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Growing up in a Latin American household, you’re taught from a very early age that bygone adage:
“Boys don’t cry.”
Or how Abuela more succinctly put it: “no llores!” (don’t cry!)
At the age of 18, I made my way to the realm of professional sports where putting a lid on your emotions and feelings has been part of the unwritten rules and code of ethics for what feels like centuries.
So it’s safe to say that much of my life experiences have taught me that as a young man, especially a Latino professional athlete, I’m not supposed to be emotional, get in touch with my feelings, be sensitive, or do anything that could be perceived as “weak” or “unmanly.”
Unfortunately (but also fortunately), I have a mother who did everything she could possibly do to let me know that I was loved, that I was cared for, that I mattered, that no matter what I did or who I was, even if I cried or showed weakness, she was still going to be there for me.
Yes, sometimes that crying came from well-deserved butt-whoopings and chancletazos (aka sandal slaps to my back-side), but she never made me feel less-than for getting emotional or being sensitive.
To this day, when I go home to visit family, I will lay down on the couch and put my head on my mom’s lap while she gently caresses my head and plays with my hair. Sometimes we’ll have deep talks about life and we’ll both get teary-eyed.
Does this make me weak? I don’t think so.
I am extremely thankful to my mom for giving me a foundation of love, affection, empathy and understanding that allowed me to not get too sucked into the machismo culture that is prevalent in the Latin and professional sports culture.
The funny paradox of it all is that there is this notion that crying, especially for men, is a sign of weakness. But I disagree. If crying is considered weak, and not crying is considered “manly” and how men are supposed to behave, we can deduce that crying, for a man, would be going against the grain, against the norm.
To me, I don’t think going against the grain, against the norm of how we’re supposed to be, in any situation, is weakness at all. I believe it takes a ton of strength to open up and say “hey world, I know this is not how I’m supposed to think, speak or act, but I don’t care, this is who I truly am and I’m not afraid to show it.”
That is not weakness, that is the epitome of strength!
It’s easy to go along with how society says we’re supposed to act and this notion of “boys will be boys.” It’s a lot tougher to break that mold and give the world the middle finger and show that you are not going to be defined or live your life the way someone else deemed fit.
Refer to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, or Steve Jobs for examples.
Taking the road less traveled and finding your own true, unique, authentic voice takes an immense amount of courage, vulnerability, fear-facing and stepping outside of your comfort zone that is anything but weakness.
This isn’t to say that we should cry just to cry, or we should use crying to try and evoke sympathy and to manipulate others and get things that we want. That is not authentic crying. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t suppress our true feelings. To me, the best cries are the ones that unleash like a broken levee when we’re trying with every single ounce of strength we have to hold the tears back. That’s real, therapeutic, necessary crying, not those crocodile tears that we put on in a situation where we feel like maybe we should be getting emotional.
There is no reason why men should be taught to suppress those real emotions when we feel them come up. Any man that says they’ve never felt these emotions coarse through their veins is BS. Whether we are men, women, children, gay, straight, black, or white, when it comes down to it we are ALL human beings. And being a human being comes with feelings and emotions, it’s what makes being human and being alive so amazing. Imagine we were just like robots and never felt anything, how miserable of a life would that be?
There’s no reason why these ways of being should be considered “gay” or “feminine” like many of them seem to be labeled. Perhaps that’s why there is this hesitance to cry because men are so worried about being perceived as anything other than “manly.”
Things that make me cry:
-Movies (if you haven’t watched “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” you definitely should)
-Touching Commercials (every time those ASPCA ones come on, I have to change the channel)
-Public displays of affection (when I see that special bond between parents and their kids)
-Text messages in my family group thread (childhood memories, touching words, pictures of my nieces and nephews, you name it!)
-Sappy greeting cards (if the card doesn’t make me tear up, it’s not good enough for my recipient)
-Memorable experiences shared with loved ones (my wedding day)
I don’t think any of these situations make me less manly.
Does being in touch with my feelings and having a deep sense of empathy really make me less of a man?
I used to have a sense of shame and try to hide my tears in these instances, not anymore.
As research shows, in this article by Andrew Reiner, one study out of Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in 1999 found that 6-month-old boys were more likely to show “facial expressions of anger, to fuss, to gesture to be picked up” and “tended to cry more than girls… boys were also more socially oriented than girls,” the report said — more likely to look at their mother and “display facial expressions of joy.”
It’s ingrained in us from the moment we come out of the womb, but for some reason or another we beat that out of our young men, figuratively and literally, and tell them that it’s wrong, that it’s a sign of weakness.
Crying is not weak. It’s not only a sign of strength, especially for men, but a sign of our humanity.
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Previously published on Medium.
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