I forgot how to cry
Posted on November 02, 2023
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Today, at some point during my daily session of meditation, I put my whole attention on someone whom I deeply love. Soon enough, intense feelings arose and an intense urge to cry. But I struggled with it because I forgot how to cry.
As a kid, I cried a lot and for everything. But as I started to grow older, this behavior became less accepted. At some point, my dad told me that men don't cry. So, as an obedient teenager, I stopped crying.
Now, being almost 30, I forgot how to cry.
We usually associate crying with negative emotions. We cry when we lose a loved one. We cry when our heart is broken. And we cry when we fail in life. But we also cry when we are in love or watching a movie that touches us.
In general, we cry when we get overwhelmed by emotions and cannot handle them as usual. It's a release mechanism. That's why it feels so good after crying.
For some reason, we don't like to see other people crying. We feel as if we need to do something to stop it. In reality, all we can do is hug the crying person. Unless this person turns out to be a man.
Men have been stripped of this powerful tool for emotion regulation. I don't know how this started, but at some point in history, we began to associate crying with weakness. This is a profound mistake.
Crying is not a sign of weakness but of vulnerability. We can fake a smile or an angry face, but it's difficult to fake the need to cry. It's one of the most authentic expressions we have. Yet, most of us guys have been told at some point that crying is "girl's stuff." So, instead of crying, we have turned to violence or masturbation as a way of releasing those emotions. After all, there is so much we can repress.
It took me more than 15 years and a profound existential crisis to start crying again. But I didn't know how. I literally forgot how to do it. It was very awkward at first. My initial instincts were to repress it. So, I had to start to encourage it to begin to break the pattern.
At times, I have to repress it because I'm at the gym or in the street. But when I'm at home, I try to recreate the situation. Sometimes, it's a song or a phrase from an audiobook. Sometimes, it's a thought like the one I had today. Most of the time, it is due to a profound sense of awe and love that I cannot handle.
I'm still struggling with it, but every time I cry, my capacity to feel and love expands. And in return, I can give more love to the world.