A Victory Over Numbness

Every tear I shed is a victory over numbness.

I wrote those words years ago shortly after my friends’ newborn baby died. A short time later I posted it on a social media platform. I noticed that the baby’s father “liked” the post.

Most people in our society have been conditioned not to think of their tears as a victory, but as a defeat, as in: “I broke down.” You didn’t break down. You got real.

Now granted, we all need a measure of toughness. If that’s all we got, though, the strategy carries underappreciated risks, particularly when it’s unconscious. Nobody wants tough, leathery eardrums. They don’t work. A common but unnoticed tradeoff in unconscious toughness is that we lose our receptivity. As that happens, we get tend to get stupider.

I continue to share this invitation to reframe our tears as victory. It has become something of a hallmark for me, in the true sense of a hallmark: a reminder of my commitment to authenticity.

There are forces both within us and in the world beyond that would pathologize our tears. It’s really easy to numb out, to dissociate, to deny or bypass what our feelings are telling us. I understand this. There can be compelling reasons for numbing out and distancing ourselves from our feelings in various situations. We can also rationalize and make up all kinds of stories about it. However, to the extent that it becomes habitual, the first casualty here is the possibility of living an emotionally authentic and empowered life. The second risk is that others will redirect us in our befuddlement and refocus our suppressed emotional energy toward their own purposes.

But here perhaps I’m already speaking a language that many will not understand. For example, often it seems the words “people think” mean precisely “thinking, as opposed to feeling”. My observation is that a thought without a conscious, living feeling at the core of its very DNA is less of a “thought’” than we think it is. Living feelings inform and empower our thoughts, and we need to be aware that this is so, lest dead feelings do so, often to our own detriment.

Because of this, when numbness or callousness start to creep into my consciousness and when tears are not to be found, this sets off alarm bells inside me. It’s not exactly like the Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! warning siren on the Starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek series, but it won’t hurt to imagine that. I sense in the absence or inaccessibility of my tears a systemic problem, an existential threat. Where some invest in heavier armoring, I suggest this has to be balanced with keeping the receptive centers open.

Of course, here in inverto-world, many people start crying only when pushed to an extreme, and then they think it’s the end of the world. Maybe it is. Maybe not. I guess it might feel that way, but really, in practical effect those tears could be the start of a new world, right now.

If there’s anything useful I can offer you today, it would be an invitation to de-pathologize your tears. Stop seeing this expression as if it’s something that needs to be controlled at all costs or as a symptom that something is wrong with you. Instead, I suggest seeing them as a sign that you aren’t dead yet, and that you still have feelings. Start seeing your tears as a victory over numbness and the beginning of an emotionally informed life.

“I can’t do that. I’m afraid if I start crying I’ll never stop!”

It’s surprising how often I’ll hear grownups say something like this. While I can empathize with how painful this can be, to me that’s like saying, “I’m afraid if I start peeing I will never stop.”

It’s true if we’ve been holding our tears back awhile that it may take more than a few grudgingly squeezed out drops to really start to clear the body. It may take time. Still, I understand the fear underneath such statements, and in fact, it’s right there in the language: “I’m afraid if I start crying….”

So start there, then. There’s poignancy in that fear, especially when people hold it for a long time, so there’s plenty to cry about right there if you look at what that fear is doing to us. And I do mean, “us”. I say “us,” first, because the fear that our grief is bottomless and may prove debilitating is something we’re all dealing with to some extent. If you feel that way, you’re not alone. Second, I say “us” because these held-back tears are warping us in all our interactions. Our feelings aren’t as private as we think they are. Our feelings and how we deal with them are a social phenomenon, because we are a social phenomenon.

Which is why it’s so strange and horrible that we have been socially conditioned to think of our tears as a sign of pathology or weakness – something to be hidden, medicated, suppressed and ashamed of – instead of an essential, perfectly designed body system that is functioning correctly. It’s like the eyes are the liver and kidneys of the head, and yet we want to prevent them from working. No wonder people become toxic, sick, desperate and crazy.

And seeing this is where I sometimes bridge into fury – which by the way is something else we will all likely have to work through. But seriously: How in the world did we get something this fundamental so completely backward? It’s enough to bring me to tears. And no, I’m not kidding or trying to be clever. These attitudes and behavior patterns can and do turn human beings into monsters. The broader outcomes are also monstrous. These patterns of suppression and emotional incoherence introduce distortions on all levels.

And if we’re collectively getting something this basic so backward and upside down, is it any wonder it feels at times like we’re collectively going backward and descending into biophysical, social, political and even international chaos? This system we’re living in is only as stable and viable as its constituent units. Those constituent units would be you and me. And, we are only as stable and viable as we are whole.

It’s taken years for me to understand this and start to reverse the most pernicious effects of my own conditioning. It’s taken practice. But anyone can, starting now. It begins with intention. We’re going to have to be our own parents, finally. We can find or create a safe place in ourselves to express what’s real, and we can hold a safe place for others as well.

Every tear I shed is a victory over numbness.

Feel free to write or print these words as a reminder.