Noam Chomsky
Mark Kingwell Charles Tayler
Naomi Klein
Arundhati Roy
Evelyn Lau
Stephen Lewis
Robert Fisk
Margaret Somerville
Mona Eltahawy
Michael Moore
Julius Grey
Irshad Manji
Richard Rodriguez Navi Pillay
Ernesto Zedillo
Pico Iyer
Edward Said
Jean Baudrillard
Bill Moyers
Barbara Ehrenreich
Leon Wieseltier
Nayan Chanda
Charles Lewis
John Lavery
Tariq Ali
Michael Albert
Rochelle Gurstein
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
Robert
J. Lewis has been editing Arts & Opinion
since 2002.
Weeping
is not the same thing as crying.
It takes your whole body to weep,
and when it's over,
you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you
up. Sarah Ockler
To
weep is to make less the depth of grief. Shakespeare
Listen to an audio version of this essay:
It
was a man, Arthur Hamilton, who in 1953 wrote the song
"Cry Me a River," but it’s the women
– women of all ages and from all cultures –
who fill that river and make it flow. That is in part
because of a cultural disposition that accepts women's
tears more than men's, and reinforces the tyranny that
"real men don't cry."
Crying
is a plea to the within-earshot-world for help. Whether
it be a child or a grieving adult, if the act of crying
could be transcribed alphabetically, it would read:
"help me, succour me, I can't do this alone."
Most of the world's cultures and religions provide for
community support during the grieving period.
Statistics
confirm that over the course of a lifetime women cry
more, and longer, than men – 30 to 64 times per
year for women, but only 6 to 17 times per year for
men -- and, there’s a growing body of evidence
of a relationship between crying and the fact that women
also live longer than men. But as women age, they cry
less, while men cry more, attributable in part to the
reduction in men’s testosterone levels. Does this
gender shift in crying frequency force the conclusion
that it's easier to live with a dried-out vagina than
a petered-out penis?
Humans
are the only species that cry. It is one of nature's
devices to heal us when we are hurting. It's a complex
physiological response to external stimuli accompanied
by radical changes in body chemistry. At one level,
tears clean and lubricate the eye throughout the day
and fend off the effects of irritants like dust and
wind. But emotional tears are significantly different
from protective tears: emotional tears contain more
hormones and proteins and other important markers. The
tears and the convulsive shudders and spasms of crying
caused by grief are nature's way of rebalancing the
body's fragile and volatile chemistry, of steadying
a soul unmoored by loss. Emotional tears are triggered
by the limbic system; they contain higher levels of
manganese, which is associated with increases in anxiety
and despair. Crying is essential for regulating these
levels. Tears drawn specifically from grief contain
a concentration of enkephalin, an endorphin that is
a natural painkiller.
If grieving men think that crying is a sign of weakness
and that a stoic attitude is essential to maintaining
their core identity, they are more at risk for mental
health crises. According to S. Ryder research, up to
50% of men suppress crying during the grieving period.
During grieving, men's immune systems are less performative
than women's, so they are more likely to turn to drugs
and alcohol to cope. Actuarial data on men aged 65-69
show a 70% increase in their chance of dying in the
first year after the death of a spouse, versus 27% for
women the same age. And a Danish
studyfound that grieving men
are three times more likely to commit suicide than women.
While
the cause and effect remain tenuous, there is anecdotal
evidence that men who cry live longer than men who don't.
Biochemist William Frey proposes that emotional tears
act as an excretory system that removes from the body
stress-induced toxins such as cortisol and ACTH. If
men suppress their tears, they may technically be "holding
onto" the chemical markers of stress, which can
lead to higher blood pressure, increased risk of cardiovascular
disease and a less performative immune system.
Emotional
crying, at its core, is a cry for help. Women are better
able to help themselves than men because they find help
in a variety of social networks, which are predictors
of longer life spans. The socially isolated die youner.
Crying and optimal health may be as intertwined as strands
of DNA, you can't unravel one without damaging the other.
That the unapologetic criers among us, the worldwide
contingent of women, live significantly longer than
men, should serve notice to men that they need not be
embarrassed by their tears, nor give in to the dogma
that real men don't cry.
As, thankfully, the elastic concept of manhood continues
to evolve, men may one day come to appreciate that three
to five extra years of life are well worth the crack
in the armour through which their tears can escape.
For tears of grief, after all, are but another expression
of love.
Best said by George Orwell, from his essay "Reflections
of Gandhi."
One is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken
up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening
one's love upon other human individuals.
