In this modern age, especially if you are a guy, you are always told that you need to suppress your feelings and emotions. You are always told that if you let other people know how you feel, you are already admitting your weakness to them. This especially applies to whenever you feel like you want to cry.
It’s as if your tears should be a source for your own shame. Whenever you cry, people tell you to just suck it up so as not to appear weak in the eyes of others. And yet, crying is a perfectly natural response to heavily loaded emotional situations. When you experience extreme pain, you might want to cry.
When you are really sad or grieving over a loss, you have the urge to cry. When you are filled with so much joy in your life and you are overwhelmed with gratitude, you might want to cry. It’s such a perfectly normal thing to do and yet people seem to vilify you for wanting to shed a few tears here and there.
Gradually, you are forced to learn to just hold back the tears and express yourself in a manner that is more “palatable” to other people. You think that what you’re doing is right because you aren’t offending the people around you with your emotionality.
But sometimes, people will be watching a movie in the cinema or a play at the theatre and they will be so overcome by emotion to the point that they are moved to tears. And a lot of the time, these people are going to be considered weak by others.
But we really need to learn to break away from these kinds of stereotypes. We need to get rid of that stigma. You have to understand that these people who allow themselves to cry in the movies are going to be some of the strongest people you will ever meet in your life. Why? Because people who cry during movies or plays are likely to be highly empathetic.
And what that means is that they are very skilled at identifying just how other people are feeling and what they are thinking. They are constantly making an effort to understand the people around them so that none of them end up feeling neglected or misunderstood.
Empathy happens to be one of the most important aspects of emotional intelligence. It is a skill that is always going to be present in the greatest of leaders and the strongest of people. The most highly successful people of our time are known to be empathetic.
They got to the top because of the fact that they know how to treat other people as a result of their empathy. They better understand other people and it makes it easier for them to be of service and value to those around them. The most mentally tough people in the world are always going to be able to take on the feelings and emotions of other people as well.
They will be able to relate with others and share in their pain, joy, sorrow, happiness, and grief. To add on to that, these empathetic people are also a lot more likely to be generous and sociable. This makes them a lot more amiable in the eyes of those around them.
Whenever you make a deliberate effort to step into the shoes of another person; when you try to really climb into their skin and live their life as they are living it, then you gain a more profound understanding of that individual. And with that profound understanding, you are able to expand your mind even further.
You gather more perspective that you can use to better understand the world around you. You aren’t selfish anymore and you understand how to better relate to the environment that you’re living in. When you are an empathetic person, you are someone who is always going to be compassionate. And you always stay mindful of how your actions are going to impact the people around you.
As Atticus Finch once said in To Kill A Mocking Bird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.” And this is definitely a lesson that all empathetic people understand all too well.
That is why the next time you feel like crying at a movie or if you see someone who is letting those tears flow, you shouldn’t be so judgmental. Don’t hold back. Let people feel what they feel.
I even cry to see a poor human being