23 Lessons in 23 years: Lesson 3- There is NEVER a valid reason to cry
I’m the last born. I used to cry a lot while I was growing up. I do not know if that is some sort of explanation but I think the two might be somewhat connected.
I was a water fountain with a switch that clearly everyone had access to. Granted there were some justified reasons to cry from time to time but on the whole I blew everything out of proportion, took the thing to a new level.
Of course being the last born, my mummy was always protecting me from any sort of pain but that did not stop me. One might think that going to boarding school in primary three (I cried for a month because my mummy would not let me go to boarding school like my siblings and she eventually gave in) would have taken this away, one would be wrong. Looking back I don’t know how I was able to cry so much yet I’d ‘tie’ 20 strokes of cane while I was in school.
This one time during holidays while I was in O level, I had a huge argument with someone and simply burst into tears because I could not take it anymore. Emotions were high, tempers were flying and my feet could not hold me any longer so I started crying. I had always made a mental note not to become a noisy crier and that might have worked out well but the crying and arguing would suffocate me (mentally I know, but it seemed pretty real) so I’d begin to whiz and after that, silent tears are but a myth. This time though, a voice screamed above my whizzing insisting that I would not cry my way through this one.
That was the last time I cried. I watched The Amazing Spiderman 2 last week and cried when Gwen died, I was really angry at Peter for failing to catch her in time so I didn’t even know I was crying until I felt the tears. I was at a funeral service 2 years ago of a friend’s friend’s sister only knowing her because she was a number of classes ahead of me at one point in school and yet my eyes could not stop, no matter how much I wiped them more tears were always ready to replace them. Like every rule, there are always exceptions. Crying is for movies, novels and death; of course it makes sense to give a reason or four for this.
From my experience, people will cry when they are stressed, lose something, sick, et al and these are all situations that require solutions and unless I am hugely mistaken, crying does not give any such result. On the contrary, it leaves you feeling terrible, with red eyes probably sniffing and the problem is not any closer to being fixed.
Crying is emotional, and therefore will always most likely cloud one’s judgment. The need to cry comes from a place that is frustrated, strained, confused and the last thing one needs in such moments is the irrationality that comes with crying.
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