Sophie, Week #4 - When Was the Last Time You Cried?
After writing three whole blog posts on the topic of identity, I had become sufficiently convinced that I was out of ideas and had nothing left in my brain to write about. In my desperate state I googled “identity questions” and hoped for the best from there. I scrolled through pages of possible options to write about, and stumbled upon one that asked, “When was the last time you cried?”
This question gave me pause, because for most people I guess that would be a pretty deep question that would bring up a lot of emotions. Maybe even something that would reveal an important part of your identity. However, my answer was pretty simple: yesterday! And, funnily enough, for nothing at all deep or important.
Thinking about this question now, my answer actually did reveal something important about my identity. My tendency to be moved to tears has always been part of me, ever since I was very little. The last paragraph of my “I Believe Poem” was all about it actually. It isn’t something deep or sad about me, it just sort of is! It’s like crying is just my natural response to any strong emotion, positive or negative.
I have cried tears of joy while listening to live music and have cried with anxiety before tests. I cry a lot while reading books, and if I see someone else crying, I’ll probably cry too. I have genuinely cried because there was no cheese left in the fridge (although I admit it was probably not my finest moment). Some of my friends think it’s weird, but to me it’s something I honestly appreciate about myself. I don’t see myself as a particularly mysterious person when it comes to my feelings, I think dealing with emotions as they come tends to be better than shuffling them to the side to deal with them later.
A book that made me cry recently. Pretty good, but also pretty sad at times!
While this is a pretty natural part of my own identity, sometimes I wonder why it’s not really common at all. I guess the threshold for what makes someone cry changes from person to person, and mine is just incredibly low. I also wonder how different the world would be if (to quote my own poem) people wore more of their hearts on their sleeves.
This blog was a bit ramble-y but I’m sure my creativity will be renewed with a chance to write about a new topic! Consider this fair warning that if you ask me if a book or movie was good, and I say it made me cry, then that book or movie might not actually be that good. The bar is pretty low for me!
That's sweet, Sophie! Crying when there is no cheese left in the fridge. That makes me remember, I was quite upset in fifth grade when the only thing for school lunch left had cheese in it, and I dislike cheese. Thinking back now, it was probably out of hunger. Not my best moment, either.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I cried -- after reading the end of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory"! It's so parallel to my own personal connection that I had with someone special who's now gone. Too uncannily parallel. It felt good to let go of things and just think about stuff without holding back. That showed good authorship, too. Writing well enough to make the audience feel a strong emotion. That's a high bar!
I think it’s really interesting how you see crying as almost a “power”. I can definitely see that idea. In fact, if we replace the word “crying”—which we’ve been taught associates with weakness or a lack of control from childhood—with the phrase “releasing of emotion”, we automatically recognize the phrase as a connotatively positive thing. And so I hypothesize the negative association you and even I have noticed with crying and the use of the term in general is at least partly due to stigmatization of the term itself. But I wanted to push back on whether emotional restraint is a bad thing. I think there’s a difference between being comfortable expressing your emotions and feeling obligated to express them. Someone who keeps their feelings a bit more private may not necessarily be suppressing them, they may process emotions differently. Expressing emotions absolutely makes it easier for people to empathize with each other, since we would get a better understanding of what the other person is going through, but penalizing someone for “not opening up” would be antithetical. Perhaps the distinction is whether we’re judging others upon their ability to handle their emotions or if we judge them on whether they’re able to acknowledge them in the first place. As you pointed out, some people cry more often than others, so crying may thus not be a very definitive measure of how deeply someone feels, and using it as a benchmark for emotional openness may be counterproductive. Maybe the goal then shouldn’t be a world where every single person wears a “heart on their sleeve”, but a world where people aren’t judged either way.
ReplyDeleteHi Sophie! I loved hearing about how you openly express your emotions through crying, and how regardless of what others think, it is still something you can value about yourself. The way you deal with emotions as they come is an admirable trait and also a sign of high emotional intelligence! I personally love how open you are about your feelings, because it is always easier to handle emotions when you are comfortable and accepting of how you feel. I personally am not as good at dealing with my emotions as they come, but it is definitely something I am working on! I find I’m the most emotional when I am hungry, so crying over not having cheese is definitely something I can relate to!
ReplyDeleteHey, Sophie. As you said, tears falling is not simply a way the body processes sadness; rather, it is a means by which intense emotions are expressed. I think this just emphasizes just how people all experience emotions differently; yet, we can all relate to certain experiences. For example, when another person reads Seek Immediate Shelter, they may not cry like you do; however, they may also feel sadness in the same moments you do. It is this ability to relate that allows humans to form a circle of identity that defines us, universally as humans. Without this connection, divisions between groups of people would become more profound, inevitably leading to more conflict and violence. This is why appearances in how we feel emotions must not deceive us. Peeling back those appearances allow us to find something more familiar, and perhaps, something that binds us together.
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