Return on tears.
“I can’t wait to graduate college and cry for something worth crying for.”
My new friend Tara said that this morning, and it made me wonder about the emotional value of adulthood. I was thinking about how we’re essentially told that everything we do as children and adolescents is simply part of a primer course on how to effectively experience adulthood. But I have to say, the whole idea of spending our youth preparing for real events and real experiences is sort of silly.
I have always been pretty thick-skinned, which may make my perspective on the matter a little brash; but I’ve always thought that the most important emotional experiences are the ones that make us adults, not the ones that we have as adults. So when I look at that quote, it makes me kind of sad. So often we’re prone to shrugging off the great and terrible things that happen to us and thinking of them as fate, or as part of the plan, or just steps on a giant lifelong staircase. The problem with that analogy is the lack of a discernible last step; so how can we say that there are any steps at all?
I have to refer back to big experiences I’ve had, like falling in love for the first time or watching my home turn to ashes, to explain what I’m feeling about this concept. I’ll learn from those, sure, but I don’t suspect I’ll ever be faced with such a situation that forces me to emotionally respond in the same way. Nor will I likely ever have an emotional response to something in the future that feels the same as what I’ve felt in the past, especially to the point of adaptation. When I look at myself and the way I respond to certain situations, I can’t honestly believe that I’ve ever been faced with a ‘big’ moment and known just how to handle it. And if that’s the case, what have I been preparing for?
A consideration like this will leave a bitter taste in your mouth. Look at it this way: if we’re not preparing for anything but more of the same emotional undulation, we might construe life as pointless and unchanging. And, in a way, it is. We could very well be wandering through a series of experiences that are in fact all separate from one another, just going through motions and following a predefined list of emotional options written on some chromosomal list in our heads.
Having only a finite range of emotions does not necessarily mean that at some point things are going to stop making us sad or angry or wonderfully elated, however. Emotions may be limited in nature, but experiences are essentially limitless. So while we are shackled to the same emotions all our lives, the experiences that merit them are so varied that they may never feel alike. For example, you can relate to the way that a person makes you feel when you’re in love—the feeling of love is mildly definable—but really, another person is likely to make you feel a completely unique kind of love.
So where do we net out? On one hand, we’ve established that the most important things to cry or laugh about are the ones that are in fact part of the formative experiences, because they’re the only ones that will allow us a fresh perspective on the full range of emotion. And on the other hand, even though we aren’t actually climbing a staircase to some greater end, we are feeling old emotions in new ways based on the experiences we encounter from birth until the day we die. If we assume both premises to be true, then what is life and what is its purpose?
I’d like to propose that life is not a staircase but rather a wild trail, twisting and turning endlessly; and every last one of those twists and turns is as important as any other, whether we walk them in childhood or adulthood. The idea of having something worth crying about is equally prevalent whether you’re five or 50.
And my little piece of advice to you, Tara, is to appreciate having things to cry about now and forever, because without those things you might forget how to smile.
3 years ago