The power of tears

The other day, I visited the dentist. She's my newfound favourite dentist because she not only does her job just by examining teeth and calls it a day, she would further explain and educate me on what she had done to my teeth and plus, she's really nice. But that day, it was a painful visit. The dentist hit a very sensitive part of my gum near the upper front teeth, and as natural as it was, tears started flowing down my cheeks that even the assistant had to wipe them off for me as the dentist was still cleaning my teeth. I told the dentist afterwards, "I'm so sorry I teared. I just... had to. It was so painful." I was still surprised at myself because I never had the intention to cry, it was something beyond my control. It was merely a physiological reaction. Just like how our eyes start to tear when we cut onions. I went home that night thinking so much about tears. I thought about the times when I cried. Why do we cry? Why was this reaction even created?

It is amazing when we start to think about the things that make us cry and what really distinguish those things apart from the things that elicit other milder reaction. What I arrived at that night was how powerful tears are and what they truly represent. While someone was peeking into my teeth with the remote possibility to scream in pain, these tears spoke for it. It is as if our tears represent the words that we cannot speak and they communicate the pain that is just indescribable, as if there is no other way it can be expressed as accurately and as sufficiently. Tears convey the depths and breadths of things which cannot be fully explained and described through words.

Washington Irving's wisdom beautifully captures the whole essence of tears:

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”

I thought about all the times I cried. It is no wonder they are mostly cathartic. Because tears serve this amazing function in which there is no other better way to express certain things, other than crying.