We’ve been crying a lot of tears this past week here in Chiapas. Tears of repentance, tears of being overwhelmed, and tears of happiness. As a white Anglo-Saxon male, I don’t understand it all. In an effort to understand this business of crying, I read the following report by Mary Beth Swan:

A happy cry averages two minutes; a sad cry averages seven minutes.

Crying in a newborn begins shortly after being born and indicates the baby’s lungs are functional. A baby has several distinguishable cries, including an attention cry, hunger cry, separation cry, and pain cry.

Between the ages of 15-30 women cry five times more frequently than men. Women’s tears flow more than men’s.

The top reasons for crying are sadness, anger, sympathy, and fear.

A herd of elephants exhibited trumpeting shrill cries, and tears as they apparently mourned the death of seven of their own who had been killed by a train. The accident occurred on November 15, 2001 in India’s state of Assam. A ranking police officer named Khagen Sangmai was quoted, “About a hundred elephants were circling the pachyderms that lay near the railway tracks, with tears rolling down their eyes.”

Crying is a means by which toxins, excess chemicals, and excess proteins are removed from the body. This “cleansing” occurs with emotional crying.

According to the column “Mind Matters,” the average adult in the U.S. cries no less than three or four times a month. Varying neonatal studies provide a 30-minute to two-hour daily window as the average time an infant cries per day.

An organization called Grief Recovery shares some intriguing advice to those who walk with those who grieve. What are your thoughts about what is written? “We must still ask, what purpose or value, if any, does crying have in recovery from loss. Let us say that crying can represent a physical demonstration of emotional energy attached to a reminder of someone or something that has some significance for you. We encourage someone who is crying to ‘talk while you cry.’ The emotions are contained in the words the griever speaks, not in the tears that they cry.”- www.grief-recovery.com