I was FaceTiming w a 2nd grade cousin the other day who asked how I was, and I’ve been pretty emotional lately and tried not to cry, but did a bit. The kid asked why I was sad. I wasn’t; I was happy that I was standing up on crutches rather than laying down in bed (which I’d done for 7.5 weeks pre/post surgery).
So I tried to explain that sometimes adults cry when they are happy.
I don’t think kids do this. Thinking back, I think age 18 is the first time I cried because I was happy or out of relief. I’d had something major turn around health-wise (not related to current stuff). My second one was the finish of my first marathon and that was happy tears.
If you cry sometimes because you are happy, do you remember the first time you did so, and why you did so?
I don’t remember ever crying out of happiness. I have laughed so hard I cried. I’ve cried over something positively emotionally touching but not what I would call happiness.
Being happy, to me, is a feeling of wellbeing, contentment and peace. I’ve never cried in that emotional state. I have cried at something positive i.e. at a scene in a movie like two people that love each other being reunited because it was touching and out of empathy but not happiness.
I’m a middle aged dude from the Midwest, so crying for any reason isn’t really in the cultural repertoire. Growing up, it was treated like masturbation - everyone knew it would happen to everyone at some point, but you did it furtively, quickly, and hoped nobody would notice.
First time I remember a happy ‘got something in my eye’ moment was on my high school swim team. We had a good team, and the assistant coach was a serious trainer who eventually went to Colorado to work with the Olympic team. But, Coach Steve was heavily invested in the whole team. If you put your heart into the work, he put his heart into you.
When I was a senior, there was a freshman on the squad who was, by any objective measure, not a talented swimmer. But he was a good dude and worked his ass off. At his last meet of the year he came in dead last in his heat, but he beat goal time by more than 5 seconds. The frosh had this look of this astonishment when he looked at the clock. Coach Steve went absolutely bananas. The kid got out of the water and Coach Steve soaked his shirt and tie giving kid a huge hug, screaming his fucking lungs out.
Seeing a coach who was really good and worked with national and international caliber athletes get the same level of fired up about the slowest guy on the team made me lose it a little bit.
I’m not sure people cry from happiness so much as cry from being emotionally overwhelmed, which can result from positive emotions as well as negative. Every once i awhile, my YouTube feed will have videos of kids crying because they got a new puppy or kitten. It’s not so much that they’re crying from joy, as that they have so much emotion they don’t know what to do with it.
Personally, like any good self respecting modern white educated middle class man, I’ve got my emotions locked down tight, so any weepyness I might be inclined to is strictly bottled up down deep where it surely won’t ever have any negative psychological effects….
Maybe not the first time - probably not, in fact - but I will say that when I saw D’Wife enter the church in her wedding gown, I TOTALLY welled up, and might’ve been on the verge of sobbing
It’s very rare for me to cry for anything but sadness. I cried once while playing with my 1st born son. Not so much happiness just weirdly overcome with emotion and it overflowed out my eyes.
Other than that one time I am pretty much dead inside.
I don’t know if I have ever cried out of happiness. But one I find odd, it is very common for there to be tears running down my cheeks at live concerts. And it doesn’t have to be anything happy or sad. Just getting into the music does it.
Of course I also cry when I buy the tickets and see how much they are.
Did you ban a particularly problematic LR member? /Pink
I don’t remember crying from happiness, but there have been very random times I’ve had a rush of emotion come up unexpectedly.
A friend of mine died a while ago. I didn’t cry when I found out. Didn’t cry at the funeral. 6 months later between dropping my kid off at daycare and driving to work I just started bawling over it and had to pull over.
This sort of long delayed reaction is fairly typical for me for some reason.
Yes, and I will unapologetically brag about my daughter for minute…
She is a college senior and law school applicant. I have watched her work incredibly hard in college; in her coursework, prepping for and crushing the LSAT (after hundreds of hours of practicing), serving in leadership roles in Mock Trial and now as President of undergraduate law review, etc.
So, the admissions are coming in and she is being offered 85% to 100% scholarships to schools ranked in the 20s and 30s. She’s still waiting to hear from the top, top schools. I didn’t even know that “free law degree” is a thing.
In sharing this with my own parents, it suddenly hit me. I don’t know if you’d call it tears of happiness or pride, but when my voice caught in my throat, I knew where it was going. Tears.
EDIT: I thought it was the most recent time you cried out of happiness, not the first time. That I do not recall. : )