Like the Eskimos and their 52 words for snow, we have a lot of words for crying. Weeping, sobbing, bawling, lacrimation. Eyes misting over, wailing, choking up. We burst into tears, dissolve into sobs, break down at a funeral, or lose it watching Bambi. We bewail and lament, shed tears and cry a river – sometimes we even cry our eyes out!
And the reasons we cry are multifold, too. We cry when we’re sad, happy, stressed, relieved, exhausted, angry, in pain, disappointed – the list goes on and on. But do we cry and what purpose does it serve? No other living thing in the animal kingdom cries when it’s upset, and when we already have a perfectly functional language system to communicate with each other through, why do we resort to such primal behaviour
