In line with the recent intellectual pursuits that I've found myself subconsciously traversing (thanks to a certain Enemy who is helping me resuscitate my whimpering brain cells), I am grateful that the past few days have been highly conducive to learning and discovering new insights in my current quasi-pathetic life. Though the experience makes me miss those precious moments I've had with my university classmates, I guess I have to make do with utilizing my facebook notes just as to provide an avenue for these thoughts.
Hmm... Okay, start. :))
A while ago, during the silent stretch of minutes I spent crouching on bed trying to appease the pain in my tummy, the lack of anything else better to do had me going back to what is now my favorite (and probably only) hobby: introspection. Yesterday, Min and I watched The Life of Pi on the big screen. It was a visual treat, to say the least. But more than that, it is the impact of the movie - how it made me think - that I loved the most. It is so thought-provoking to the point that it made me cry.
Tears. The general topic of my hour-long reflection a while ago. It made me wonder why and how tears work. Our ever dependable friend Google provided me with the fact that there are three types of tears: basal, reflex, and psychic. Basal tears are 'constant tears'. They stop our eyes from drying out. Reflex tears, on the other hand, are secreted when an irritant threatens our eyes. This is also the type of tears that is linked with vomiting, coughing, and yawning. Psychic tears, often referred to as crying/weeping, are the by-product of strong emotional stress or any fundamentalist chemical reaction related to the workings of the limbic system.
Of all three, it is the last one which made me think. Generally, it is often assumed that people shed (psychic) tears when they are sad, angry, suffering, mourning, stressed, or in any form of intense (may vary depending on the person) psychological or physical pain. Except for those so-called rare moments when people produce 'tears of joy'. It has become an accepted fact that the presence of tears is related to a form of severe (again, may vary depending on the person) discomfort.
I've been living my life sharing this same thought with (probably) the rest of the people on the planet until yesterday. We were still twenty minutes to the film but I think I already cried a quarter of a pint. I cried because the film is beautiful --- the lines, the visuals, the message.
And it made me question the long established belief of crying as the mind's natural defense against stress. I was never stressed during the movie and the parts that made me tear up were not sentimental at all. It then gave birth to a random thought in my head: what if it is never really discomfort that causes our tears but rather beauty? Beauty, in its purest sense. May it be the presence or absence of it. I refer to Beauty here in its most abstract definition. Beauty that involves perceptual experience and is not limited to the physicality.
Is a thing beautiful because you can relate to it or can you relate to it because it is beautiful? This is a hypothetical question which I believe I can only answer after loooooong, long hours of introspection (and that does not necessarily mean I will have a full grasp of it too). Reflecting on it, the immediate answer would be the first one. A thing becomes beautiful when we can relate to it. It highlights the thought that the standard of beauty is not given by anybody but ourselves: it is only beautiful once you agree to it. A dry leaf may look unappealing to the rest of the world but if that thing inspires you, then it is beautiful.
But then again, there are things that everyone generally find beautiful. And sometimes, their reasons for thinking it beautiful vary. Like how we can all agree that a night sky full of stars is beautiful or the sound of soft rain drumming on a glass window is pleasant to the ears. There are things which immediately strike us as beautiful without us even noticing it initially. So how could it happen that we find a thing beautiful first without necessarily finding any connection to ourselves? That in itself, puts the first statement in question.
See, it's a viscious cycle.
Like when I watched the movie 'Children of Heaven' (that was probably one of the most beautiful films ever made), I cried too. The two movies I've mentioned were no melodramatic films (in fact, CoH is so incredibly simple), that if I would deduct the reason behind my tears for both, it will only end up in one conclusion: because they are beautiful.
Hence, it made me think and made me question what experts have defined psychic tears to be.
We cry not because we are sad or we are in a great deal of stress but rather because we find things beautiful. We do not necessarily need "intense" stimuli but rather a 'soft, gentle touch' is enough. What matters is that we feel it. Beauty affects us in ways that we never imagine it could. Beauty is harmony and balance. When we want to put things in order, set our priorities straight, look for a distraction to an otherwise monotonous life, it is because we find beauty in it. We cry for beautiful things --- beauty that is not limited to what the sense of vision can provide but rather to that which gets all senses working. It is when it touches a part of ourselves that even us did not know until it happened. When something is so incredibly amazing, it hits you with so much force that you are eventually moved to tears. Beauty --- the presence or absence of it.
When you are heartbroken and you cry rivers of tears, you cry not only because you are hurt but more because you subconsciously realize the absence of something beautiful in your life. Most of us only gets to the most obvious point: that which is pain, that we do not bother to reflect more about the deeper meaning behind it. People are funny beings: we oftentimes notice what is absent than than what is present at the moment. We easily see the lack of beauty, kindness, goodness, and everything that is pure that when we notice the utter simplicity of something beautiful, it leaves us awestruck.
And if were think of it again, there is Beauty in Pain. There is Beauty in everything. The realization I had a while ago got me so hard I started crying again.
Ah, life. There is a stigma against tears and to be honest, that thought of it makes me cry.
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