Tears

Tear is a weird stuff; people shed those when they are sad, happy, excited, surprised ...

Tear, as a word, is also a strange combination of seemingly unrelated things. The salty water drops we excrete, versus the action of ripping apart, those do not look too related in my eyes, although it might make a tiny bit of sense when you say ripping hearts apart invokes tears; but that is quite far fetched.

Although tears are not so enjoyable, people love them. There have been numerous songs containing "Don't Cry" or "Tears" in the title or the words, countless TV series and books counting on eliciting as much tear as possible in order to make big bucks. Even in classic works, tragedies seem to overwhelm comedies in the number.

Nevertheless, I have been infused with "man shed no tears" ever since I could understand the first word. Obviously it was partly because of my parents' selfishness, because me no cry would give them a much easier life; only I was not a man yet at that time, sorry for them.

Grown up, I can hardly remember when was the last time I shed a drop of tear. Most recent such incidents happened in dreams, always some eternal departure with closest family member, friend etc; not too many of those, so I guess shedding tears in dreams is only a way to let out the overflowing tear gland. Further back, there was a time when I first arrived in the US for a couple of weeks, and wife started weeping with homesickness; I felt exhausted and helpless and weak, then shed a few drops of tears. Before that it would be more than 10 years of absense of tears as far as I could remember. I would choke on something really touching, like Kevin's picture I posted the other day; but no damp eyes.

When I saw men openly crying for a new baby, a new house, or even a surprise party, I got stunned. Since when tears are so cheap? But slowly, it came to me that tears are cheap; what is not cheap is the real feelings behind that, and the heartily exchange of those with the closest. Tears are cheap so that it could be easily accessible to express yourself fully, no matter what occassion. Despite that, I would not follow that path; partly because after so many years of abstaining from crying, my tear glands are more or less dysfunctional.

In Brokeback Mountain, the cowboys would rather shed blood than tears; this alone has flooded Six Crawl's eyes and noses and the whole face. I was simply envious.

Tears and cheers are close.