. These tears appear to be contagious, like the laughter of young children whose honesty and temperance urge them to laugh until they cry. Laughing and crying are not so very different, you know. At least they are not so different from a physiological perspective, but therein the similarity stops.

Crying can come from the heart, and often it can come from emotional pain or anger. Angry tears are for me the most terrifying, because they bring with them a very high level of emotional as well as physical intensity. Like the frustration seen in the face of a firefighter unable to extinguish the burning flames that engulf a family's home, tears of anger seem to burn, just as does the inferno that blazes through priceless memories and discards them as useless and unrecognizable when it completes its destruction. These tears bring with them a deep sense of dread for any unlikely witness, and they can bring unwanted humility for their victim. They tend to reinforce a person's resolve with little regard for the consequences, as was seen by all of humanity during the latest Los Angeles riots when the rioters visualize too late the destruction of their own neighborhoods. They bring retribution and vengeance, and they are rarely forgiven, as with the person unknowingly abandoned by friends on his birthday who sooner than later discards those same friends. Seldom seen, angry tears seem best shed alone or in extremely intimate company, as with a wife or husband. Parents know these tears all too well from seeing their children move through their life experiences, whether it be from childish games and name-calling or from bigotry or from the snobbery that adolescents often display, thinking that it must be chic.

Children cry for so many reasons, not all of which are from anger or emotional turmoil. They are far more immediate than adults. Not having learned to delay gratification as adults must, they act and react spontaneously. Nothing is quite so moving to me as a child in crisis and crying in physical pain, even if it is a necessary event like the inevitable fall from a bike that just lost its training wheels. It hurts, and I wish that I could take away that pain and wipe away the tears. Tears resulting from physical pain are the least controllable, and this is true of anyone at any age. Those tears that at once soothe and lessen the pain come from an internal threshold that dictates when the pain becomes too much to bear mentally, as if the mind either can or cannot justify the intensity or longevity of the pain. Not only physical, pain responses are also culturally imposed; Americans have a very low tolerance for a male crying in pain and teach this to men throughout their formative years. Although always inappropriate, I have a tendency to laugh when I see someone in such intense pain that they may cry, even if it is myself. Perhaps this is also cultural, because Wylie Coyote and my cartoon friends never shed a single tear in my childhood. I remember laughing at them. Possibly this is one cause for my inexplicable reaction to tears shed in pain.

A thousand times I have seen tears shed for at least as many reasons, but for me the release of those tears may be more tortuous than the impetus for their release. I have never understood what people mean by 'a good cry'. I have reasoned that it may be used as a healthy release or as an effective coping mechanism or even as a stress reliever used to heighten a person's sense of self, but my understanding stopped when relating it to myself long ago. All that is my being has resisted the relief that the taste of a single tear might bring, as if the very sensation would torment me. The simple act of crying has exacerbated not pleasure or surrender, but has served in contrast as if it released more pain. Not a healthy release, tears have not calmed unreasonable emotional intensity for me.