Retrospective #1: Tears
Why (actually) do we cry?
This essay first appeared in October 2023. I was curious about the origin and purpose of tears. Several readers found real healing through these words. May they land well with you today.
My son has a book about eyes which explains how tears flush away the grit and keep the cornea fluid and functioning. The illustrations rendered in exquisite scientific detail (from David Macaulay of Castle and The Way Things Work fame) make the nuts and bolts of the situation quite clear indeed. But I still wonder why. Why do we cry? What’s with that jaw twinge just before I crack? And then there’s the way the eyeball (inspired mechanism refined by millennia of use) floods itself at the crucial moment making it even harder to interpret the images in front of me. (Huh?) I would think that survival would dictate a sharper focus. (But no!)
Maybe the tears act like a built in version of those eye-washing stations in high school chemistry labs. Like an ancient and embedded reaction to the sting borne by our desert fathers as they combatted sand embedded in crevices, canvas tent seams and the corners of their eyes. It’s a fun thought anyway. I remember learning as a wide-eyed college student in the south of France that the Mediterranean’s winter storms routinely pick up red dust from the Sahara and bear it away each year only to land (astoundingly) on wooden planks in my host family’s garden in Montpellier. I’d imagine the winds brushing their hands over the shelves where we put out withered, wintered-over plants to bask in spring sun. I'd catch the soft rosy stuff on the tips of my fingers, drawing eddied patterns to suggest their airborne journey. Sometimes homesickness spilled over and plashed in the silt.
The suddenness of tears. It still catches me off-guard. I happened to revisit Love (iii) by George Herbert this past week. Though I have dissected its lines with detached academic aplomb for some years, this time was different. Without a hint of warning the words began swimming in a sea of tears. The line I cannot look on thee seemed particularly apropos since I couldn’t see a dang thing and I the unkind, ungrateful? caused my nose to tingle, signaling more emotion to come. These physiological responses at the very least were screaming to me to pay attention. Something important in my soul was afoot.
We could take revenge on these moments by labeling them chemical responses in the brain and leaving it at that. I don’t know very many humans who are really satisfied with that as a sole interpretation anymore but it’s still tempting. Loss of personal control can feel so undignified to the ego and hormones are a convenient excuse.
Another way to deal is to stuff it. Here’s a case in point. Pretty close to the beginning of the war story of the Iliad, Priam king of Troy sends out his men to collect the bodies of the dead during a brief ceasefire that the Trojans and Greeks have agreed upon for that purpose.
Now the sun of a new day struck on the ploughlands, rising
out of the quiet water and the deep stream of the ocean
to climb the sky.
The Trojans assembled together.
They found it hard to recognize each individual dead man;
but with water they washed away the blood that was on them
and as they wept warm tears they lifted them onto the wagons.
But great Priam would not let them cry out; and in silence
they piled the bodies upon the pyre, with their hearts in sorrow.
Priam’s order always seemed exacting in the extreme to me. It appears to involve holding it together in a real men don’t cry kind of way. Of all of the unthinkable things that humans do to one another in war, tears do seem to be an appropriate acknowledgment of the embodied horror. But then I remembered the end of the story. (Always remember the end of the story.)
Almost as the curtains are closing on the Iliad this same king is brought to the end of himself and tears spill inevitably. Here’s how it goes. He’s has lost many of his sons (including Hektor, his favorite and heir) to the force-of-nature Greek warrior Achilles. Achilles, in turn, has lost his best friend Patroklos to Hektor. Then Priam shows up in Achilles’ camp to ask for his son’s corpse and something extraordinary happens. It’s impossible to paraphrase so I’m going to let Homer do the telling:
Tall Priam came in
and caught the knees of Achilles in his arms, and kissed the hands
that were dangerous and manslaughtering and had killed so many
of his sons.
Achilles wondered as he looked on Priam.
But now Priam spoke to him in the words of a suppliant:
"Achilles like the gods, remember your father, one who is
of years like mine, and one the doorsill of sorrowful old age...
take pity upon me remembering your father...
I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children.”
So he spoke, and stirred in the other a passion of grieving
for his own father. He took the old man's hand and pushed him
gently away, and the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled
at the feet of Achilles and wept for manslaughtering Hektor
and Achilles wept for his own father, now again for Patroklos.
When he had taken full satisfaction in sorrow
he rose from his chair, and took the old man by the hand, and set him
on his feet again, in pity for the gray head and the gray beard.
After this, Achilles famously gives back the body of the man who had killed his beloved friend. His reasons for doing so are complicated and myriad but one thing that I have to think played a part was really seeing this man who happens to be his enemy. The joyless monotone of revenge (which I see not only in the news cycle but also myself, I the unkind, ungrateful) is brought to a halt by this encounter. Achilles bemoans the sorrows heaped on humans by the detached, largely unfeeling gods. In a short time his army will take Priam’s city — raping, pillaging, carrying away hostages. No one wins. We weep.
What’s more, this unimaginable meeting ends with a meal. Achilles insists. Priam longs to return and prepare his son’s funeral (and maybe hightail it outta there before Achilles changes his mind) but first they share meat and drink.
Which brings me back to the Herbert.
It’s been a week of pains great and small. Photographs from Gaza that I cannot unsee. Angry words snapped at my kid I cannot unsay. I hang back, weary and soiled by world, loitering in the doorway. Is Achilles right? Is it just a dispassionate Zeus up there dispensing two equal urns of good and evil? Life’s a bitch (or beach, depending on your luck) then you die? I’m on the periphery of Lazarus' graveside kicking stones, mumbling if only the healer had been here sooner. Tears don’t come anymore. The ducts have run dry.
But.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Header image: © 2023 Abbey von Gohren
This is an astonishing piece. A must read for all who have any heart at all. Read on and weep.