DailyJim: The strength to cry

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gem today is oh just crossed over it is tuesday september 3rd 2024 um okay a minute after and i have been almost on this unannounced vacation because i haven't been recording many episodes but uh hopefully trying to get back on track again today what i want to talk about is the courage is it the courage to cry, The strength to cry. Let's call it the strength to cry.

Okay, so I want to start off with a lyric that came from this song by Jason Mraz called Three Things. Let me flip over to it without screwing up my recording. He says, there are three things I do when my life falls apart. Number one, I cry my eyes out and dry up my heart. Not until I do this will my new life start. So that's the first thing I do when my life falls apart.

So last week I went to a funeral of a friend a 40-year-old man who had passed away from, I believe, a brain bleed. This morning I woke up to a message saying that a neighbor of mine passed away. Now, this neighbor of mine, Mr. Randazzo, Tony Randazzo, had congestive heart failure, I believe, for the last couple of years. And he was even at my mother's funeral almost about a year and a half ago and I saw in his eyes that he may have even said that something like seeing my mom pass, reminded him just maybe how close he was to passing, and so I heard the news this morning and it didn't really hit me until later tonight I started to think about it And I think sometimes we think crying is weak.

I had a conversation earlier today, and I think crying is not weak. Actually, the people who often say that crying makes us weak are the people who also say that they are afraid to cry because they don't think they will ever stop.

And I think sometimes when someone sees us cry, they start to feel afraid that they will start to cry, and they don't want to cry. They're not happy when they think about crying they're not necessarily sad when they think about crying sometimes they feel very afraid maybe angry but I think even more very afraid, and so we have this idea that crying makes us weak, whereas I think being afraid of crying makes us weak or more weak the fear can make us weak in some ways, and so that's why i wanted to call it courage to cry but i really think it's the strength the strength to have the courage to cry the strength to step into the fear, and know that if we cry we're still going to be okay.

And i've gone to five funerals in the past two years of people quite close to me and some over COVID that I missed like my great uncle and ex-girlfriend passed away, and just, yeah quite a lot of funerals and death and I'll probably miss this one as well because it might be happening in a few days and I'm still in Kenya and it's a long trip back home especially to switch at the last minute, and just this idea of.

I think it makes us weak when we don't cry.

Because the pain gets bottled up inside and because the sadness can come out in so many different ways towards other people, towards ourselves. It can really eat us alive. And...

I just...

Sometimes the tears come because we think about happy moments. There are moments I've had with Mr. Randazzo. I still call him Mr. Randazzo because I've known this man my whole life. My whole life. He was a neighbor. He was an original owner in the neighborhood. My parents moved in a couple years after the homes were built. And then I was born a couple years later.

He was there my whole life. Recently they moved to another neighborhood in the same town. But I'm talking three years ago and yeah just such a steady presence in one's life just always down the street and every time you'd see him he'd give you that smile and he was an old man I believe from Sicily you know and so tell stories about Italy and tell stories just telling stories and big smiles and full of energy. And so sometimes thinking about the things that bring us joy actually bring the sadness when the joy is no longer there. And I've talked about this before.

And I just think I wish people had more strength to cry. I just wish people had the strength to cry and the strength to miss people, the strength to admit how much we actually love and care about each other, because this life is very short we never know when it's gonna end it can end after a couple years of battling congestive heart failure it could end after a surprise stroke takes you at age 40 can end after a car accident when you're young when you're old it can life is precious and honestly the more that I cry, the more that I realize how precious life is. And so I hope some people realize that it takes strength to cry and that not crying is actually probably making us more and more weak. So I hope people listen to this and have a little more courage to cry and to feel the sadness and the loss of the things that we've loved, the people that we've loved. Because sometimes when we cry, it actually brings us closer to others and closer to ourselves and closer maybe to just what this whole experiment of life is all about.

Instead of going the opposite direction and fighting against life, why not embrace it and bring it closer to our hearts? All right, on that note, I'll hope to talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.