Crying, Strength and Weakness

"What doesn’t kill you makes you smaller" – Mario

***

"People cry, not because they're weak. It's because they've been strong for too long"

This is another of those throwaway phrases that many people love.

Yet, what does it really mean? If we rephrase it, it comes out as the following restatements:

1) Weak people don't cry
2) People who aren't strong for too long don't cry
3) Only people who are strong for too long cry

From being a sign of weakness, crying has somehow now been transformed into a sign of strength, albeit overextended strength. This would befuddle not only those crying due to weakness or a problem (and possibly direct them from help they could well benefit from) but also those who know people who cry at the drop of a pin.

Of course one fudge is to say that nobody is weak, and we only have strong people who do not overextend themselves, and strong people who do.

Yet this is sophistry, for if no one is weak, then nobody can be strong either.