Happy Atheist Forum

A few years ago a good friend of mine was caught in a bombing and was killed. Upon hearing the news, I cried. I'm not prone to crying, I don't think I'd cried since I was a boy when my first dog died, but this senseless loss affected me.

I've witnessed other things that cause other people to cry. One of my first girlfriends cried when her favorite sports team lost the Superbowl. My mom cried when she got her Masters after going back to school. Kate Winslet cried when she won an Oscar.

Crying is a very accurate way to determine what matters to people on a deeply emotional level. When I cried in response to my friend's death, it was because of my yearning for a more sensible world with less chaos and the realization that someone I was going to spend many years enjoying life with was now gone. This tells me I value reason even to the point where I expect reality to bend to my reason (an established belief system triggering an emotional response), and I value my ability to predict developing interpersonal connections. These things tell me a lot about myself.

What makes you cry, and what does that say about your own beliefs and understandings? Have you ever cried unexpectedly?

I cry all the time. I cry during romances when everything turns out happily, and I cry when they turn out poorly. I cry when fictional characters die, when they have touching moments, or even during heroic, and inspiring scenes. The other day I was taking a survey about my moral views, and one of the hypothetical moral dilemmas involving smothering a baby to death made me cry -- it was my agreeing that I would do it that got to me. That was unexpected, I have never cried over a hypothetical before. There was something about agreeing to be willing to smother a baby to death given a certain circumstance that really hit me.  

I don't weep all that often, but I get teary eyed to the degree I would consider crying all the time. Last time I really wept for a considerable length of time was my last breakup. I've never had any close friends or family die, though I have had some disown me -- that hurt, and still does.  

What does that say about my beliefs and understanding? I don't know. I'm terrible at psychoanalyzing myself.

I actually find myself holding back a few tears after watching various good films. The last one being Wall-E... I know, that sounds odd but i really appreciate the artwork and story telling from Pixar to the point that it almost moves me to tears. These aren't really cry tears though. It is more of a deep emotional response due to my overwhelming appreciation for storytelling in film. A fine book will also envoke this in me. I fear, when i finally get to see the last episode of BSG (tonight hopefully) i'll probably have a few tears welling up.

The last time i cried real deep sobs of great sadness was when i took my cat to the vets to be put down due to renal failure. The last time i saw him he was nuzzling the vet and purring even though he was in great pain. I loved that bloody cat. That was about 12 years ago.

Apart from that, i'm usually a rather unemotional person. Many things which move other people to tears simply do not work with me. I didn't cry when i found out my girlfriend of five years was cheating on me with my housemate. That deeply effected me in other ways though. I didn't cry when my auntie or grandmother died. I don't cry when i see images of famine or war. I certainly do not cry when much loved public figures die. It doesn't mean i don't care, i just deal with it in other ways.

I'm sorry for your loss Will. I know if i lost my best friend, Alex, i'd be completely beside myself. He is the brother i never had.

I tend to get angry, not upset. I think it goes back to when I was younger and my teachers would get angry and make fun of me if I cried. Ironically, I cried because anger would've gotten a worse response. So I just let the anger seethe inside of me. Which, in hindsight, may not be healthy. But it was the only option.

Over my many years in school, this became a habit, and old habits die hard.

well im an emotional person I choke very easily. Last night my eyes got teary form the end of the lord of the rings. again
I will cry if Im angry which makes it hard to argue with someone

Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto (and, by extension, the movie Shine)
What Dreams May Come
The Roger Waters song "Go Fishing"
Les Miserables (only with Colm Wilkinson and Philip Quast, though)

Media and art bother me, not news. Last time I really cried was my father's death in 2002. After that I've had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends die, and didn't shed a tear. Guess I'm desensitized.

My fiance is like you, Hitsumei. She watches these Korean soap operas on Youtube and I hear constant weeping and sniffing coming from her office.

The last few times I've cried have all been in a high state of emotion with my girlfriend. We weren't in a bad situation, it was just an overwhelming feeling, like I can get teary if I just sit there and have uninterrupted deep conversations with her. Only though if we're talking about deep things, we talked about hockey and sensory deprivation yesterday :p  But my deepest emotions recently have all come from my overwhelming feelings of love towards her.

Quote from: "curiosityandthecat"Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto (and, by extension, the movie Shine)
What Dreams May Come
The Roger Waters song "Go Fishing"
Les Miserables (only with Colm Wilkinson and Philip Quast, though)

Media and art bother me, not news.

Hmm... some songs for me. Like Gary Jules' version of Mad World, quite rarely.

Oh and I didn't cry but I sort of felt emotional towards the season 4 finale of House.

Quote from: "liveyoungdiefast"The last few times I've cried have all been in a high state of emotion with my girlfriend. We weren't in a bad situation, it was just an overwhelming feeling, like I can get teary if I just sit there and have uninterrupted deep conversations with her. Only though if we're talking about deep things, we talked about hockey and sensory deprivation yesterday :p  But my deepest emotions recently have all come from my overwhelming feelings of love towards her.

That's nice
Too many men hide that kind of stuff because of a misguided feeling of bravado.

Quote from: "liveyoungdiefast"Oh and I didn't cry but I sort of felt emotional towards the season 4 finale of House.

Oh, good lord, yes.  

Quote from: "curiosityandthecat"

Quote from: "liveyoungdiefast"Oh and I didn't cry but I sort of felt emotional towards the season 4 finale of House.

Oh, good lord, yes.  

You said the 'L' word :p

Quote from: "karadan"You said the 'L' word :p

This one:

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Haha.

I cried on the funeral of my aunt, who died two years ago of cancer. She was a real beautiful woman, strong of spirit, full of energy and also my godmother. In just a short period of time you could actually see the cancer destroying her body. At the end she decided that she didn't want to go through any more pain and suffering , so she asked her doctor to end her life (note: euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands).  Her funeral was the first atheist funeral  I'd ever attended and also the most emotional one.

Good topic--because
Of course I cry about real, personal loss; but I have often wondered about my tendency to cry in the face of extreme goodness, niceness, hope. Like at the end of the movie "Fahrenheit 451" where all the book people tell what books they "are." And I cry at the end of that "King of the Hill " episode where when the crazy Christian character, disillusioned by her alternate Hell House experience, weeps the words "Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat."'  then  they show  whole town getting back to trick or treating fun; or the scene in "Sullivans Travels" where the poor, auster Black church so graciously  hosts a movie night for prisoners. (Just writing about that one tears me up--what a great movie.)

i weep when i worry that people don't know that i can't  spell "austere."

I weep that people will think I can't spelll "austere."

 

I wept like a little kid during The Land Before Time, when Littlefoot's mom got killed and he sat by her body saying "Mama?  Mama?  Get up Mama!"  Gets me every time.

Quote from: "Enoch Root"I wept like a little kid during The Land Before Time, when Littlefoot's mom got killed and he sat by her body saying "Mama?  Mama?  Get up Mama!"  Gets me every time.

oh dont remind me. I might need tissues again

Gee willikers, what's DOESN'T make me cry?

A good chick flick (Beaches, Steel Magnolias).
Pam and Jim on "The Office."
My son getting a new belt in Taekwondo.
Seeing my husband cry during a touching scene in a movie or TV show.
Thinking about my dad.
My son's birthday (guaranteed tear-inducer).
Seeing my credit card bill.  ;-)
Reading the part in Harry Potter where Dumbledore dies.
The last chapter of the last Harry Potter book.
Thinking about Prop 8 passing.
Chopping an onion.

Really doesn't take much.  If I haven't cried in a week or so, I'll be more prone to having a really good cry for relatively no reason.  It's a release.  I could scream or yell, but that tends to scare the Kid.     My husband is quite emotional about movies and civil injustice, but not much else.

Last time I cried uncontrollably was when my female pug died last year from heat exhaustion. She was only 6 but overweight. I have cried uncontrollably when some of my cats got run over and killed by automobiles in our last house.....I cry when something touches me......a movie can do that....a song......I cried when I lost my father in 1999 to cancer.
I cry when I am in pain....I cry for lots of reasons......

The only time I cried as an adult was an involuntary reaction to a hysterical comedy film I was watching. There are things that make me sad, but I haven't wept since I was a child.... so I really don't know.

I cry most days. I'm a man and I try not to let people notice. But really anything I perceive as significant can make me cry. Usually its positive things. For example, today I learned that Charles Darwin had a habit of walking several circuits of a path he had made while he was thinking. It occurred to me that I could have the same thing and I made three circuits of my office while I was thinking over a problem. The connection was significant to me at the time and I cried.