Give Yourself Permission to Cry
Something extraordinary happened at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on January 14, 2012. Sure it was an amazing ending to an NFL play-off game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints (which the 49ers won in dramatic fashion, making all of us fans here in the Bay Area very happy), but the monumental win wasn’t what made it so remarkable to me.
As Vernon Davis, the tight end for the 49ers who caught the game-winning touchdown, came running off the field, tears were streaming down his face. He came to the sidelines and was embraced by his head coach, Jim Harbaugh, in a huge bear hug. Coach Harbaugh hugged him for quite a while and spoke into his ear in what I can only imagine was an expression of authentic appreciation and celebration. It was a beautiful and moving moment that transcended football, and even sports—it was about courageous triumph, raw human emotion, and vulnerable self-expression. (If you didn’t get a chance to see this when it happened, I highly recommend searching for the video of it online; it’s quite moving.)
Of course, I loved it—not just because I’m a huge sports fan and like to see my hometown teams win (especially after many years of not winning, which was the case for the 49ers that year in the play-offs), but because it highlighted something very important … the power of tears! I also loved it because you don’t usually see a big, strong football player like Vernon Davis break down and cry in the arms of his coach in front of 65,000 fans in the stadium and millions of people watching on TV. But he did, and it was a powerful scene and an important reminder of what it means to be human.
One of the many things tears can do is remind us of our humanness, our vulnerability, and our connection to one another and to things much bigger than the specific circumstances we are facing. We cry for different reasons and based on different emotions. Sometimes we shed tears of pain, sorrow, anger, frustration, or grief. Other times, tears show up because of love, joy, inspiration, hope, or kindness. Regardless of the underlying emotions, crying often makes us feel better and is one of the most authentic expressions of emotion we experience as human beings.
However, many of us have a great deal of fear, resistance, and judgment about tears—both ours and those of other people. While this tends to vary based on our age, upbringing, gender, and the environment in which we find ourselves, I’m amazed at how often crying is seen in such a negative way in our culture, even today.
As a man, I was trained early in my life, like most of the men I know, that “boys don’t cry.” Based on this and a variety of other factors, I sometimes find it challenging to access and express my own tears. But I do actually love to cry, so when my tears show up, I let them flow, often quite passionately.
One of the places my tears often flow is on airplanes. I don’t know why, but for some reason, being on airplanes gets me into a heightened emotional state. I was on a flight a few years ago and decided to purchase a movie on my personal TV monitor, which I don’t usually do. It was the award-winning film The Help, which I kept hearing about but hadn’t seen yet. The movie really got to me. The emotional story, coupled with my heightened emotional state along with some stuff that was going on in my life, caused me to sob so intensely that the guy sitting next to me leaned over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Dude, are you all right?” Although I was momentarily confused and a bit embarrassed, since I had gotten so into the movie that I forgot I was sitting on a plane, I jumped right back into the film and let the tears continue to flow, which felt great and so cathartic.
As I look back at some of the most important, pivotal, and transformational moments of my life—both ones I considered to be good and ones I considered to be bad at the time—tears were a part of just about all of them.
How do you feel about shedding tears? Is it easy for you to cry? Is it hard? Are you comfortable crying in front of others? Do you judge yourself or others for doing so? I think it’s interesting and important for us to ask ourselves these questions and notice our relationship to tears.
I’m not advocating that we go around crying all the time just for the sake of it. Excessive crying can sometimes point to a more serious underlying emotional issue or can be done as a way to manipulate others; I’m not talking about that, either. I’m talking about our ability to express our emotions in an authentic way, some of the time resulting in the shedding of tears. What if we embraced crying a bit more and let go of our negative connotations about doing so? As Charles Dickens beautifully wrote in Great Expectations, “We need never be ashamed of our tears.”
When we cry, we often open up, let down our guard, and connect with others in a more real and vulnerable way. Many times in my own life and with some of the clients I’ve worked with, I’ve seen tears dramatically shift a person’s perspective, change the dynamic of an argument, and bring people together. Tears have a way of breaking down emotional walls and mental barriers we put up within ourselves and aganist others. Crying tends to be a human equalizer, because no matter the circumstance, situation, or stress we may face, our tears often have a way of shifting and altering things in a beautiful manner.
There’s nothing wrong with our tears, even if we get a little embarrassed, uncomfortable, or pained when they show up. As we give ourselves permission to cry, we not only release toxins from our bodies, stress from our systems, and negative thoughts from our minds—we tap into one of the most basic and unifying experiences of being human. Crying is powerful and important. It’s not only okay; it’s essential.