Not everyone cries at music. Even goosebumps caused by aesthetic experiences (a reaction called “frisson” in French) is a phenomenon which evades many. But I think even those who are brought to tears by a melody may find themselves perplexingly unable to tell you why they have that response. 

It’s not always clear to us what chord in our heart is struck by a chord progression, nor why we may personally find woodwinds or piano or violin to more frequently be the culprit for our feelings. 

I can identify at least five songs which can—with nearly absolute certainty—bring me to tears every time. Three of them are connected with intensely emotional memories, so it’s not exactly any wonder why. With the other two, however, I have no intrinsically personal association. They could seem to exert such visceral control over me almost without reason. But whatever the deep, subconscious string being plucked at the sound of their melodies is, I’d wager it’s surely resonant with that same essence struck by the memory-associated songs which evoke my emotion.

And that essence? As far as I can understand what I perceive in myself: it’s the hope against hope that the love you know (and the love which knows you) can never really be lost. 

Love Insists on Forever

Sadness requires bravery to face, because at least one of the potential claims of any sorrowful experience is that you may have to accept a reality where you move on without something you love. Truthfully, all of reality demands that we will move on without what—even whom—we love. And for some of us, everything that could be worth fearing about life in a physical universe is embodied in that inevitable reality. To walk on the path of life without the real presence of one who has loved us—to leave them behind—is an actually unbearable thought, but no lived experience will allow for the avoidance of this reality. 

If we acknowledge that the ones we love can truly be lost to us—or we to them—what would remain of life itself? Would existence be worth experiencing, would life be worth bearing with, if those we love were not, after all, held within the very elemental and indissoluble essence of what is good? 

It’s terrifying to love anything that can be lost, because love always desires to keep. Love’s natural gesture is to enshrine, to immortalize, to cause the beloved to persist and to flourish perpetually. Why else do we cherish the memories of those we’ve lost? Why else do we select the most immutable of stones for the graves of our loved ones if not to fulfill this basic desire of love: to forever keep the beloved? Love doesn’t ask for forever; love demands it. 

Love doesn’t ask for forever; love demands it. 

If relationality lies at the core of the human soul, then the fear surrounding the sadness of loss can hardly be surprising. Maybe it feels to us like something that was never meant to be—like the goodness of love is so essential that we find ourselves unable to believe that forever goodbyes could ever be “right.” And even a distant glimpse of that sorrow is enough to conclude that it won’t be safe for us to get close to acknowledging it as a possibility…

Music Wins the Argument

Enter music. (It would take a volume of the most winsome prose to convince me that music isn’t magic.) In this zero-sum game where life makes us face loss but my soul cannot handle the prospect of truly parting, music bridges the gap and allows the impossible. Music takes by the hand a part of my soul unable to be reached through conscious reasoning, and tenderly shows it the beautiful scenery that remains. Music soothes a fearful, defensive psyche that would deny either love or loss, finding itself otherwise unable to accept the existence of farewells in a universe that really is good.

Music takes my soul by the hand and tenderly shows it the beautiful scenery that remains.

Words may help music as it accomplishes this, but it’s chiefly possible because of that unnamable quality intrinsic to beauty within melody—the quality of beauty like the language of the soul—which convinces on a level meta-rational. The Beautiful bypasses argument—convicting, convincing, and assuring the soul beyond the ability of formulated hypotheses—like an IV needle circumvents the mouth’s role in hydration. 

Melody can make one accept what a lifetime of philosophizing may never: that goodness and loss exist together, and that love always remains. A paradox is not a contradiction; it’s the tension held by two contrasting realities existing at the same time. Beauty, especially through music, can assure one of the paradox that sustains hope against the reality of sorrow. 

The Sight the Tears Let In

When a song makes someone feeling this to cry, perhaps it’s because they’ve glimpsed the sublime. When, moved by the multivalent proposal of beauty, a soul experiences the persistence of their love beyond a loss that looked like the end, what could be more excellent? What reality could be desired more than to know the security of the perpetual wellbeing of those you most loved into eternity? For an experience that so poignantly infuses the present soul with such perceived assurance, the only reasonable somatic response is tears.

Tears uncover deep realities of the soul. To the extent that tears fall on account of reasons like those described above, they reveal some of the inmost parts of the weeper themselves. Tears illuminate what we most want to be preserved forever, what we can least bear our own existence without. They show us what we most hope for and what we most fear; in other words, tears reveal the deepest loves of our souls. 

The other morning, I offered a simple thought as a prayer, and I found it surprisingly comforting. I imagined my wife and two daughters—with all the hopes and fears that are bound up in my thoughts for them—and myself holding “my girls” the way a child might hold a fragile stuffed animal. And, as a child handing such a possession only to someone they could trust supremely, I placed them in God’s embrace. The dearest treasure I have, they’re too precious for me to trust in anyone’s hands but God’s. 

When a song reminds me how God brought my wife and daughters through two complicated pregnancies, I cry. When a song reminds me of the vows that she and I made that started it all—again, I cry. And for every time a song makes me tear up though seeming to have nothing to do with any such memories, I can only imagine that it’s because it’s touching the same reality: that the ones I love are held by a greater Love… 

…that there’s a Love that—when you know it—cannot be lost. And it’s a Love that loses nothing and no one in its embrace.