I want to say right away that I’m fine. I am actually characteristically a pretty happy person. When I think about what makes me feel good, the list consists mostly of things I experience daily. I’m almost always smiling. And when I’m not, I’m probably crying.
There is a very high daily minimum number of tears I’m likely to shed. Most often, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Sometimes I’m laughing too hard and tears are flowing (which is normal), and then, imperceptibly, a switch is flipped and I’m uncontrollably sobbing (which is… weird?). Recently, helping my boyfriend build a credenza, “Free to Be… You and Me” came on on his speaker and we had to take a break so I could get the crying over with before handling any tools. Once, during quarantine, I asked my brother for a hug, just because. He gave me one, and then I cried for 45 minutes. To further my point, I made some lists:
things that will always make me cry
BMO’s song from the series finale of Adventure Time
Children hugging / holding hands / walking single file / wearing snow clothes / hats / sunglasses
Detailed and accurate illustrations of gnomes or elves
When someone is embarrassed of their parent in a movie
things that have made me cry that’ve really shocked me
The incredibly slight possibility of getting to go to a monkey sanctuary one time
Later, again, at the reality of not getting to go
One time, I got a haircut and the hairdresser blew out my hair, which gave me an ego death
Nothing at all, the other day, sitting in the living room with my roommates
It comes in at all ends of the spectrum that runs from reflex to surprise, and it’s something I have in common with babies everywhere.
When a baby cries, though, presumably, it’s because they have a need they can’t verbalize, and the cry comes as a combination of frustration, discomfort, and the need to get our attention somehow. As someone who is, in theory, capable of expressing my needs, I wondered if my crying is an unbroken habit from infancy. I asked my mom if I was a particularly emotional kid. “I don’t remember you crying a lot”, she replied. My dad corroborated: “you did laugh a lot!” The consensus was that I was generally “pretty happy, lovey and affectionate”. And, my mom texted later, a good listener/observer. Empathic. So why am I crying? Surely this is abnormal. What’s making everybody else cry? How often? Enter “Frequent Crier Miles”: an investigation of our tears!
A little about crying to get us warmed up—
Darwin thought that the reason humans are the only animals to cry is because tears serve no biological advantage: they are a social signal, he believed, that helps us to communicate our emotions. Over time, the act of crying has come to be linked to feelings of pain, and that explains why we cry even when we’re alone, instead of feeling just dryly sad with no need to perform it (that case feels like something that would be objected to by anyone who has ever cried at an inconvenient time). He even called tears “purposeless”.......... okay…….. crying……. His point makes me feel defensive, but also, we’re the only species that does it, so I get why he’d go there– other animals don’t shed tears out of emotion, but out of utility, to lubricate their eyes. If their eyes are watering for a different reason, it’s probably an infection or a scratch. So, no offense, but what’s wrong with us?
This is when I found out about Ad Vingerhoets, a professor who is considered the world’s foremost expert on crying. He argues that there is a biological benefit to crying: it’s a silent signal that we need help. As opposed to “acoustical” crying (what babies do), which is used to get needed attention so a problem we’re having can be solved for us, crying tears provides a visual clue that we’re in trouble that won’t attract unwanted and potentially dangerous attention. This is a benefit that’s not super relevant these days, though. Tears, like opposable thumbs and big toes, were crucial to the way we developed. They helped us get to where we needed to be empathically, morally, prosocially. They help us judge each other: a person’s tendency to cry factors into our whole impression of them. Typically big criers are seen as more honest people– and this information is valuable when one needs teamwork, but must remain focused on survival, as early humans did. We needed tears at one point, to place ourselves among other people. It was the babyhood of our species, of course we were crying!
In our individual development, too, Vingerhoets tracks a change as we mature, observing that humans cry less as they get older. He believes that, rather than sadness, tears usually come from helplessness– we are less helpless as adults, supposedly– as well as from separation from loved ones (another shade of helplessness, perhaps). This, of course, in addition to physical pain, empathy, and what’s called “sentimental” tears, those coaxed on by positive emotions. But even our sentimental cries have a painful underbelly: positive emotions, too, make us feel helpless, because we aren’t able to express extreme joy adequately (again, information that is threatening to make me cry). This becomes the main culprit for our tears as we grow up, and we cry less from physical pain or helplessness. And what do we get out of it? Vingerhoets stresses that the “catharsis” we feel from crying at any age is believed to derive more from being comforted than from actually having shed any tears. It’s been observed that people cry the most during the day (between 4am and 11pm), and prefer to do it either alone or with their mother or romantic partner. I don’t even have a comment to make about that last bit, that’s just interesting. Anyway. Crying is biopsychosocial (CrazySexyCool), so the context in which we do it on an individual level is influenced by all three things, and there’s no conclusive evidence for why some people cry more easily than others; but the verdict seems to be that crying can happen to anyone whenever they feel unable to express themselves.
I like to express myself!! I like all my little ways of doing it, substack included! And!!! Expressing myself hasn’t kept me from crying. So I’m repurposing my self-expression here to look my behavior in its glassy eyes. I’m interested in other people’s relationship to this particular outburst of emotion, informed by our many sources of influence, including music, movies, culture and family. We’ll have interviews, essays and more. I’m glad you’re here!! :’)
Reading ur work is like drinking water to me!!!