Cry

Maybe no one told you there is strength in your tears.
(Kelly Clarkson, If No One Will Listen)

 

I once heard a Christian pastor explaining how it is that all people have sinned, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans. Anticipating his practitioners’ questions, he also explained that even babies sin. “Have you ever heard a baby cry when it’s hungry?” he asked. He then went on to explain that, when a baby cries in this circumstance, it’s actually a lie, because…

…actually, it’s hard to say exactly why he thinks it’s a lie—maybe because the baby doesn’t actually need anything, I think was his point(?)

At the time, this struck me as odd. I didn’t necessarily have an opinion on it one way or the other, but it sounded peculiar. Could it really be a “sin” to cry?

Now that I have a son, I have a more solid opinion on this pastor’s idea.

And I think it’s bananas.

Never have I thought Emerson was trying to lie to me when he was crying. When he cries, it’s because there’s something he needs or wants, and he doesn’t have the words to communicate it in a more appropriate, agreeable, effective, concrete way.

Crying is a form of communication. In fact, it’s our first form of communication. Before we have words—before we even have smiles*—we have tears.

Tears, then, must be important.

It was then that I realized that forever is in your eyes
– the moment I saw you cry.
(Mandy Moore, Cry)

Not only is crying a form of communication for babies; it is for you and me as well. It was true then and it’s true now.

We cry when words fail, because crying is more primal. It is more intimate, and it expresses what words simply can’t.

All this to say:

Why do we tell people to stop crying when we’re trying to comfort them? Maybe they have something they need to express, and there isn’t any other way.

Why is crying considered a sign of weakness, or of being overly-sensitive? Crying is more real and more raw than language. What is “weak” about this?

Don’t apologize for all the tears you’ve cried
– you’ve been way too strong now for all your life.
(Mat Kearney, Closer to Love)

Maybe, conversely, we would do well to cry more often. Not that we need to look for opportunities to cry, of course, but…maybe we shouldn’t be so judgmental or annoyed or put-out when the people around us cry. And maybe, just as importantly, we shouldn’t be so adamant about fighting back our own tears.

Maybe crying is just a way of asking for empathy.

I saw my tears are in your eyes.
(Michael W. Smith, Everybody Free)

* * * 

*This is true—maybe I was naïve, but I didn’t realize that babies don’t know how to smile when they’re first born. I didn’t learn this until Emerson was born, and I had to ask why he wasn’t smiling.

Thomas

First of all, a tiny preface:

Yes, I like playing video games. Despite this, I’ve tried to avoid the topic of video games in my blog here. I know they simply don’t interest everyone, and, anyway, I have plenty of other things to talk about besides nerding it up and talking about whatever cool new game I played recently.

However…

Thomas Was Alone is a masterpiece.

The narrative structure presented in the game Thomas Was Alone is truly exceptional, easily on par with some great post-modern pieces of literature.

The plot is extremely simplistic: some lines of computer code become self-aware, including the little red rectangle Thomas, who finds himself inside a set of geometric cells. There is portal which leads him out of one cell and into another, and along the way he meets several friends—other quadrilaterals of various sizes and colors—all of whom have distinct personalities.

Yes, rectangles.

The official website for the game describes it as “a minimalist game about friendship and jumping and floating and bouncing and anti-gravity.” This sums up the gameplay, sure. But the characterizations are brilliant, evoking personalities that go deeper than many popular movies and books out there.

If a game can make you care about sentient rectangles—make you anxious about if they’ll achieve their goals and learn to work together and overcome their self-esteem issues—then it must be doing something very right.

Thomas Was Alone could have easily been a children’s picture book (except, perhaps, for a single use of the word “damn,” a few minor pop-culture references, and the highly-conceptual nature of various ideas here and there). On the printed page, however, we would have lost the British narrator, Danny Wallace. A word on Danny Wallace: I’d even consider listening to Twilight if Danny Wallace narrated it; he was that good.*

Throughout the 100 levels of the game, each includes 1-4 sentences/lines of story, many of which include the thoughts of the various quadrilaterals—let’s average it to about 250 narrated lines.

All this to say:

Utilizing only about 250 lines of text (in other words, about 4-6 Microsoft Word pages) and a few variously-colored rectangles, Thomas Was Alone achieves more with its structure and its characterizations than many feature films or full-length novels out there. It is a brilliantly told story that any writer should take seriously, regardless of his/her impressions of video games.

Really, it’s nothing to me if you play it. But it might be something to you if you do.

http://www.mikebithellgames.com/thomaswasalone/

*Actually, this probably isn’t exactly true. I don’t think anything could make me want to listen to the Twilight audio book. But Danny Wallace is as good as they come.

A Thought on Romeo and Juliet

I think that one of the problems with our society is that we have this intense focus on romance. We have thousands and thousands of books and movies and songs all about romance, its ups and downs and inspirations and shortcomings. It doesn’t help that we’re barraged with the Romeo and Juliet story—or allusions to it—every which direction we turn, in our English classes and in the movies and by approximately half of all Taylor Swift’s songs and in books about vampires and their pedophilic, forbidden love with human girls.

This single-mindedness when it comes to romantic love, however, causes us to lose sight of any other sort of love that is out there. Love has many faces. There is not only one type of love, one highest type, one most fulfilling type. And the longer we continue to look at only the once face of love, the more we allow the others to slip away from us.

And so it is that the loss of a romantic love is considered and felt to be such a tragedy. If you have boiled your entire love experience down into only this one type of love, then of course it feels like a tragedy; you have not allowed yourself to become familiar with any other face of love.

The real tragedy with Romeo and Juliet is not that they couldn’t be together, or that their love was forbidden, or even that they died. No, the real tragedy is that they willingly closed their eyes to anything but each other. Romeo mistook Juliet’s face as the face of love—as if love couldn’t look like or be anything else. And Juliet did the same of Romeo—as if love could only come from him and from nowhere else.

This isn’t sweet or heart-melting, and it certainly isn’t a good example of what love can and should be.

Rather, this intense focus on romance is much more harmful than anything else. We feel unfulfilled if a romantic love is not in our life or in our present circumstances, because it is the only type of love that we fully accept, the only type that we choose to let in, to make us feel satisfied. And so we don’t allow ourselves to see or to feel all of the other loves that are out there, pressing in on us. We feel as though we are no longer loved once our boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse leaves us or dies or disappears or betrays us, even though there are a great many other faces of love ready to show us how important we are, and how much of a light we bring into the darkness of the world. Surely all love is a light, a sun. But we only allow ourselves to see the small flicker that is romantic love.

Please, forget about Romeo and Juliet. Their tragedy is their own; it does not need to be yours and mine.

Know that you are loved. Every moment of every day you are surrounded by love. Of course it might not always be romance. But it is love, of one sort or another, and it is enough. At least, it should be—we are the ones who choose to not let it be enough.

You Too?

Before the trip was even over, Michelle asked us all our favorite moment from the trip. It was hard to answer this. Not because I didn't have one, per se, but because it was difficult to explain the why.

For a few moments here and there, I allowed myself to think that Denver isn't as impressive as I had imagined it would be. But this isn't very fair; certainly Denver left an impression on me. If nothing else, it is impressive by the sheer fact that I will think of it again.

I will think of how sad it was to say goodbye to my son, knowing that I wouldn't see him for 36 hours, and that there was simply no way to get him to understand that this was happening.

I will think of hearing Randy be completely absorbed in his element, getting the chance to talk about the history of rock and of radio and of how we define musical genres.

I will think of how tightly I had to grip the steering wheel as we passed through Pueblo, because the wind there can be insane.

I will think of how I very nearly lost my mind in Manitou—but we don't speak of that anymore.

I will think of the fact that there are times you're actually supposed to throw spoons in a movie theatre.

I will think of outdoor escalators.

I will think of how surprised I was to learn that Mt. Rushmore isn't nearly as far as I had always assumed.

I will think of eating Taco Bell three times in two days.

But mostly I will think of the stories we tell, and of how no matter how well you know someone, there's always more there to learn. It's a beautiful thing that we can never fully know someone else, that there will always be just a tiny bit of uncrossable distance between ourselves and any given human being out there.

That said, I think my answer to Michelle's question would have to be:

My favorite moment was the stretch between Manitou and Denver, when I simply sat back and listened to their stories.

There is something profound and beautiful to be said of hearing your words come out of someone else's mouth, to hear that someone else shares your same thoughts and feelings and joys and frustrations and doubts.

I once read that a friend is born in the moment when you can look at someone else and say, “Wait—you too?” and I think this is very true.

What is also true though, is that any friendship can—in fact, should—be full of these moments all throughout, not just at the very beginning.

We share words, and sometimes in doing so, we find that we've always shared thoughts and ideas and beliefs too, without even realizing it.