Why women CRY !

Emotion is what is closest to the human rib cage. What we feel seems to build up somewhere behind, in the chest. A surge of pain, hurt, anger, love...all of it emanates from a space near the lung. I was trying to comprehend the science of emotions; from a spacial sense. Once the brain is stimulated something about oxygen and the intake varies; either it increases or decreases depending on the emotion one is experiencing. Which is why all of us have the same strange feeling in the chest when the balance is tilted. Maybe that is why love is said to be from the heart and not the legs; when actually legs take you to your love :-)

We all know it is the brain that stimulates the rest of the body. The reactions we see in ourselves, are visible to others as we emote. Brain is the master controller. That explains why most of us react the same when in disbelief or shock, despite our cultural differences. Emotion at the seed state, is the same. But how much of it's natural manifestation on the outside is acceptable - now that our society can prescibe.

Old England for instance did not see open laughter, good cheer and wit as appealing on women folk. Hurt and anguish too had to be contained if you were a true "lady". That demand for a human being to control what it is natural forcing one to live up to a communities view of what is OKAY - is hard yet achievable. The more raw you are with emotions -the less containable it is. Like children ....try reasoning with a child that crying and howling is inappropriate. You might get spat on the face if you push too much.

Barbaric human emotions are as wild and as pure as animals have it. Women, especially young women are more prone to tears and the jitters, than older women who are calloused by life experiences, heart breaks and a few experiences of betrayal in a lifetime. Tears and emotions have a lot to do with how many times you have been slapped by life. The more violence , time and destiny showered upon you, that many times the lachrymal glands must have overflowed, till that kind of experience is spent once and for all. The second time a friend lets you down, you cry less. The third just a few cursory ones in the memory of something beautiful that died. And by the time it is the fourth - it ends with only a sigh.

Tears are a students in training. The more they train the more resilient they become refusing to fall. Not all who cry really get over the episode or that type of stimulus. The same kind of event can trigger the same passionate weeping all over again. Such women seem to hold a bottomless pit of salt water, they freely distribute. So then how is that there is a dichotomy of practice ? People who cry and learn and stop? And how is that some who cry - keep crying. My theory has now reached a place of final conclusions watching people. Here it is

1) Some people cry, to get it out of the system. That is a push from within to expel the ghost that possess them as memory or bad experience. That kind of crying is with the intention of getting STRONG. Once strong - the memory wont drive you to tears.

2) Some people actually enjoy the haunt of a memory that jabs the chest and sits down on the mind forcing a shut down. That is their alone time. With themselves. A place hard to reach in the din of the world. An outburst of such emotion, crying into a kerchief or in the bathroom with the tap running - whatever the style it eventually makes them feel alive again. Tired but alive. The pain is what is left of a memory and that memory is so precious, they keep it breathing by crying.

Women therefore cry to either get going or to keep feeling. There are only these 2 possibilities. The first makes them fighting fit and the second; the reason why they hold on. Men are no different actually but because the world has pronounced a crying man to be the lesser man - he runs away to cry alone where no one can witness the "womanly" act. But now that you know why Women cry....you know Dear Men ---- you are not alone. We all cry for the same reasons. How long you cry however, depends entirely on where you want to go!

Seema Raghunath