My psychologist friend told me the other day, “Mental illness is the inability to cry.” I almost scoffed, that’s how ludicrous I thought her idea was, and I don’t even know what scoffing is.
But then I thought about it for a bit, and she may have a point. Everybody cries. Everybody cries except serial killers. Everybody cries except true borderline personalities, true psychopaths who don’t have the emotional capacity for empathy, sadness, those who don’t actually have an emotional range. They may fake it to appear human, but lacking the ability to feel bad for other people, so lost in power thoughts about how to best manipulate the situation, they aren’t capable.
She may have a point. She’s one of the last remaining Primal Therapists on the planet. You may not be familiar with this branch of therapy, because they don’t have any decent drugs, and because it’s all but faded from the psychological landscape. Even if you don’t know what Primal Therapy is, if you’re old enough to remember the 1970’s, and didn’t take too many Quaaludes in that wonderfully hedonistic decade to be able to remember anything about it, then you might recall The Primal Scream. It’s the stereotype of that therapy that wormed its way into the zeitgeist. Like an old, studious, largely silent, possibly Austrian guy in a chair asking you open-ended questions while you lie on a couch spouting complaints about your parents (the classic image of talk therapy), or the dog salivating when he hears a bell because he’s paired that sound with dog treats (Behavioristic Therapy), or the lazy brain-warping drugging of your “troubled” teenagers (the overwhelming majority of all modern therapy), the Primal Scream is the image that’s survived for Primal Therapy.
My friend is an encyclopedia of emotions. She believes that emotions are EVERYTHING. Well, the most important thing anyway. And the more time you spend thinking about her premise, the more truthful it looks. We may think we’re logical beings, but we’re not. The only truly logical beings are psychopaths and severely autistic people. Even most slightly autistic people have emotions, they just can’t really express them.
Maybe it really IS all about emotions. Laughing is the best release available to us, other than crying. Sure, social pressure and rigid gender roles prevent most men from crying in public, but most of us still do cry. Women have accepted crying as a natural part of life. I’d say they’re more evolved in that regard, but if my girlfriend reads this, then I’ve got an “I told you so” the size of Neptune coming my way. Still, men cry, only generally not in public. A song that matters to you or reminds you of a special time earlier in your life, if it hits you at the right moment, can make you cry. Seeing pure selflessness in action can make you cry. I doubt this happens to women, since they cry more regularly, but I can tell when my emotions have built up to the point that I know I need to cry. I even have a movie I always watch, something so beautiful, cheesy and heart-warming that it makes me wail. Every. Single. Time. I. Watch. It.
I guess my friend was right. Crying is evolution. Crying is freedom. Crying is life.