It’s happening again.
I am witnessing the awkward kindness of a teen, remembering the good manners someone painstaking taught him at some point, giving up his seat for an elderly woman who has just boarded the bus and immediately I register an uncomfortable prickly feeling in the corner of my eye. With alarming speed, there is a sudden increase in my heart rate, a flush of red up my neck… and before you know it, blurred vision and water pooled behind my lashes.
I widen my eyes just a little bit in the hope that I can dry my eyeballs out sufficiently so I don’t have to wipe them and give my sentimental self away. (By the way, this technique is, more often than not, futile).
I chuckle fondly at myself. “Again, Tania?”
I am discovering the ingredients to this tender alchemy – witnessing the beauty of an authentic gesture that triggers humility and wonder is a combination that moves me and… it just overflows.
Yes, I am a sensitive one.
I tear up when I hear voices raised to sing the national anthem, I tear up when I see the free abandon of children being silly, I tear at the expectant faces in the international arrivals (confession, sometimes I wait with them, just to witness their joy). I tear at the sincerity of the server who asked me if I’d feel more comfortable moving to a quiet corner to finish my writing, and when the cardinal and his mate sing at the feeder and always, without fail, I tear when I hear Amazing Grace, even if it is the most terrible Muzak version and I am in an elevator on my way to a meeting.… the truth is, every day there are tears.
It used to make me so uncomfortable, this propensity to weep.
At the first sign of this liquid response I’d lurch in a sudden panic to cover up the moment: pinch myself hard, suddenly tell a joke, look away, or hide behind a camera and focus on taking a photo. Anything to disconnect and avoid being caught in this vulnerable place of emotion. I’ve been labelled “sensitive” and “emotional” and for so many years those words did not feel like they were things to be proud of. So I hid the watercolour of feelings that infiltrated my day.
That was before.
I’ve now learned to just take a breath and let them be.
I treat them as signposts; notations from me to me. They say “Look here, Tania! There is something going on that matters, this moment holds a clue to what is meaningful.”
My tears are my inner self putting a moment in BOLD so that I will take notice. A way to highlight and experience the same way you would a text to have me pay attention. When I allow them to come, unchecked and without judgement, I realize I am being gifted an opportunity to witness what has value to me and to act upon it.
Think about it, you only tear up about things that have resonance with you. Be it a corny commercial or a goodbye, tears are our first line of communication that lets us know that something of deep value is happening. So I have learned that if something is moving me, a new, deeper appreciation of a meaningful moment awaits.
Now, as soon as I feel the familiar prickle, I sit with the fullness of the experience and wonder, “What is there for me to know? What is it that wants my attention?”, “How is this a guide to who I want to be?”
The anthem is about the power of being a part of a larger whole, the children are about my own longing for freedom, the happy arrivals are about the exquisite joy of being wanted, the server’s offer is about being seen, the birds are about nature’s pure beauty and Amazing Grace, well that is about something higher than me.
As I let the tears fall, I feel connected in awe of what is happening within and around me. I wonder if our tears are their own love language.
Recently I was in Paris and after hours of tossing and turning, I gave into jet lag and went for a walk. Pre-dawn quiet blanketed the cobblestone streets and I paused to sit in the park and watch the light. As dawn arrived I became aware of a silhouette of a woman on a bench across from me, impeccably dressed, on the phone.
I recognized in her posture the anguish that I heard in her voice. She was saying goodbye to someone.
She sat there alone, tears streaming down her face. Not wanting to disturb her, I continued to sit still. I was swept away by the remembering of those life-changing moments when our hearts are breaking. I let the tears stream down my cheeks. It was not my heartache, but somehow it felt like solidarity and an honouring of the moment to experience the emotion. She got up to leave and our eyes met. She saw my tears, my compassion, and my knowing. She did not wipe her tears away, neither did I. We just let that moment live in BOLD. It felt like a reminder that even in the most solitary of moments, we do not have to travel alone.
There was such a felt sense of truth to our shared experience, a few seconds of connection and presence neither of us had chosen to hide. I saw a flicker in her eyes. Because we did not hide our tears, we were reminded that even in the most solitary of moments, we do not have to travel alone.
My tears are my connection to humanity – IN BOLD.
In celebration,
Tania