A few years ago, I underwent unexpected triple bypass heart surgery. There were several subtle changes that accompanied this event. It truly was life changing, but in ways you might not expect. For example, today I find myself unable to hold back the tears while watching acts of courage, sacrifice or deep personal love. Why, I reasoned, would this be so? Could it be that the heart, as myth and legend have it, is the seat of emotion?
I began to share my experience with others who had gone through major surgery. I discovered that they, too, were unable to restrain the tears. Some of the men I spoke to were rough and tough cowboy types: former football players, truck drivers and the like -- men you simply would not expect to be easily emotional. Why? What had happened? Could it be a byproduct of the anesthesia?
I did a little more research. I found that many people were reporting a special new sensitivity: empathy following surgery. Some of the surgeries were not particularly major. One anesthesiologist on the Internet, Gareth S Kantor, M.D., theorized that it could be due to a repressed memory about the surgery itself. That's a guess, which he admitted. Unfortunately, as Dr. Kantor was quick to point out, anesthesiologists typically do not see their patients in the days that follow surgery.
Although the reports are many, the answers are few and none are definitive. I suppose that the "post-general anesthetic effect" of tearing up over things that formerly would never have produced a single wet eye could be due to some cognitive impairment -- brain damage. That's an interesting question for the neurologist, but from my perspective, and the input of those I have spoken with, it's really more a matter of feeling somehow more mortal.
In my mind, the solemnity of major surgery reminds us that our mortal self is not all there is. Once we recognize this -- truly cashing in the meaning, not unlike those near-death experiences -- our lives change. The empathy arises particularly when we behold the glory of humanness on display, and that is why a sad movie can trigger the crying.
I first experienced this with a "chick flick" that I saw with my wife. It was an ordinary story of a relationship between two people who loved one another to the core. Through this and that, their relationship came close to ending, indeed you thought it was over, and then through a few near magical events, they were brought back together to live happily ever after. Previously, I had watched many of these kind of films with my wife because I love her, but I generally failed to appreciate them. Not this time. I wept during the happy ending. "What the hell is this?" I asked myself.
For years, I practiced criminalistics, and my life was threatened more than once. For recreation, I trained horses, and sometimes these were wild horses rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As a boy, I was in more fights than I can remember. I don't cry... or didn't!
A day or two later, we watched another movie -- this time one to my liking, "Armageddon." In the end, Bruce Willis puts his daughter's intended fiancé on the ship for home, and in that way takes his place -- a place that had been drawn by straws for the one who would remain on the asteroid, set the charge, explode it and thereby save earth. Throughout the movie, the two men have been at each other's throat, but Willis has promised his daughter that her fiance would come home. Hell, tears come to my eyes as I write this, so obviously I cried!
The glory of the human condition is beyond words. As a species, we can be so cruel, so conniving, so filled with enmity; and yet, there is this other side: the side of humanness that reaches beyond the needs of the individual, that is willing to pay the highest price for the good of our fellow human, that knows no sacrifice too great for those we love and cherish, that simply is proof, in and of itself, of the Higher Creator who endowed the species with the ultimate "good," or god, within. It is the portrayal of this side of humanness that evokes the tears.
Perhaps if our species knew no temporal limits we would fail to recognize the ultimate good that we are all wired to express, to share, to be. Perhaps the nature of major surgery reminds us all that we could be out of here, figuratively speaking, in the next breath. We are eternal, not from our indulgences with the outer world, but from who we truly are, at our innermost level of being.
This is a reminder that opens us up to the real beauty of the world we live in and the people we are. Our human potential is so incredible that without its glory, I wonder if we would even need tears. It is for this reason that I find great value in mortality.
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I just think that there are many things that can open our hearts, and life-threatening surgery is certainly one of them, but not the only one by far. And that's good, because there are sure a lot of us guys that could use some softening and empathy.
When this pathway is then balanced (perhaps by an operation) the emotions can now flow. And really, what does it matter as to the “why” as long as the individual is living a rich, full and empowered life.
I’d rate that exercise in the top three of emotional times alone.
I was still recovering when I boarded a jet and move from Washington State to Thailand. That was essentially letting go of my previous life, family, et al.
So, I don’t know if my experience is close to other parameters, but now that you mention it …. Maybe I am more aware of tear generating emotions welling up; and I do think I am less inclined to turn away from them.
My eyes do leak once in a while - a heck of a lot more than I was younger. (61 on the forth of March.)
For me, the value of mortality is much like what jf12 said below, although my life so far has been nothing like a vale of tears. But I have a Home to go to and will be delighted to get there and be with the person I love most in this world or any other.
Seven years ago I needed to undergo brain surgery to correct damage caused by an accident at work. The surgery was to last 5+ hours and I was cautioned that I may suffer a stroke, blindness, be unable to distinguish odors - and to put things in order just in case...EEEEEGGGGGAAAAAADDDD!
After visiting with my family physicial for the pre operative physical and nearly freaking out in his office he calmed me by explaining that I had to "let go" and trust those around me...a zen experience if you will.
The operation was a success (my kids said I finally had a brain) and upon waking from the anasthesia I knew that I had to completely change a number of things in my life...and yes, I cry easily now and never did before. My crying comes not from movies but from thoughts and new experiences with my wife and children.
The night before my operation I was home and couldn't sleep. At 1AM I began to write letters to my wife and children individually. Those letters were some of the best writing I have ever committed to paper. The letters were sealed and handed to my wife just prior to the orderly taking me from the admissions area. I told her what they were and to open them only if everything went wrong.
We all opened the letters after the surgery with my consent and we all cried.