The first cry of a newborn baby, as ear-piercing and shrill as it can be, is also one of the most euphonious sounds in the world. Like a tiny fanfare, a baby's first cry out of the womb is a resounding celebration of a new, beautiful, and complicated existence. It also serves as a call for protection, love, and mercy from an unfamiliar world. And from a scientific perspective, the first cry out of the womb is (literally) the most important cry of a person's life. See: during the nine months between conception and birth, babies receives their oxygen supply through the umbilical cord. When they're delivered and have to start breathing on their own without the help of their placental crutch, that first vociferous cry is what clears the excess fluid from the mouth and lungs, and kick-starts the baby's respiratory system to stimulate it, and to get it used to life in the outside world.
So from emotional to physical necessity, there's a lot of function to be packed into one little howl.
As that baby grows though, and their cries become a little less enchanting and a little more incessant (and sleep-depriving), those tears are typically understood with less complexity. Most phonetic research suggests that baby cries fit neatly into five categories: "Neh" = hunger, "Eh" = upper wind, "Eairh" = lower wind, "Heh" = discomfort, and "Owh" = sleepiness. And don't get me wrong, categorization like this is pretty crucial when raising a baby who can't communicate other than with nearly-indecipherable syllables such as these. But as that baby becomes a toddler, and that toddler becomes a little kid, an unconventional pattern seems to emerge; the older and more complex someone becomes in terms of thought, emotion, verbal ability, and self-awareness, the narrower the function of their tears.
I mean, for a newborn, the first cry is an expression of the otherwise inexpressible wonders attributed to that journey into a new stage of existence. For an older baby, those emotions can be boiled down to hungry, uncomfortable, sleepy, and gassy. A young child is usually taught to only cry when they're sad, and as an adult, a good cry might as well be an annual event.
Well, when I was a kid and I was in my "only cry when you're sad" stage, I remember experiencing what my nine-year-old self considered to be the most miserable of all earthly miseries—my brother having moved out of our shared bedroom. I didn't understand why it was so hard for me to let go of our bunk beds and double dresser, or why I was suddenly crying every evening, but I remember one day, my dad sat me down and together we wrote out a list of all the types of sadness we could think of, in order to help me process what I was feeling and why I was feeling it. On a lined piece of notebook paper with the words "Sadness List" scribbled in crayon across the top, we wrote something along the lines of:
- Disappointment — sad because I wanted something to happen but it didn't happen
- Regret — sad because I didn't want something to happen but it happened
- Grief — sad because I lost something important to me
- Loneliness — sad because I'm alone
- Shame — sad because I'm embarrassed
I don't remember what else was on the list, but after mulling it over that night, I remember deciding that I was feeling disappointment because I wanted to continue sharing my room with my brother but I couldn't.
I carried that list around with me in my school backpack for a few years, and whenever I felt sad, from regret when I did poorly on tests to grief at the loss of important friendships, I had it as a tool to help me navigate my sadness, and more importantly, to feel my sadness in an appropriate and comprehensive way. And what I learned after using my Sadness List a few times is that often my situations didn't fit neatly or exclusively into just one category. When my brother moved out of our shared room, for instance, sure I was feeling disappointed, but I was probably also feeling a bit of loneliness at nights since he wasn't around anymore, and I was most likely feeling a bit of shame too, because I was embarrassed that I relied so much on my siblings.
I guess my point is that we're complicated beings with complicated feelings, living in a complicated world. Injustice, hatred, and brokenness are just as real, and just as much a part of our plight as humans as is pleasure and joy. Life, at times, is a beautiful mess, and feeling it— like really feeling it— isn't a sign of weakness at all, but in a way, it's a sign of profound strength.
I mean, one quick Google search is all it takes to get an extensive account of all the health benefits of crying— you're releasing your body of toxins and hormones, you're strengthening your immune system, you're avoiding weight gain, you're lowering your blood pressure, you're clearing up your skin.
But to me, a good, strong cry transcends the physical, and touches on something a little deeper.
Try to think back to a time when you were crying, say, in front of your friends at school. You probably felt pretty embarrassed or ashamed. You may have been holding back your tears for dear life, or hiding them behind a forced smile. We don't like to cry in front of others because it makes us feel vulnerable and defenseless. Crying in front of others exposes a different side of us. It puts all our ugliest, most potent emotions on a pedestal and shines a spotlight on them.
So when we do cry in front of others, whether it's crying in the arms of a loved one or over the phone with a close friend, or whether it's lamenting to God through prayer, it almost always feels like an act of faith. It says "I trust you," and it says "this relationship matters to me." It forms and strengthens meaningful bonds with the people around us, and sometimes it's what gets us the help we need.
In our search for meaning in this chaotic and confusing world, it can be tempting to fall on easy answers. Answers like "I'll never get hurt if I don't do anything to deserve it" or "I'm not really hurting because I don't have a good reason to be" or "my hurt isn't valid because someone else is hurting more." But the truth is, there are some things, like sadness and hurt, that we simply don't and can't understand, at least not entirely. Sadness is more complicated than "hungry, sleepy, or gassy," and it's more complicated than "disappointed, lonely, or ashamed." To me, crying is a way of recognizing and accepting that complexity, and giving up the need to figure it out.
And that's why everyone needs a good cry from time to time.
Very deep blog post. I have to admit it got a good cry out of me
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