Why I Started Crying Instead of Meditating
Why are you trying to be happy?
What do you do when you go through a tough phase in your life?
If you are anything like me, you might ‘handle’ any tough situation somewhat like this:
- You might slip into the zone of ignorance, not being able to accept the depth of the situation. You know it’s bad but suddenly, you just don’t care.
- You might repeat in your mind that whatever happens, happens for good.
- You might compare your grief to others and try to convince yourself that at least you don’t have cancer or you are not poor.
- You may fall into the deep shithole of short term distractions to avoid thinking about your current situation whether it’s scrolling through social media or doing something which isn’t important only to keep yourself busy.
- You may try to act like a Zen master. You may even remind yourself of all the ‘mindset’ quotes and ‘stoic’ philosophy of life.
- You may try to be happy for things that are good in your life — forcing yourself to enjoy what you have instead of being sorry for what is wrong or what didn’t work out as you planned.
How marvelous, isn’t it?
To never let a situation take over you. To never let a loss make you weep like a baby. To never doubt, question or blame God or whoever you think is sitting up there because if you do so then you are not faithful. To always choose to meditate over screaming at the world. To find gratitude for the ‘worst’ that could have happened instead of feeling sorry over the ‘bad’ that did happen.
Isn’t that what a strong person would do? Or perhaps a monk?
The Forced Identity As A Monk:
‘Why are so hard on yourself?’
I used to think that I was better than everyone else because I don’t cry irrespective of how bad it gets. I used to believe that I have cracked some kind of ‘monk’ code because despite how rough it gets, nothing can influence my mood.
I thought I had become a modern monk. Someone who trusts that everything will unfold at the right time. Someone who won’t, and can’t cry because I am tough.
Because I read those books that said, ‘If you can’t change your situation, then why worry?’
Turns out, I was only being a hyper-independent egoist ass (mind my language).
Almost two months back, I fell while jumping around the house. It pained me so bad I thought I had lost my knee forever. I went to the doctor the next day and he said, ‘It’s nothing.’
In the next couple of weeks, I changed two doctors and both of them said, ‘It’s nothing.’
I thought maybe I was worrying for no reason so I went to travel for 15 days. When I came back, the pain increased so much that I couldn’t even walk. I went to a new doctor this time and after examination, it turned out that two of the ligaments were broken in my knee. One that keeps the bones of the knee together and another that is responsible for sudden movements.
And guess what?
Both of these ligaments cannot be healed. You either go for surgery (which often results in early arthritis) or you go for a rehab program where they help you make the other muscles around the knee stronger so you don’t face any problems.
The problem with the latter option is that even though it doesn’t involve surgery, as you grow older, you start to lose muscle mass and the other bones and muscles that were keeping the balance start to become weak too. And so if not today, somewhere down the line, you have to get surgery done.
If that wasn’t enough, I got to know that my bone type is such that my chances of recovery without surgery are not good.
Oh well, isn’t that just sweet?
But you see, after all this, I didn’t let myself cry.
I, instead like a good child, kept my emotions together. I thought there must be something good in it too. Maybe, it happened so I could slow down and focus on more important things in life. Maybe, it happened so I could learn this or that. Maybe, I did something bad and so I am getting punished for that.
As time went by, my ability to keep my ‘calm’ went down the hill too. The more I researched and read about people’s experiences on how even after surgery, they couldn’t recover or how it’s been 9 months and still they feel the pain, my estimation of possible future pain kept growing so much so that I didn’t understand ‘How can this happen to me?’
But still, I kept telling myself that my situation isn’t as bad as someone who is dying or who doesn’t have a roof over their head.
I tried to meditate. I tried to pray.
Until, I screamed and pulled my hair like a zombie.
The Crying Cure:
‘What if you scream out loud and cry your lungs out?’
The so-called internet graduate stoic philosopher and spiritual gurus have taught us that we must not cry, or scream. They tell us what some old guy known as ‘stoic’ said about suffering.
And the old stoic always has only one thing to say, ‘Focus on what you can control and let go of what you cannot.’
Well, guess what?
The old guy wasn’t going to go through knee surgery as someone who loved to jump around the house for no reason and was told thousands of precautions to take for the rest of their lives.
One of the biggest problems with us, especially as young people, is that;
“We try to manage our emotions as per what guidelines of an old stoic or some philosopher who died God knows how long ago or some spiritual guru who never had to walk in our shoes.”
I am not saying that what these old guys said was wrong or not worth it. It’s good information to read. But the thing is, we all are so damn different.
You don’t have my emotional capacity, do you? Maybe, if you had the problem that I have, you wouldn’t have taken it so seriously. And maybe if I had your problem, I would have handled it perfectly.
Why?
Our emotional digestion is different, and so are our goals. And yet, we make our lives a blueprint of the ‘rules and philosophy’ of those who are not living on earth at the moment.
We think crying is wrong because what do they say?
Oh yes, ‘Why cry over a spilled milk?’
Well, it was my milk. I wanted to drink coffee so I will cry!
And when I am done crying over my loss, then I might get a glass of water and go to buy another bottle of milk.
But I will cry! Because it was MY MILK.
It was MY LOSS.
I should be allowed to scream and cry and weep.
Crying doesn’t mean never getting up again or leaving yourself on the floor as a mess. Crying also doesn’t mean that I don’t understand that it was just milk. Crying also doesn’t mean I will never smile again because the loss is too big.
Crying is simply a way to let your emotions be out in the open. Screaming doesn’t mean I don’t have manners or trust in the Universe. Screaming simply means letting the frustration, the heaviness on your chest channel out.
Meditating or trying to keep calm when you clearly don’t feel good is like covering your child’s mouth with a handkerchief as tightly as possible because your child is crying.
If you do that, it won’t ease the pain of your child, would it?
In fact, you will deprive them of the only way they could have felt better. Not just that, your child will quickly learn that they cannot cry in front of you so they must hide their emotions otherwise, you will choke them.
If that doesn’t sound pretty, then why do you do that to yourself?
Screaming Instead of Meditating:
I am not against meditation. I love to meditate.
I am against meditating when clearly your body wants to cry and scream. I think meditation is a great way to keep yourself calm and centered.
Meditation is a method to reach the center of our hearts, and focus on what matters to us.
But meditation is not something you should use to choke your emotions. It’s not a bandage for everything despite what the stoics or modern monks say on social media.
After trying to hold my emotions together, when I couldn’t take it any longer, I watched myself grow frustrated. And unconsciously, I ended up yelling at other people. Frustration takes the form of anger.
One way or the other, your emotions will find a way to channel themselves out in the open. You cannot keep suffocating yourself and expect to act like a monk. When your body and mind cannot keep it any longer, you will find yourself getting angry, or distracted.
Either you allow yourself the freedom to feel all your emotions or your emotions will find a way to make you feel so weird that you won’t be able to recognize who have you become.
Better to cry and weep for your loss. To let the world know that this is not what you wanted. It’s better to let that sorrow find its place than to keep it inside you.
In the past three days, I cried my eyes out. I cried in front of my parents and siblings. I was trying not to because I thought that would be embarrassing. So all this long, I was trying to put up a happy face until I couldn’t any longer.
In fact, when I tried to keep a happy face, I kept questioning, ‘Why are they not taking my problem seriously? How could all of them be so joyful?’
It made me assume that maybe, they don’t care.
This is another reason why you shouldn’t keep calm. When you don’t show your truest emotions, you lie to those around you about how you feel. And if they don’t know how you feel, they cannot help you.
Then it doesn’t matter what you assume, it won’t be anyone else’s fault for not being able to read your mind.
So I yelled at God and screamed at him. I cursed myself and the damn doctors who said ‘it was nothing.’
Until I was done, I cried. I cried so hard that I felt lighter than air.
I screamed so much that I felt my lungs might have detoxified themselves.
All in all, by not trying to be happy, I feel better.
Conclusion; Scream:
I am not happy. I am not satisfied either. And when I am glued to my bed all day long with pain in my knee, I cannot focus on what I cannot control.
But I do feel better. I now feel ‘Okay, well, what’s next? What can I do now?’
And I think that’s better than meditating.
Take this article as your sign to scream. Scream so loud and clear that you can hear your own voice echoing. And cry so hard that you no longer feel the pressure of keeping it together.
Know that, your emotional digest is different. You don’t have to be happy all the time. And you don’t find the silver lining because surprise, sometimes, there is not any.
And just because you cry, or scream, it doesn’t mean you are weak or stupid or unfaithful. It means you are mature enough to not suffocate yourself. It means you know how to actually handle a tough situation.
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