Why we cry
(and especially with a glass of wine)
Take an Airbnb in Paris, set up team Amayzine there and you get a drinks table that the average Frenchman is incredibly proud of. And of course accompanied by a good glass of red or white. If you had secretly peeked around the corner, you would have witnessed 18 moving hands, 9 non-stop chatting mouths, exclamations, jumping girls, high heels casually strewn everywhere, a dance step to the left, and bottles of wine being passed around, and let's not forget a carafe of water. And if you had lingered a bit longer, you would have seen the first tearjerker come in via YouTube. ‘Ne me quitte pas’ performed by Juliette at the Prinsengracht concert, then a ‘Mag ik dan bij jou’ from Claudia de Breij, and then came Dinand's song for Guusje Nederhorst: ‘Dreamer’. Crying, of course.
That's when the first tear came from our tough Daan, Simoon grabbed a tissue and I gave my eyes a good shine (I'm a bad cryer in company, alone I can do it just fine and loudly). How is it that we become a) emotional when consuming wine and b) start listening to very sad songs and with a bit of bad luck c) sing along at loud volume? I dare to admit that these kinds of situations pass through my life at least once a year. This time was my first time within the Amayzine family.
It's all due to the hazy state of your frontal cortex
How come? That glass of wine primarily affects the frontal cortex in the brain. And yes, that's the part where control over yourself and your social functioning is stored. At the moment you bring that self-control into a hazy state, your inhibitions disappear and the chance of impulsive actions increases. Look, there's the culprit for crying very hard in unison at sad songs, suddenly becoming a cuddler (while normally you're never ever that, hello me here) and dancing on the bar.
So if you find yourself sobbing and sniffling, throwing your arms around your boss as Robbie Williams blasts ‘Angels’ through the speakers, that's normal. It's all due to the hazy state of your frontal cortex. And now let's hope that your boss's is just as under the influence as yours.
