What's wrong with crying?

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.” ~Jim Valvano US Basketball Coach

We just finished a series of Masterchef here in Australia. We all watched and enjoyed it for various reasons. Every so often I wasted a bit of time on the Masterchef Australia page on Facebook. It was a popular page, heaps of comments, lots of opinions. But the one think that really struck me was the utter hatred and rancour for anyone that dared to cry. One contestant in particular took a real hammering due to the semi-constant stream of tears that poured fourth from her eyes any time anything even remotely emotional happened.

Why?

What's wrong with crying?

I should preface this by saying I'm a 'cryer'. I cry at a lot of things. Sometimes bizarre things. I cried watching the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. I've cried at school in assembly when the kids sing the national anthem. I've cried watching a family get their new home on a reality TV show. And my all time absolute most strange cry was on a weekday morning watching an info-mercial for Canberra (Aust).

Yes I said Canberra.

"Oh Canberra... sob, sob.... so pretty... sob sob... would be nice to visit.... boo hoo hoo hooo."

That was in October 1997- I was 8 months pregnant. I think maybe hormones had some sway on that particular tear-fest. :-)

So anyway, I'm partial to a good cry. I don't mind listening when others need a cry and I'm quite happy to hand out a cuddle to someone who's shedding a tear. Some people are not. In fact some people are so anti-crying it's down right vicious.

I get that for some people being in the company of someone who is crying can be quite uncomfortable. You don't know what to do, you can't take away their pain, you can't make them stop. If the reason for the crying is shared it can be particularly bad because people don't want to be influenced to cry as well and 'lose it'.

I realise we have a stigma in our culture around crying. Phrases like "It was enough to make a grown man cry" suggest that crying is not a 'manly' thing to do. We talk about not crying as being 'strong' a sign of weakness. And someone that does cry is a cry-baby.

But this contestant was a young woman in the midst of a full on emotional event. It was on TV- none of the viewers had to deal with it. It wasn't likely to be 'hurting' them in the sense that they may also have wanted to cry. So I wonder why there was such a slew of  vitriol and rage expressed at this girls crying on Facebook? The masses were baying for her blood... send her home!

Strangely enough towards the end of the competition another contestant suffered the same sort of barrage of abuse for being at the other end of the scale... she, supposedl,y was a 'robot' incapable of showing emotion and people hoped she'd meet the same fate as her 'overly' emotional fellow competitor because of it.

I'm of the opinion it's not the crying that's a problem. It's the fact that hundreds of people, the vast majority of commenter's in fact, felt that it was reasonable for them to openly publish their rhetoric which was unsympathetic at best, and completely hostile at worst. That hatred is more acceptable than tears is a sad indictment of the society that we live in.

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

♥