Growing up I was conditioned to the idea that crying is unmanly and best reserved for women and the weak. A man must be hard, chiselled out of granite not soft like mushy clay. That is what it meant to be strong - to act unemotionally, dry and unaffected. Therefore, being all too aware how 'sensitive' I was, naturally I grew up thinking I was a somehow weak or defective man. I was never a brawler, fighter or a hooligan. I wrote poetry and practised guitar and drew pictures; hardly the mark or makings of a real man I thought.
These days I understand strength to be something entirely different. I've noticed over the years a transformation in the causes of my tears. As a child I was a crybaby. Throw me in a pool and I would cry. Tell me I can't have something and I would cry. If something caused me physical pain I would cry.
Growing into manhood I saw that I still cried and its easy to label yourself as the same person as that child. I used to see this as a weakness until I realised that what caused the tears had changed:
- When I had a bad motorbike accident when I first arrived in Bali that flung me in the air, only to hit the ground sliding on the asphalt at some 50km, leaving me with lots of bloodied skin and roadrash, I didn't cry.
- When I landed ribs first on a metal bar in a Parkour move gone wrong and winded myself, I didn't cry.
- When I slipped and landed on my nuts on a metal bar which left me very bruised, I didn't cry.
However...
- break-ups, even after short relationships made me cry. I always mourned them.
- Watching a touching moment between two people profess their love at a wedding makes me cry.
- A tragic end to a character to whom I'm emotionally invested in a movie can make me cry.
A New Perspective On Tears
As a man I now realise that crying is a release from being emotionally invested, not simply from feeling hurt or pain. If emotional release was truly a sign of weakness, then so too would be orgasms, sighs, laughter and so on. Emotional investment is a sign of empathy and far from a weakness, it is a virtue in our largely disconnected, connected world. I would go as far as to say in our vibrationally ascending planet, one cannot be an effective leader without the empathetic capacity to understand those they are leading.
So men, if matters that touch your heart make you cry, take it as a sign that you are strong, evolved and in-tune with your more nurturing side. There is great strength in surrender. There is also weakness in resisting your emotions out of dogmatic shame, guilt and judgement. There is power in recognising there is an inner feminine that gives you your creativity and care and there is a warrior masculine that exists alongside her to give you courage to forge your life out of the blood, sweat and even the tears.
- A man who can cry does his best to not cause others pain and suffering because he understands what its like to feel this.
- A man who can cry does not carry pent-up rage.
- A man who can cry is likely to understand the emotional spheres and depths of women and be largely misunderstood by shallow men.
- A man who can cry knows when something is truly worth fighting for rather than fighting to prove his own self worth.
- A man who can cry is a man who can one day feel peace.