To Cry or Not to Cry?

As many of us know, art can be quite moving, but for a very long time I dubbed myself as emotionless. It’s not that things didn’t move me, I just felt incapable of showing it. After finishing a particularly engaging novel I would mourn the loss of the “friends” I had made, by sort of shutting down and reliving the events of the book until I could let it go. That was my way of being moved. At no point did I shed a tear. I know when you’re “supposed” to cry – when things are tragically sad or wonderfully happy – but I always internalized these feelings rather than expressing them through heartfelt tears. My father, unlike myself, is quite the crier. By this I mean when he is moved, he lets it all out. I used to make fun of him for crying at the animated classic Beauty and the Beast, but deep down I always sort of envied his ability to release his emotions in such a natural way. Even my mom easily became tearful when confronted with the intricate beauty of opera or a work of classical art. After noticing my own connections with moments of beauty did not reflect what seemed to be the norm, I began to try to cry. I would stare without blinking to try to well up some dust induced tears, but even though I really did feel the sadness or joy that I wanted to respond to, it always felt insincere to push that hard for something that wasn’t natural to me. Eventually, I just gave up and dubbed myself as “not a crier.” I adopted the tough persona I felt I needed to have in order to explain my inability to express emotion.

However, last year I met one of my (now) best friends, who cried at just about everything. We were complete opposites but still cared about the same things. How could this be? Well, this connection with someone who felt the way I did but produced an entirely different emotional response than I did broke down the wall I had built up of “toughness” and allowed instead for me to accept not crying as a perfectly acceptable response. I realized that not crying is just as valid as crying. After that point, when faced with something meaningful, instead of forcing myself to try to cry, I began to let myself off the hook and instead embraced opportunities to really feel something. I told myself it was okay to cry if I felt like it and okay to just feel if I didn’t. By taking off this pressure I’ve since been able to experience art in a whole new way, allowing it to move me to a natural response and not a forced one. I now realize I don’t have to be a crier or an ice queen, and this has allowed me some good healthy cries as well as some really deep completely internal responses.

What this journey means to me is that art can evoke a variety of responses, but none is right or wrong. No matter how sad, brilliant, moving, or delightful something may be, your experience is only appropriate if it is the one most natural to you.