TerrieMiller.com

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and this morning’s unexpected rain seemed like a sign that I should get to it. Living in California makes it easier to see rain for the miracle that it is.

We live in a culture where we’re encouraged to repress the expression of our feelings…even encouraged to repress the feelings themselves! Expressing feelings makes us vulnerable and can make others around us feel vulnerable, too. We see vulnerability as a negative quality.

I don’t think there’s any expression of feelings more troubling to us than tears. Even when a child cries and we feel tremendously sympathetic, there’s an urge to encourage them to stop. “Stop crying, sweetie.” Men in particular (but women, too) are trained to avoid crying, by themselves or others, at all costs. They may see it as a manipulation or an attention-grabbing ploy.

But what are tears? Why do humans cry? What exactly is this strange phenomena of water falling from our eyes?

There are actually three kinds of tears. Basal tears keep the cornea continuously lubricated and clear of dust. They contain substances that fight bacterial infections.

Reflex tears are the kind you cry when you’re peeling an onion or get something in your eye. Reflex tears clear the eyes of irritants by washing them out. You might also cry reflex tears if you eat something especially hot, are exposed to extremely bright light, or are retching.

Crying or weeping as we usually think of it (sometimes called psychic tears) is brought on by strong emotions: suffering, mourning, pain, joy, gratitude, and so on. The chemical make-up of psychic tears is different than that of basal or reflex tears! Psychic tears contain protein-based hormones associated with stress; crying as a physiological act may be a way to excrete these hormones from the body when their levels grow too high for good health. This might explain why we can often feel better after having “a good cry.” Some researchers have gone even further and believe that crying is specifically related to an underlying feeling of helplessness….an anticipated, actual, or previous frustration with being unable to control a situation; a resistance to surrendering. This might help explain why we are sometimes moved to tears of empathy by the sight of another person crying. This rings true to me….think about when you’ve done this: was it a situation where you were helpless to do anything to relieve that person’s suffering?

Crying in infants is particularly interesting. Parents may recognize three basic types of crying in babies: the basic cry (usually caused by hunger), the anger cry (louder and more abrupt), and the pain cry (sudden and loud, followed by a period of breath holding). There is also evidence that babies in some cultures cry more than in others, with East and Southeast Asian babies crying the most and African babies crying the least.

Do animals cry? Most mammals will cry reflex tears as a response to irritants or pain, but most consider psychic crying to be a uniquely human phenomena. Perhaps animals are less likely to feel that frustration of resisting what is, and lack the drive to control life that we humans seem to have.

I have struggled with my own tears for all of my life. As a child, I once gnawed my knuckles raw rather than cry, and as an adult I have dug my fingernails into my arms to keep from weeping. And I think it becomes a cycle…my inability to control my own tears leads to more frustration, more tears. Yes, I’m a crier.

Could tears be my strength? I’m getting a glimmer of this. Some people say they can’t cry, that my crying can do something for them that they can’t do for themselves. I don’t understand this, but I’ve had some experiences that support the idea. I do know that if I can accept my tears, even when others can’t, and allow them to flow, I can feel completely grounded and in the moment. When I resist the tears, panic about the tears rises in me and presses for the situation to end; I miss something.

Many of us strive for what we think is a Zen-like experience of accepting what is. But I think we also need to remember our humanness. We also have to accept our feelings. We need to accept our lack of control over the universe, but we also need to accept that we’ll be humanly frustrated by that lack of control, time after time. And with that, I can begin to understand how there might be strength in tears. LIke the miracle of rain, perhaps our tears fall between the skies of our yearnings and the ground of our reality. Tears are an expression of the miracle of being human.

Links:
Wikipedia on Tears
Wikipedia on Crying
Fears about tears? Why crying is good for you
Crying Animals from “Ask Me Help Desk”
Crying: discussing its basic reasons and uses