When the Los Angeles Lakers lost to San Antonio Spurs in 2002-2003 NBA Western Conference Finals, Kobe Bryant was shown bursting into prompt and understandable tears. His voice crackling and shaking while being interviewed live. Likewise, Michael Jordan also burst into tears during the 1997-1998 season when he hit the winning shot that gave the Chicago Bulls it's sixth world championship in eight years.

What makes us cry when we are happy? One of the unexpected learning's for me in being a parent has been discovering how we develop the ability or tendency to cry out of happiness. I would never have thought about this if I hadn't observed it in my children.

My kids could never figure their grandma out: I remember them staring at her if she got weepy in church at a joyful song or at a happy ending in a movie: "Mommy Day, you're crying!" one was sure to exclaim and she would quickly try to shush them. My mom would tell them she
was crying because she was happy, which confused them even more: as a child, you cry if you are sad, hurt, lonely or upset, but when you are happy? For them it's totally ridiculous.

Somewhere during the late teenage years (but later than I would have expected) children seem to finally develop this ability or inclination to cry when they are happy.

My thoughts on what makes people cry when sad or happy suddenly clicked when a friend lend me a copy of "The Propeth" by Kahlil Gibran, and I came about the nature of joy and sorrow. I've heard or read this many times before, but sometimes things click in a new way:
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is
only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."


The prophet concludes by saying joy and sorrow are inseparable.

If that is true, I guess seeing my children not being able to cry happy tears is a good thing-because it shows they have been protected enough or lucky enough to be spared deep and great sadness in their youth. It is only as we have experienced pain, grief and setback that we then better know the blessing of health and wellness, healing, and overcoming problems. Part of maturation involves experiencing enough of life that we have gone through tough times, death of a loved one, illness, injury, hospitalizations. We have either personally or vicariously suffered through dreadful events: murder, kidnapping, and so can feel joy and tears of empathy when there are happy endings to terrible stories.

Thus deep happiness creates the joy that then prompts tears of sorrow if and when the happiness is taken away. So even if we must shed tears in mourning and grief, deep down we can know that we feel grieved because we have also experienced the kind of love and relationship that gave us joy.

Joy and sorrow: opposite sides of the same coin. Knowing that we can't have one without the other helps to heal the grief and sorrow.