Crying

I don't think that there is much in this world that I hate more than someone who is unwilling to cry. Not someone who, because they don't need to or isn't affected or moved to cry, not crying. Nor someone who cries too much at everything. But, rather, someone who holds back tears.

And it's not the person I hate, no, but, rather, the stoic mindset that underscores a persons unwillingness to cry. This unwillingness is, really, a statement that they are unwilling to be vulnerable. Unwilling to let it out.

I remember back to last year when one of my best friends was going through one of the hardest points of her day, let alone life. We were in my car after another disastrous day, and yet another disastrous event, and she sat there, silent. Or so she thought. Her soul was bawling, and her little hubris was attempting to stifle her soul. At last, I pulled over, and said: "Just f-ing let it out."

She cried.

Her tears were unbridled, and seemingly endless - she had gunny sacked so much raw emotion that once she started it was another good 10 minutes before we were on the road again.

And since that point I have realized why I hate this stifling so: my father.

Growing up, it was my father who always told me that crying was a sign of weakness, and that "that's not how a man is to act." Man!?! I was a boy of eight with a skinned knee; a boy of nine with difficult life choices; a boy of twelve with relationship issues. I sought refuge in my mother and was subsequently raised by her. To this day, both the only time I've cried in front of my father, and the only time I've ever seen him cry was in the theatre during "I Am Sam." I was fourteen. I am now twenty-one.

My father, hubris, stoicism all rise to the forefront of my mind when I see a gorgeous woman stifling back one of her most gorgeous moments: that of reckless abandonment to caring what they world says is proper, and bawling her eyes out.

And this goes for us men too. If we are sad, we ought to have every right to acknowledge - nay, embrace - that emotion. We should not feel pressed into stifling our natural response in favour of a messed up cultural value to be strong.

Kierkegaard is classically known for his statements on "the leap of faith" where a person is required to engage in what is - to the world - seen as reckless abandonment. Abandonment of the models they have been enculturated with in order to follow the pathway of that which they have faith in. Less and less, in our time and in our society, I see this leap, this abandonment. We want to appear as though we hold tenuously to the ideals of being strong, or at least of not being vulnerable.

And the wreckage in this comes, fully, when we realize that we are not holding tenuously to anything at all. Our disposition to be flippant, or not vulnerable - to not be able to cry after a disastrous day in the car of a trusted loved one - is a state that we choose to actively engage in every day, in every way. Hold to nothing, be vulnerable to no one, and yes, you will not have to be hurt.

But you will also not Know love.