It seems most emotions are permissible in public or private, except crying.
THE late inspirational author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four-year-old whose next-door neighbour, an elderly gentleman, had recently lost his wife.
Upon seeing the old man cry, the boy went into his yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, he replied, “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”
The act of crying is a form of catharsis. It actually helps us find some kind of relief. Withholding tears can be tragically detrimental to our mental and physical well-being. There hasn’t been a huge amount of research on crying, but most findings concur that on a chemical level, it releases endorphins (feel-good hormones) and gets rid of toxic stress hormones.
Of course tears actually keep the eyes clean and healthy by washing out pollutants and irritants. The logical reason for tearing up when we’re chopping onions and chillies or wiping the top of a cupboard that is covered with dust.
Yesterday, the little man and I were in the car and it was his turn to choose what to listen to. Yes, I practise democracy in my car. Anyhow, he chose to listen to a story that used to be his favourite when he was about two years old.
When the musical introduction started, I was thrown back in time and had such a nostalgic emotional rush that I started choking up. The little man asked why I was crying and I explained that these were happy memory tears of a time when he was still a tiny soul. He then started to well up, saying, “Mama, I will always be your baby even when I am really big, like 12 years old!”
And just as he said that, his hand flew to his eyes and he angrily wiped away the tears. I asked him what was wrong. His answer broke my heart: “The teachers and kiddies tell me that crying is for babies, crying is bad and only girls cry.”
I pulled the car over and turned to face him. I told him that those were stupid comments. That everyone cries, or should cry. That crying makes us feel better and as long as he did not “cry wolf” with crying, he could let rip anytime he wanted. That crying, just like colours, belonged to everybody and not one gender.
Now I am as guilty as the next person of trying to hush up a child who seems to be crying for eternity by saying, “Stop crying now, enough now”, because the tears have gone on for too long and far outweigh the scraped knee or accidental knock.
However, maybe that’s just the point. Maybe the crying goes on and on because it is a form of release for massive pent up emotions that have been contained for too long. Maybe that tiny paper cut was just the catalyst for releasing so many other things hidden and buried.
Which was the case for me the day I sat on a bench outside an office block after an exhausting, infuriating meeting with a health care professional with regards to my son. I was so frustrated and angry that tears started streaming down my face.
This old man from the shop in front came out and asked if I was okay. I told him, “No, I am angry and disappointed.” He asked what made me most angry and I told him, “bad manners”.
He smiled and said: “Then just walk away, don’t let that affect you. Find someone else who can help you.”
Practical advice from a stranger who did not know my problems, but in just five minutes had helped me calm down without making me feel like a freak .
There is so much shame attributed to tears, as if it makes you weak and incapable. It is the one emotion you hardly see in public. But why? Why does it have such negative connotations?
To not cry is to not feel, or to suppress emotions that, in turn, fester into rage and torment. How is that less shameful? To be prone to violence because you cannot release your stress, rather than use a whole box of tissues to wipe that entire toxin-filled snot away is beyond me.
We cry because we are sad, angry, frustrated, happy, joyful, in pain or grieving. We are sentient beings who need to connect with each other, make sense of our surroundings, and emote. Society needs to accept this part of nature as natural and not oppress it. Either through the subtext of language, education, gender divide, age or cultural norms.
So the next time someone tells you to calm down, stop crying or hush up, walk away from him and sit somewhere on your own and weep until you can weep no more. Trust me, it’s a good thing.
Asha Gill put her globetrotting life on hold to focus on the little man in her life and gain a singular perspective on the world.
"You say good morning when it's midnightGoing out of my head, alone in this bedI wake up to your sunsetAnd it's driving me mad, I miss you so bad"
"It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you, wishing I realized what I had when you were mine. And I go back to December all the time."
