Everyday Canvas

Shedding Tears?

Prompt: Tear Jerkers
Have you ever cried over a movie or serials or sad novels? What do you think brought on your tears?

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Crying over fictional works? I might have shed tears over stuff like that a few times, but I can only recall one such spectacular incident when I was a teenager. Funny, I can remember it even after several decades!

A friend of my family had invited me and a friend of mine who was a year younger than me to the movies. I think the name of the movie was Christine, and the actors were then-famous Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. It was the story of a love affair in which the male lead was killed in a duel at the end.

At the end of the movie, both I and my friend were in tears. We cried all the way home as the three of us walked, and our poor host was shocked by our reaction. He kept saying, "He shouldn't have been killed, but he could have been wounded on his arm." Today, I recall him repeating those words over and over more than the movie itself.

Why did we cry like that? I think, now, that it was more hormonal than anything else, as we were both in our teens. My friend, however, might have had a better reason than mine, as she had been made to stop a love relationship with a navy officer through her family's intervention.

Our and others' tears over a movie, serial, or novel may have to do with emotional connections to the story or the characters. Then, maybe, we, as human beings, are wired to feel empathy and we extend it to fictional characters.

Then, we might be releasing suppressed emotions from our daily lives, too. We cry because the story reminds us about our own losses and struggles.

Also, of course, the kudos for our tears can go to the beauty of the storytelling, writers, actors, and people who create such visual or written sad pieces.

All I can say is that tears can be caused by a multiple of factors, but ours when we were teenagers were the tears of our emotional reaction to the love-gone-bad theme. Still, I can't help but laugh now, when I recall the antics of that day when we watched "Christine."

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