Confessions of a Cry Baby

Sometimes the world feels like a really sad place.  This week a dear friend's Mom passed away and I attended her funeral.  She had lived a very long and rich life and was celebrated for that.  I shed lots of tears at the funeral.  Not so much for the extraordinary woman who had passed,  but for her family, her children, the fragile relationships that hold them all together.  I cried because life really is too short.

And then this morning we all awoke to the news of Robin William's passing.  What a loss.  What a tragedy.  I am so so sad that his life ended so abruptly at such a young age.  So I cry for him and for  those of us who will miss his gifts his extraordinary talent.

I cry a lot.  I cry, not because I am falling apart, but I cry because I feel deeply.  Some people don't know what to make of my tears.  There are those who misinterpret them.   There is a classic story that took place when I interviewed at the company where I now work.  When my company hires executives they do a very exhaustive process of vetting the candidate, complete with a set of personality tests and assessment tools.  They want to dig deep and know what they are getting.

This process culminated in an interview with a psychologist who administered the tests.  This interview lasted a full three hours and really delved into a lot of personal information about my successes and stumbles both in work and in life.  You can probably see where this is going.  As we delved into some of these chapters in my life,  I, as I am wont to do, shed a tear or two.  I didn't blubber.  I didn't sob.  I just reconnected with some old wounds that made me cry.  I pulled myself together fairly quickly and explained it away by admitting that I occasionally shed a tear or two, no big deal.  I mean we had been talking for almost three hours.
 The psychologist then asked me how I felt about his sharing what had happened in his reporting of the interview.   He offered to hold back the details of my emotional moment but I said- what the heck.  Open the door.  Share what you want.  This is who I am.

Well here is where the story gets interesting. As the interview process progressed, my tears became "a thing".  They were discussed.  There was concern that I would be discovered in my office in a pool of tears when things did not go according to plan.  There was concern that I would fall apart when they needed me to be strong.  This line of thinking was only exasperated when one of my references, a fabulous former boss, in the course of giving me a glowing reference, shared that he and I had cried together no less than five times.  I'm not actually sure if that was true but what I do know was that he and I had a very close and strong friendship and while we enjoyed working together, we also often talked about life, about things that had nothing to do with the workplace.  This. my friends, is when I cry.  I don't cry about work.  I cry about life.  I cry about dying and suffering.  I cry about babies and puppies.   I pretty reliably cry at weddings. I cry when I feel deep compassion for the people in my life and their joys and their struggles.

There was a time when I apologized for this tendency.  I apologized for making people feel uncomfortable.  But here's what I've learned.  People are usually uncomfortable when you are uncomfortable.  If all I'm doing is experiencing something fully and deeply, then lucky me.  If you are someone who has seen me weep, please don't assume that I am falling apart.  Consider instead that I am  living as fully as I can.  I'll take that any day.