I am what could best be described as a crier. Not the kind from the old days, riding
through the streets, delivering news, but the weepy, snotty,
need-to-bring-tissues-wherever-I-go kind.
I cry if I'm sad. I
cry if I witness something beautiful. I
cry if someone is kind to me. I cry at movies,
weddings, and funerals. Mostly, though, I
cry at the endings of things.
In the span of a week, two of my kids have graduated from
something: my middle son from high
school and my youngest from eighth
grade. Both have successfully ended one
part of their lives and are moving on to a new part. Although I am happy for them, it was
inevitable: tears were going to flow.
I worried about these graduations all year. I hate crying in front of other people; it's embarrassing and makes
me feel overly sentimental. What's worse
is that I suffer the after-effects of crying for the rest of the day. After a
crying spell, my eyes remain red, dry, and itchy, and I have trouble seeing properly. My nose and cheeks turn red and
splotchy. Definitely not my best look.
In an effort to prevent the tears, or at least minimize
them, I began researching ways to prevent crying. The "solutions" ranged from
harmless but ineffective (pinch the bridge of your nose) to the odd and outrageous
(open your eyes as wide as you can.) Right. Try not to attract attention with that one.
Out of desperation, I tried them anyway, and still ended up
leaving the graduations looking as if I'd just been to a funeral.
Since there doesn't appear to be any way of preventing my
tears, I decided to find out why tears happen in the first place. Surely they're not there just to make us
miserable and self-conscious.
From what I've read, tears do everything from washing away
toxins to healing our corneas to enlisting comfort and support from those
around us. But one explanation I read in
an article by Jay Efran and Mitchell Greene really hit home with me:
"Physiologically
speaking, emotional tears are elicited when a person’s system shifts rapidly
from sympathetic to parasympathetic activity—from a state of high tension to a
period of recalibration and recovery. Depending
on the circumstances, individuals typically describe such shifts as 'letting
go,' [or] 'going off duty'...”
The authors explain: "The shift from arousal to recovery is
almost always triggered by a psychologically meaningful event, such as when
lost children finally spot their parents and realize that they’re safe.
Typically, children don’t cry when they first realize that their parents are
gone; instead, they become hyper vigilant and start searching for their missing
caretakers. It’s only when the parents reappear—perhaps rounding the corner of
the supermarket aisle—that their child “goes off duty,” and tears begin to
flow."
To me, that process seems
pretty typical of parenting. When you're
there in the trenches, taking action and
just trying to get through something (the school year, the teen years,
Algebra), you're too involved to have an emotional response. You're doing what needs to be done to
survive. It's only when you're on the
other side of whatever it is that you break down and cry, releasing all of that
built-up stress and tension in the process.
Considering that my two
boys are about to embark on exciting new chapters of their lives, crying at
their graduations was an appropriate response.
All of that preparation and guidance to get them to this point required
massive amounts of both action and patience.
Going forward, I'm not going to be needed quite as much. Instead of parenting from the front line,
I'll be more on the periphery - allowing them to experience new things but
ready to re-direct them if necessary.
Then again, maybe it's a
simpler reason. Maybe it's seeing these
people you love so much, these people you've nurtured and guided and kept safe,
achieve something so wonderful that it's more than the heart or mind can
hold. The pride and potential of the
moment can't help but spill over in the form of tears.
Whatever it is, I can't
wait to see what the future holds for them.
For more about why we
cry: http://www.alternet.org/story/155447/why_we_cry%3A_the_fascinating_psychology_of_emotional_release
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