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Have you ever kissed away someone’s tears?
Tasted the salt that was rubbed on their wounds?
Decried the bitterness of what befell them?
Offered yourself as a balm?
Tears are drawn from the well of the soul.
Tears are not manufactured, like drops in a bottle.
They already exist inside us.
We are born with our tears.
Tears flow when we need them.
Tears are a sign.
The sign says we need to be comforted, that our own well of comfort, our source of self-soothing, is dry.
Yes, our eyes flood, but our well is emptying.
We are tapped out from giving endlessly and not receiving, or not knowing how to receive what is offered.
Or we are not tapped in, our roots drawn away from a toxic source, scrambling and digging, seeking the nourishment of clarity, the strength of love that flows and fills us, the lifeblood that enables us to stand, reach, and grow, to leaf out and shelter, to flower and flourish.
Or we are leaking, losing water faster than we can take it in.
The roots of cry begin in begging and imploring, and beyond the sound of crying, the call for succor, tears make the call visible, as they flow from the eyes themselves.
The word we use for tears is telling. It also means tears, as in rips, splits, separations, and injury visited on fabric that was once whole. I believe the tears we weep embody the tears we’ve suffered to the lining of our wells, the lining that protects our vital essence and prevents our own sacred water from being drained away.
Tears, the rips, cause pain that needs healing. Tears call for comfort, for someone to comfort us, but so often, this is a silent call, and the tear itself a flawed effort to comfort ourselves, to split ourselves around pain too unbearable to integrate, too intense to feel, too unfathomable to accept, so unfathomable that it stays hidden deep inside until the other kind of tears flow.
Comfort is not a state of being, the state of being comfortable. To comfort is to act, to draw on our own well, to tap in to our own source, and strengthen someone who is torn and tearing, to render assistance and start to repair the rend, to gather and stitch with solace, to mend the holes in covering for recovery, to restore a tattered shroud to a glowing robe of glory.
Is someone you know crying now?
The pursuit of comfort is not about making our own lives easier and softer.
If you want to chase comfort, if you truly want to catch it, you can’t run from those who are crying, you can’t deny those who need a drink from your well.
Originally published on Tom Aplomb and republished to Medium.
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Tears un-shed become the acids that corrode us from the inside out. Some of us are too far gone…