I don't know about you but I've shed quite a few tears for many reasons as I'm sure you all have too. The science of tears is something I have always been very interested in. Questions like "why do we cry?" or even "how do we cry?" is something that has always baffled me. For that reason, I decided to do some research and try to answer a few of my questions on the topic.

So, naturally, I turned to google first. I typed in the search bar, "why do we cry?" That leads me to an article that Time magazine wrote on the subject, called "Why Do We Cry? The Science of Crying." I learned that the whole action of crying has been a huge mystery for a long time. Even Charles Darwin himself deemed emotional tears "purposeless". I even found out that humans are the only creatures in the world that cry because of an emotional response. Other animals can cry but only because of pain or irritation. This further fueled my curiosity and more questions came into my head. How can we just not know? Is there ongoing research happening to find out?

I did some more digging on the subject. I found out that even today there are scientific doubts about whether tears serve any other purpose than to lubricate our eyes. But there has to be more. It turns out crying has gone unstudied for quite some time for a few reasons. One reason I found was crying is just so mysterious, no one knows where to start. The second reason being, scientists have always been more focused on the emotions and not the physical reaction to that emotion. For example, science is more focused on love as an emotion rather than the butterflies you get in your stomach in response.

I found another article from Sploid magazine called, "Tears of Joy and Tears of Sadness Look Different under the Microscope." From this article, I learned that tears can represent more emotions than just sadness. There is a range of emotions or sensations that can make us cry such as happy, strong scents (onions), grief, anger, surprise, and even empathy. In fact, there are three different types of tears and they all have their own chemical composition. I found out that even our ancestors were stumped. They thought that, because of all the reasons someone might have to cry, tears originated from our hearts. That, when we feel love, for example, our hearts heated up creating water vapor that then rose and came out of our eyes.

After some more reading, I came across an article that says not everyone can even cry! Scientists express that they don't know the cause yet. They do say that tears have a huge role in human bonding. Because of this, people who don't or can't cry are less connected in relationships and have a tendency to come off as cold.

The last bit of information I found was the myth that crying makes you feel better. We've all heard someone say or said ourselves: "I'll feel better after a good cry." Well, it turns out that is completely untrue. Studies show that crying doesn't actually make you feel better. The idea that crying made us feel better was a theory for a while so because it was proven wrong we're back in square one.

So after reading all that, it seems we really don't know anything about tears. That is true because the modern science of tears is still a fairly new concept and only recently did we even start asking questions about it. What we do know is that crying proves our humanity. It brings us together and unites us as a species. I hope you now know more than you did about the science of tears and remember crying is natural. We all do it, for the most part.