i.
You may not believe this, but if you pull me apart and unpeel me layer by layer, you will discover that I am an ice queen.
Yes, you read that right.
My eyes glitter keenly; my tongue is sharp and cutting; my heart is smooth and cold as a mirror’s surface.
Vast dominions of my mind glitter in the sunlight, pure and beautiful and white, like songs in a Christmas jingle.
Here, where I reign, everything is cool and collected. My streets are straight and orderly. My castle is a crystal marvel.
It’s not perfect, not by any stretch.
But oh, how I try.
ii.
A few weeks after I moved to the United States, my parents’ friends invited us to their small apartment for a welcome dinner. I was five years old, disoriented and bored, the only kid at the gathering. Desperately I wished to go home.
I trundled about the tiny apartment, sniffing for amusement like a pig for truffles. In the kitchen, plastered onto the refrigerator, I found it: a plush egg-face magnet. Between two paisley-yellow cracked egg halves, a hot pink face with googly eyes peered out at me.
It looked adorable. It beckoned like a friend.
I pulled the magnet off the fridge and plunked down on the linoleum. We played for hours in that tiny kitchen corner. My mother found me there when it was time to leave.
“What’s this?” she asked me in Mandarin as she plucked the magnet out of my hands.
“I want it,” I said, yanking it back.
“We’re going. Put it back where you found it,” she ordered.
“I want it,” I insisted. A whine bubbled in the back of my throat.
At this point our hostess fluttered into the kitchen, overhearing the argument.
“Oh, she can have it,” she said brightly, taking the magnet and pressing it into my grateful palm. She flashed my mother a smile, sent us on our way, and that was that.
Or so I thought.
Delighted, I played with my new eggy friend the entire car ride home. But as soon as we reached our own tiny apartment, my mother whirled on me.
“You. Cannot. Take. Other. People’s. Things!” She grabbed the magnet, as dark as a freak thunderstorm.
The force of my mother’s anger barreled into me like a battering ram. I must have fought it, must have tried holding onto my naive innocence. There was no guilt in my heart then; I had no conception that I had done anything wrong.
Before long, my mother pulled my crumpled form into the bathroom. “Think about what you did,” she demanded as she flicked off the lights and shut the door behind her.
On that cold tile floor in the blackness, I slumped my face on the toilet seat and cried and cried.
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iii.
Let us examine the tear, that droplet which carries the chemistry of our emotions.
For centuries, people dismissed tears as weakness. Science today tells a different story.
Emotional tears, different from the ones you shed chopping onions, are chemically denser, laced with stress hormones like cortisol and ACTH, and natural painkillers called endorphins. In the 1980s, biochemist William Frey found that emotional tears are like a river that carries away stress-related substances.
The act of crying is orchestrated by the brain’s emotional command center, the limbic system. The amygdala sounds the alarm, the hypothalamus routes the signal, and the tear ducts respond. What follows is a cascade that flips the body into its parasympathetic state — the “rest and digest” mode that slows your heart, deepens your breathing, and tells your muscles to unclench. Psychologists like Ad Vingerhoets and Jonathan Rottenberg have shown that although crying sometimes dips your mood at first, within about 20 minutes most people report feeling calmer, lighter, and more in balance. In biological terms, shedding tears is a form of repair.
The benefits don’t stop at physiology. Tears are a kind of social glue. Unlike screaming, which pushes others away, crying is more likely to draw people closer. Researchers found that people who cry in front of others are more likely to receive comfort and support. For those mourning a loss, studies show that expressing genuine grief, including crying, predicted better long-term adjustment than burying emotions tightly inside. In therapy rooms, tears often mark breakthrough moments when buried trauma surfaces and has a chance to heal.
Not everyone finds it easy to cry. Hormones matter: testosterone dampens tearfulness, while prolactin (higher in women) encourages it. Medications like antidepressants can make crying harder, flattening the peaks and valleys of feeling. And of course, there is the matter of culture.
Yet when tears do come, they are a gift to the nervous system, lightening the body’s chemical load and opening our hearts to others.
iv.
I cannot tell you when my crying stopped. At age 8 or 9 or 10 perhaps. It was a gradual taper, one that seemed as normal as rain. In a million different ways, the world conspires to tell us that we don’t need to cry. Or, in its harsher moments: we shouldn’t cry.
Let’s take a cliche we all grew up hearing: Don’t cry over spilled milk. On the surface, it delivers a nugget of wisdom: what’s the use regretting something you cannot change? Used nobly, its intent is to nudge the listener towards peaceful acceptance and perhaps more fruitful action (You still have the power to clean it up!)
But how might this be meant by a parent distressed by their toddler’s howling at a bustling restaurant? Your crying is loud and embarrassing, so please stop!
And how might it be interpreted by the toddler? Crying makes Mommy upset!
Growing up, I saw kids get teased at the playground for crying. Don’t be such a baby!
I saw adults apologizing when they did cry. Oh gosh I’m sorry, I’m making such a scene.
I never ever — not even once — saw someone being praised for crying.
So I swallowed the message: Tears are weakness, tears are useless. Tears are an omen of trouble. Tears are a thorn in the side of polite society.
v.
In my line of work, I meet many denizens of the ice.
Like me, they are attracted to the elegance of cold, hard logic.
What is a problem but an opportunity for creative solutions?
What is the future but a chance to achieve our grandest designs?
Obstacles are meant to be deconstructed and understood; chaos is meant to be transfigured into elegant systems.
And emotions — emotions are meant to be contained. They are like flies; nuisances to good work. How often have I heard a colleague vent to me in frustration, “If only
Rulers of ice kingdoms know intellectually that they can’t solve every problem. They know life cannot be fully controlled. But shouldn’t it be? The pursuit itself feels urgent and noble and deeply, deeply important.
Because ice people do not value emotions, they have a blind spot for them. It’s easy for them to tally other people’s emotional illogic; it’s much harder for them to recognize their own.
If you asked me how I was feeling on any given day, the answer I’d give you would be an algorithmic assessment of my current circumstances — family healthy? Job enjoyable? Milestones marked? Fun weekend impending?
“Doing well,” would be the usual answer. If I wanted to sound more human, I’d throw out a problem du jour — “But
My answer would certainly not be the bodily feeling of the moment: Lonely. Disappointed. Frustrated. Angry. Loving. Joyful.
Why not? For the longest time, I don’t know that I felt those things consciously. My overmind performed its security duties admirably in keeping those pesky emotions locked behind thick walls.vi.
The narrative of the ice queen, the childhood memory of a stolen magnet, and the scientific exploration of tears all converge on a single, profound realization: the suppression of emotions, particularly crying, is a deeply ingrained societal and personal habit. We are taught from a young age that tears are a sign of weakness, an inconvenience, or even a failure. This conditioning leads us to build walls around our feelings, to become "ice people" who prioritize logic and control over the messy, yet vital, landscape of human emotion.
However, as science reveals, tears are not a sign of weakness but a biological mechanism for release and repair. They are a language that, when spoken, can foster connection, facilitate healing, and bring us back into balance. To deny ourselves and others the right to cry is to deny a fundamental aspect of our humanity. It is to remain trapped in a cold, logical kingdom, beautiful in its order but ultimately sterile and isolating. The journey from the ice queen to a more integrated self requires dismantling these walls, allowing the warmth of emotion to thaw the frozen facade, and recognizing that true strength lies not in the absence of tears, but in the courage to let them flow.
In conclusion, the journey from the stoic "ice queen" persona, shaped by societal pressures and personal experiences that equate tears with weakness, to a more integrated self requires a conscious dismantling of emotional barriers. By understanding that crying is a natural, biologically beneficial process that fosters connection and healing, we can begin to embrace our full emotional spectrum. True strength is not found in suppressing our feelings, but in having the courage to acknowledge and express them, allowing ourselves and others the grace to weep and, in doing so, to repair and connect.