The Meaning of Tears

Do you ever feel like the one thing you need most in the world is just to cry, just to break down, but you can't? Your face is frozen into a frown and it will go no further in expression than stoney silence. Is it shock that makes us this way, or just a defensive mechanism so practiced and attuned that it's second nature to say STOP. Don't cry. Do. not. cry.

Then, other times, the tears pour out of you like some unstoppable spring, no matter how much you just want this onslaught of emotion and hot saltwater to STOP. Everything you didn't want before, every ounce of will and iron that stopped you from even feeling, has completely degraded at the worst time and you are a wreck.

For me, tears come at the most incorrect times. They come when I am out in front of the world, unprepared with a private place or a tissue. They happen for others and they happen for the movies. They are just...wrong. When I need to cry, when a release is the only thing that will suffice, my face is as dry as a pristine sheet of paper. Pale, smooth, blank, and completely unable to get wet without destruction. Destruction of my facade. The ironic thing is, the more that I cannot and will not cry, the more I am destroyed inside.

I scream OUT for my chance to let it all come out of me. I scream on the inside. I am so full, full of other's pain and my own struggles. I am a vessel with limits, and those limits are being pushed upon to their threshold.

I often wonder, is the uniquely human capacity to feel deeply and truly, is it really a gift? A characteristic to point to, and comfort ourselves that our savage behaviors and base nature has some separation from the beasts? Humans are more primitive and savage than any animal, because of our ability to feel and be hurt on a level that these other species cannot even be a part of. We heal from physical hurt. We may never heal from emotional pain. We are the only creatures that can love, that can care and comfort. We are the only creatures who are able to lose the ability to love, to hate even ourselves. How is this a gift, really? Only if we are given the chance to love and be loved is any of the pain we go through even remotely worth it. When we stop trying just to survive and start trying to feel, is when we are vulnerable to death: death of our amorphous feelings, death to the thoughts and emotions that make us who we are, death to our humanity.

Yesterday, I said that our generation has the most to fear and worry about, and someone asked me why. I stated physical reasons: the threat of nuclear attack, the degradation of the planet, the loss of a sense of community. Underlying these immediate reasons, however, I think we are at most, fearful because our humanity is easier to lose now than ever before. The world is as big and as small as it will ever be. We have unending pressure on us to achieve, to be the best, to get by, whatever it is. Do we really have a moment of true, pure, unadulterated bliss, free from any worry? Probably...never. With our 5 second attention span and culture of speed and convenience, we are at constant risk of losing ourselves, if we haven't been trained to hold fast to our freak flags. You must be attractive, you must have money, you must indulge, you must have willpower, you must perform, you must be knowledgeable, you must be ambitious, you must be passionate, you must not care at all, you must conform as you strive for uniqueness....it is all, entirely, too much. Were we really designed to prosper like this? How can I really stay uniquely Sarah when the entire world is violently pushing me in every direction? And who am I, if not a reflection of my immediate culture? And so, we are the generation of anxiety. Anxiety that who we are is never enough, and that we don't even know who we are. What does that even mean, really? Who we are. It's nonsensical. What are we made of? I can't answer that.

My final rhetorical is this: Will we stand for it all? Will we wait for the pressure and the push to just form us and change us, without resistance? Have we completely lost our innocence and curiosity to a time in which information is everywhere and we are told what to know and when? I don't pretend to understand myself completely, but I know one thing: I want to hold on to the innocence I still have. I want to believe that we are not just products of culture, but real individuals with real feelings and experiences and pain and joy that make us who we are.

We are fiercely human. We mustn't let anyone, anything, take that from us.