DailyJim: Who is stronger: the person who cries or the person who does not cry?

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024. And today I want to talk about a question. Who is stronger? The person who cries or the person who does not cry?

So I think this is a conversation that comes up so much in my life, where people will tell me that, you know, I don't want to cry because I don't want to be weak. And I don't really know if that's true so I'm curious who do you think is the person who is stronger who do you think is the person who is demonstrating more strength the person who is crying or the person who is not crying now many of you may say the person who is not crying because the person who is not crying is feeling the pain but is fighting against the pain is trying to overcome the pain, is trying to persevere, to not give up, to not succumb to the pain. And perhaps, perhaps. But, yes, so holding in that pain, there's a fight, maybe an internal fight, but there's no external fight. Because there's not many people who would, at least in most cultures around the world who would belittle you or attack you or make fun of you if you hold in the pain.

Quite the contrary. Actually, often people, I think, are celebrated if they hold in the pain. We perceive them as being strong. We perceive them as being tough, resilient.

A fighter or whatever language we use. And you can tell, you probably detect the sarcasm in my voice. But we hold it up. And I understand that there are times in life where crying is not very helpful. Just like there are times in life where being excited is not helpful or being, happy is not helpful. If I'm trying to do push-ups, being happy is not very helpful. It's hard to laugh and do a push-up.

So I understand there are times when crying is not particularly useful. I just, I wonder if sometimes...

We think it's strong to hold in the tears and hold in the pain, or more strong to do that than it is to show it. So on the contrary, if someone shows that they're crying, we could say, ah, maybe they aren't fighting against themselves. Maybe they actually just give in and let their body do what the body wants to do. And growing up in a domesticated society because we as humans are domesticated. We live indoors.

One of the things we learn the most when we're kids is potty training. So we learn to only use the bathroom when it is culturally and socially appropriate to use the bathroom and in locations where it is culturally and socially appropriate. Meaning if I have to pee, I don't just pee immediately. I have to wait. And so I have to fight against some of these urges. Now we could argue much of human, uh, civilization is fighting against urges. So maybe there's an element of, okay, fighting against the urge to cry is, shows our strength in being a very civilized, uh, human being. Um.

But you know, like if we have to pee, we don't hold it in forever. We, we wait for the appropriate time because we can't hold it in forever. And, um, yeah, it starts to wreak havoc on the body. And I think it's similar with, with crying and sadness. And the other thing I want to talk about is that if so many people think it is wrong to cry or that it is weak to cry, wouldn't it actually be really strong of someone if they cried in the presence of so much disapproval?

So the person who lives, let's say one person is surrounded by 99 other people, and those 99 people think it's very bad to cry. You should not cry. Wouldn't you say the one person who cries is actually stronger than the other 99 because that one person has the courage to stand up to the attacks that may come from the 99 people, the looks, the shame, the belittling, the blame, the laughter, the demeaning behaviors.

Wouldn't that show a certain level of strength?

To say, this is who I am. This is, I'm a human. This happens. It's okay to cry.

I particularly think that takes a lot more strength, than fighting against the body. Yeah, perhaps there's a certain strength in fighting against the urges.

I just don't think it's always healthy. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they're just different types of strength. One is more of social strength, maybe. The other one is more of suppressive strength. I don't know. I don't know if it's... It's almost like someone bragging, being like, you know what, I can drink this huge thing of water and I don't have to pee for three days. It's like, good. You know how much damage you're doing to your kidneys? You know how much damage you're doing to your bladder? Maybe not kidneys, your bladder. or you know how much damage you're doing? You're proud that you can go three days? Like, okay, great. Yeah, maybe it takes a certain pain tolerance, if that's the definition of strength is just pain tolerance.

But that seems to belittle the importance of pain. I've read before that there are people who don't have sensitivity to pain. And I think I read they often die very soon. Because we need pain to operate in the world. We need pain to know, oh, don't do this. Pain teaches us what we love. It teaches us what we can lose.

So maybe, yeah, people associate strength with a certain pain tolerance. I associate strength with a certain...

Yeah maybe it's maybe there's like this idea that pain tolerance to have tolerance to pain you just suppress pain and for me it's more of like no how much pain can you feel can you feel like feel it all um and still be loving and still like feel instead of go numb, I don't know, for me, and I'm curious how other people would respond to this question. Like, for me, it just seems so obvious that it takes a hell of a lot more strength, to do something that society really doesn't want one to do. And often that is crying. And when there are so many people around you telling that you shouldn't cry and trying to cheer you up and trying to either get angry when you're crying or they laugh at you when you're crying.

Makes me think maybe the strongest ones in those scenarios are the ones that stand up and do it anyway. And say, yeah, you do it. What are you going to do to me? Okay. I'm crying. How are you feeling? You feel angry? You feel you're going to try to laugh at me? You're going to make fun of me? Okay. How terrified are you of crying? Maybe it's more about your fear than it is about mine. Maybe you actually admire my courage maybe so just reflecting on this because i you know i had an episode weeks or months back where i called we are either crying or we are dying and i think crying is so essential to human biology maybe mammalian biology but definitely human biology and the idea of being sad and slowing down. And I think to live in a world, to live in a society where that's not what most people believe, I think it takes so much strength to be like, yeah, I'm going to do this anyways. What are you going to do? Okay, you think it's stupid. You disagree with it. You're making fun of me. You're blaming me. You're getting angry that I'm doing this. Okay, I understand. And I'm still doing it. So I hope one day you'll change your mind. I hope one day you'll have the strength. I hope one day you'll have the courage to actually join me here.

So, yeah. So what do you think? Do you think it takes more strength to cry? Or do you think it takes more strength to not cry? I would love to hear your answers, your thoughts, your perspectives. Please reply in whichever way you can. and we'll continue the conversation. All right, bye.