WHY AM I SUCH A CRY-BABY NOWADAYS?

DEAR Bel,

THIS may seem a trivial problem but in the past five years or so (I’m in my mid-60s) I have become a terrible blubber. Films, music, plays all set me off. I cry at weddings and weep at funerals even when the person isn’t strongly connected to me.

I even cry when I think about someone famous has died, who I regarded highly, such as George Michael. Reading things can set me off, too.

It’s becoming embarrassing and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t understand it either. I wasn’t like this until recently.

I didn’t cry once when my father died when I was young, and I’ve only cried once about my cancer diagnosis a decade ago. I’m still under the care of an oncologist but the cancer is, thank the Lord, not active at the moment.

I’ve not generally a pessimist and have much to be thankful for, so why have I become such a weepy cry-baby and what can be done? CHLOE

HIS email seems to me to be very sensible. I have yet to meet a feeling human being who doesn’t think there’s a lot to cry about these days. But why am I specifying ‘these days’?

War and suffering are timeless; but right now rolling news plus online content means it’s hard to escape from events that break your heart or drive you mad, which might spark a different kind of tears.

Then, just as large events we cannot control have always been emotive, so too have the important landmarks in individual lives: births, marriages, deaths.

You cry at weddings and funerals because you feel intensely involved with human life and death and identify with the feelings of those around you.

Films, books and music can act on the emotions because they express versions of universal suffering, so that the tears we may shed are about much more than the story, words or melody.

Those tears of compassion are for the human condition which, of course, we all share.

These are the lacrimae rerum meaning ‘the tears for/ of things.’ It comes from Virgil’s great poem The Aeneid, when the hero is inspired to reflect on the Trojan War which drove him to flee, and on the deaths of family and friends - the mortal fates that always touch the heart.

I sense you are feeling the passing of the years. In addition that cancer diagnosis ten years ago must have been a shock, and each year you cope with underlying worry.

This week our hearts and prayers must be with the King as he faces treatment with his customary sense of courage and steadfast duty.

There’s much to be sad about - so is it surprising you feel deeply? I can’t read Oscar Wilde’s stories aloud to my granddaughter without starting to cry. Just try, The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant - too moving and beautiful for words.

By now you’ll realise I don’t want you to be cured of this malady. There are so many things in life that ‘catch the heart off guard and blow it open’ (to use a beautiful line by Seamus Heaney) and there’s nothing ‘embarrassing’ about crying in compassion - or joy.