[interesting synchronicity on this one as I am about to depart to pay respects to our school's priest, who passed away a couple of days ago]

Est quaedam flere voluptas.
(Ovid, Tristia 4.3.37)

pron = ehst KWAI-dahm FLAY-reh woh-LOOP-tahs

There is a certain pleasure in weeping.

Comment: Ovid wrote this in exile. We don't know, finally, for sure why Augustus sent him away from his beloved Rome to die in a foreign land, but it is likely that he wrote something that reflected on Augustus and his family and his "plan" for Rome that didn't sit well with the first Emperor of Rome.

What we know of Ovid suggests that he was a man of "the city" and he was forced to spend the rest of his life banished from the city of Rome. While in exile, he wrote the Tristia (Sad Things) from which this quotation comes.

No one in his/her right mind takes pleasure in sad things. And yet, there is a certain physical and emotional release in being able to weep, to let go of the pent up emotional energy that we all bear from difficulties, of one kind or another, in our lives. That release certainly could be called "pleasure". Relief is relief, regardless of what we call it.

In some arenas of mind-body work, it has been suggested that sinus infections, frequent colds, allergies that focus on the eyes, nose, ears, and throat, may be related to a life long suppression of grief--the tears not cried, expressing themselves as "a cold" or "a sinus infection".

It might do us an occasional good to ask ourselves, our bodies, what grief has gone unexpressed--what weeping needs to be done in us. And allow it.

Bob Patrick
(Used with permission)
Latin Proverb of the Day Archive