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Lakaw is a journey is a step is a move. I love to travel around the world and this is my travel and travel gadget site. Welcome and Enjoy!

1 comments | Saturday, August 25, 2007

So when was the last time you cried?

A poster, with big bold texts, glued to a door of a downtown store caught my attention – "there is always time for everything, a time for joy and a time for tears". Call it impulse. I hurried home and organized my thoughts.

After moments of quietude and deep inspiration, this article was made, one stressful afternoon.

The verse was much enough to get me into thinking about sorts of things and memories of the years that passed. Surely, sweet and tearful memories and priceless possessions - all left for me to reminisce right now.

Rewind, many tears ago.

I wasn’t that kind of a cry baby when I was young. My cradle years, mom told me, were spent on thumb–sucking, toy-biting and the likes, but not so much on crying. I always had my tears reserved for bigger things.

The elementary years carried most of the few significant events there are to share about my life. Let me take you to a declamation contest I participated in for the sake of a teacher who insisted on the idea that I could be a good orator, if not best, and was so certain (even during the elimination round) that I could land no less than the first place. Madam Calderon, as I remember, taught me the art of being strong, confident and to never doubt my self-capability most especially.

Thus my mind was set on two things – the prize and the teacher's expectation. "I must win this!" For a while, I thought I would. So timely it was that the school was celebrating Linggo ng Wika, and I had to wear Barong Tagolog (its fashion outdated and goes back to grandpa's era) and a Salakot headdress (rattan made, its top pointed like what kundiman dancers usually use). There I was, standing in the middle of a crowd feeling rather confident, hmmm...a little bit confused and of course afraid of not living up to the crowd's expectations of Mrs. Calderon's pupil.

The first few lines got off to a good start. The middle part was the worst. Gosh, as I raised my arm for an excellent shout (emphasis on the lines was the key), a good smack hit my Salakot right then and there, covering my face of what seemed to be a perfect picture of a frowning clown. With knees trembling and insides banging so indescribably, I peeked through the salakot and saw friends heavily laughing, including my kind of frustrated adviser.

It was the moment of truth. Droplets of tears, ready to burst out any moment, started to form around my trained-not-to-weep eyes. Hadn't I been in front of classmates and mentors, the poor kiddie could have poured out sentiments and cried up there on the platform where I tasted my first shame. I did cry at the top of my lungs when I reached home and nobody had stopped me. That precious moment of being alone, wailing, turned out to be an experience of really knowing the best pain reliever of heartaches and pains - that's crying.

It was not the last time I cried. I cried for reasons - trying my very best and being beaten. Or giving everything for the first time in my life and then losing it. Or simply circumstances would just allow me to explode out in tears.

Take this example of my older brother Noel at six. He was sent by Lolo Nayong to an afternoon errand to buy food for supper when on his way he fell upon a very close comrade he had not seen for over a year. Out of friendship, he went out with the other strolling, trekking their usual "hideouts" and doing just about anything friends do. And the rest was all fun.

As I expected, later in the afternoon, Lolo Nayong’s leather belt met him at the door. But look what my big brother did! Before a great swing of rage hit his prepared buttocks, he already spent minutes crying outside the house – a perfect strategy of lessening my grandfather's fury. The night seemed to go ad infinitum as he was sobbing with all regrets of the afternoon's fate and saying he would never commit the same offense again. I just left him in such a situation, as I knew from experience that few moments later he would be back to his 'normal' senses again. It did happen.

Many of us cry because of unresolved problems and burdens. Or when in deep waters. Or maybe for reasons of anger or fear. We cry for days or even weeks when someone we love so dearly dies. Or when we miss someone we care so much or people close to our hearts.

Also when in moments of deep prayer, there is a tendency for us to cry and sob like a child wanting mama's attention. Like my friend who spends hours praying and all suddenly you'll hear her weeping - alone. Ask what she felt during those times: abundance of God's love and mercy. It is her unexpressed gratitude for God's limitless outpourings and bounty of blessings that make her cry.

Peter had this grudge for his late father that often he was moved to tears each time he remembered the life he had with him. His tears permitted him to express his emotions and hurts deep down, which eventually enabled him to lessen the pain and after sometime, learned to forget and wipe out the bitterness in his heart and the wrongdoing his father had done.

Tears may sometimes spring forth at the vision of what is purely natural and beautiful. For someone, they are more than just the emission of anguish and anxiety. They come at times of being free from pain and in moments of outpouring of joy. Tears of joy – for seeing flowers blossom across green and forested mountains and hills, birds that feed their young, fishes that swim on clean rivers and streams and for anything nature is left unaffected.

Some mothers, if not all, are moved to tears at the slight touch of their babies. Parents weep at the sight of their daughter walking down the aisle on her wedding day. Tears that spill forth happiness that their daughter will have a family of her own and kind of sadness that they have 'lost' someone who has long been part of their lives.

We weep toward sympathy like that when we are watching dramatic movies. "Sad movies always make me cry..." remember Sue Thomsom's song? We pity the bidas and tend to cry whenever we see them enslaved in the hands of contrabidas. We are moved by our emotions, by what we feel. These unaccountable tears tell personal wisdom and can teach us much about our hidden selves.

Tearful situations catch us by surprise at our unlikeliest times. We fight back the tears, suppressed and silenced our own emotions and passions – afraid that people around us will think us "soft" and mushy (especially us, guys). We pretend to be strong and wrap ourselves under a cloak of pride and egoism. We try to live on the facade we make though what we want really is to cry out and shout our sentiments from deep down.

An article once quoted "...tears of nostalgia can lower down the blood pressure. People who are afraid to let themselves pour forth their heartaches, doctors find the suppressed tears can trigger the outcome of ailments such as asthma, migraine headache and many others."

Finally, tears are just outward manifestations of our being human and weak. Just remember this: a teardrop of distress and affliction, of commiseration and compassion, of unsqueezed joy and deep appreciation - it simply discloses the desires of our hearts – our need to love and be loved, to be washed away from all troubles and uptightness, to be happy and fulfilled, to be strong and not weak and be restored from the present state of despair to hope.

So when was the last time you cried?

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

am panget nmn!!!111 gawa ka pa!

August 13, 2008 6:14 AM

 

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