How to Cry

One minute he would be in tears and the next he would be laughing and playing with his toy cars. I didn’t get how he rebounds so quickly. No one else I know does it like he does.

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with my three year old nephew, while in Canada with my family. He is one of my favorite people, and I am amazed by how entertaining everything is to him. The way he wants to show me everything, from his latest toy red car, to the food that is currently in his mouth, or to the empty Amazon envelope he found and is fascinated by.

Not only was everything fascinating - but every emotion was heightened. He could break out into a burst of laughter or tears in a small instance. From falling off his chair at the dinner table, to stubbing his toe on the kitchen island, to getting his finger stuck in the bedroom door he was slamming, to simply just because. The tears would come when things bothered him physically, emotionally, and maybe even spiritually. 

He would very quickly express and release whatever emotion was triggered. And then recover so quickly

It got me thinking about how I can release and express emotions more.

As adults, we rarely cry as a way to release and express emotion. We have become attune to the societal norms of always having to be ‘good’ or ‘great’. How often do you just respond “Im good” to the question “how are you “, instead of taking a moment to think and be genuine in your answer 

Society has trained us to associate crying and sudden outbursts of emotion with weakness.
This belief that crying is a sign of weakness is reinforced by social norms, social media, and many other facets of adult life. Suppressing our emotions is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness. It is convenient. 

The truth is that we as adults do experience emotions just as heightened as my 3 year old nephew, but we train ourselves not to express them. The reality is that we are highly emotional beings - but at some stage in the 6-10 age bracket, we decide (or society teaches us) that we should not longer give those emotions space or make them visible.

It takes courage to first acknowledge that to be human is to experience emotion. It takes more courage to allow ourselves to express emotion in its entirety and regularly.

Suppressing emotion and sadness not only means that we aren’t fully expressing ourselves, but that we are not releasing our feelings and allowing for the growth to happen. 

Mother nature shows this to us frequently. Even though I often wish for sunshine all year round (which is why I visited Australia earlier this year), I know that without the rain the heat gets exhausting, and nature becomes withered and no longer lush. Nature in all its beauty, can't existing without the rain 

Similarly, if we suppress our ‘rain’, we become out of balance and increasingly numb to emotion. Emotions & feeling is core to what makes us human. 

Like rain, I have discovered that crying is required in life.

I have gone through periods where I cry everyday, and others when I don't cry for weeks at a time. I have felt a block around crying for the last few months, and I can feel the cumulative effects from the lack of tears

Crying gives me access to the full beauty and experience of life, and it is what leads to growth. When I don’t  let myself cry often, I am in a desert. Most things die in a desert.

When I cry, I know I have felt something. When I cry, I know I have I am alive

And that is how I learned to cry.