It’s the rest of the week. Laughter is good—but so are tears.
Laughter might help you relax and reorient, but (if you let them) tears can take you back where they came from.
Tears can be little guides, leading you to places inside you didn’t realize existed—places where you can rest.
Have you ever been caught off guard by your own tears?
A sudden emotion pricks your eyelids and you feel the moisture gathering in the corners of your eyes. Maybe you know exactly what’s happening and why.
Maybe you don’t (at first).
Nowadays, I grab the slightest shift in my emotional state towards tears and hold it close, open to whatever I’m about to learn—thanks to a curious experience at the family lunch table over a decade ago.
Likely it was over plates of beans, rice, and avocado salad that Ricardo relayed a conversation with a friend from college—and then proceeded to suggest we consider such-and-such.
Right there, to the wide-eyed astonishment of our children (and myself), I burst into tears.
Ricardo was the first one to name what was happening. In one, five word sentence, he named the desire underneath my response.
That exchange led to a series of considerations that concluded in a life altering decision that we would not change. Whenever we talk about the choice we made, Ricardo refers to that conversation around the table—and my tears.
Tears tell us what is truly important to us. What we desire in our heart of hearts.
Tears reveal what deeply hurts and disappoints us.
Tears invite us to drop our defenses and feel again.
There is a place for defenses—sometimes we just have to survive. But living in survival mode is anything but restful.
And we could all use rest in the midst of everything going on right now.
May your rest be sweet.
Alicia
P.S. By the way, did you know we cry between 15 to 30 gallons of tears per year?
Also that there’s evidence that tears related to emotion have a different composition than tears performing regular physical functions (with hormones that contribute to our well-being).
I did a little googling around and gathered a short list of how tears help (backed by good science)—in case you’re interested:
reduces sensation of pain
improves your mood
reduces physical distress
fights bacteria
aids in sleep (study was done on babies)
releases toxins
helps you communicate
rallies support