Crybaby

 

Why do we cry? We have many reasons to cry and many reasons as to why we cry. It is the latter I'm interested in. Animals can wash out a dusty eye, but to shed tears over emotions, that is uniquely a human activity. Homo Sapiens are willing to cry over spilt milk while an animal will only cry if we spill the milk into their eyes. Among all sentient beings, our special relationship with tears is distinctive and noteworthy.  

 

We cry when our Meibomian gland is woken up and sent into overdrive. Normally we produce half a teaspoon of teardrops a day, but in the time it takes to finish The Notebook we could have produced up to half a cup!

 

That's how we cry, but why do we cry? For some it's despair, for some it's being overjoyed, while for a limited few its being hungry. Those who suffer from “Crocodile Tear Syndrome” experience the perplexing situation of shedding a tear every-time they get peckish. This often occurs from a facial injury in which nerves are severed and damaged. Mistakes are made while the body attempts to repair the carnage. In the process wires are crossed, leaving a nerve transmission line linking the saliva glands to the Meibomian glands. It's as if someone wired your oven-stove to your bathroom faucet. Every time their hunger fires up, their eyes over-flow like the kitchen sink. Curious indeed, but this information only answers why do some cry, Why do WE cry?

 

Let's talk to the experts! Babies are the Professors of the crying world. To be a cry baby is to be an A-tier athlete on the tear production team. Babies cry a lot; they scream, they wheeze, all while calling for attention. Oils are among the 160 molecules found in tears, without these drops of moisture some scientists posture that a baby could steer into harm's way. A dried out nose and throat is an irritant for us but for the feeble, it's dangerous. Having the tears come along with the hours of screaming may protect a baby from un-wished ills.

 

Examining tears as merely a way to keep the repository channels lubed up ignores the important roles tears play in our society. If we are to answer this question (as to why we cry?) we need to dive deeper!

Crying is an external display of an internal emotion. It is described as an honest single. For emmy-award lacking plebeians, tears are something that can't really be faked. Anthropologists have argued that this honest expression can add authenticity to a relationship. A symbol between an individual and a group that their emotions are raw, bare and real.  Blurry crying eyes leaves one emotionally and physically vulnerable. Like bowing or opening arms for a hug, tears show the group that the individual is comfortable around them. Crying helped to bring communities together, securing their survival against a hostile outside. These acts would help to ingrain crying from a communal code to the genetic code.  

 

Account of William Howe defending his client ( Edward Unger) 1887, NYC

“The trial had left Unger with not so much his foot on the scaffold as his neck in the noose. He had admitted his hatred of the victim, one August Bohle. He acknowledged battering him with a hammer, dismembering his body, and sending his limbs and trunk in a box to Baltimore. He also accepted that he had taken Bohle’s head to Brooklyn and dropped it off an East River paddleboat. It was hard to identify any doubt, let alone a reasonable one, from the evidence. But as the handkerchief hit Howe’s forehead and his eyes began to shine, an argument, if not quite a defense, swirled out of the maelstrom. Unger had three children, including two daughters who had been clinging to him throughout the trial, and — although Howe begged the jurors not to let that sight cloud their judgment — it was to their tragedy that he turned. For Edward Unger’s only crime, he insisted, had been to spare the little ones the sight of death. He was no guiltier than the girl being dandled on his knee. “It was his son that cut up his body,” he sobbed. “It was that beautiful child that used the saw: it was the elder sister that throw [sic] the head in the river.” Reminding the jurors that there were no eyewitnesses to the killing, he pleaded with them not to make up that deficiency with logic. “Did you leave your homes to hang a man upon inference or your reasoning?” he demanded. “God forbid.” The point was, in every sense, a rhetorical one. Unger was found not guilty of murder. “

The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O. J. Simpson  

  Sadakat Kadri  

Maybe it was Howe's tears that got his client off scot-free. As he dabbed his eyes, his tears jumped from the handkerchief into the minds of the jurors. This honest signal proved that this lawyer believed in his client and so should they! Whether it was the tears or not that clinched the not-guilty verdict the prosecutor, Francis L Wellman would always lament he could smell Howe's onion soaked handkerchief.

 

Tears are a lot of things, protective lubricant for our eyes and airways, external expressions of internal thoughts, but most of all tears are signifiers of humanity. Language isn't unique to humans, neither is tool making, but crying not to wash the dirt from our eyes but the emotions from our souls, that is something that is uniquely us.