A Brief But Spectacular take on crying in public

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Finally tonight, Brandon Stosuy is the co-founder and editor in chief of The Creative Independent.

It's an online resource that provides emotional and practical guidance for writers and musicians and artists.

Here, he shares his Brief But Spectacular take on the power of crying in public.

BRANDON STOSUY, Co-Founder and Editor, The Creative Independent: I think people can be disarmed by crying if you're not expecting it.

It's a powerful thing.

If someone's willing to go to that place in front of you, you react to it.

I think very rarely does someone cry and you just have zero emotion.

I feel like I cry pretty frequently.

I cry during sports.

I'm a huge Buffalo Bills fan and sometimes I will cry tears of joy.

My mother died 13 years ago, so I find sometimes around then I will cry more.

Then my wife points out, like, oh, yes, you're like nearing the anniversary of your mother's death.

So I think sometimes there's those points in the year where you just cry more.

The first time I noticed people crying in public is when I was jogging and I just saw someone running towards me and they were crying.

And once I noticed that, I just started noticing more and more people crying.

I just started documenting it and writing it down.

So, guy eating fruit salad and crying, guy in the airport crying at the urinal, when I saw a guy crying in a JFK bathroom, air drumming to a Chicago song, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry."

So I would just write it like that.

And then really when I posted stuff on Twitter and saw so many people reacted, I realized, oh, there's other people thinking about this too.

So I wrote a book called "Sad Happens," and the book has 115 essays by a variety of different people speaking about crying.

And so it started out my friend, Matt Berninger, who's in the band The National, he was the first person to give me something and he writes a lot of lyrics about sadness.

So we just kept adding people.

I think my favorite story from the anthology is this one by a woman named Olivia.

She wrote me in my D.M.s and said, hey, I'm a zookeeper and I want to write about the animals I take care of who eventually die.

And so she wrote a piece about loving these animals and then having to -- her favorite owl dies.

I hope, after people read the book, they feel more willing to share.

I'm not necessarily saying everyone has to walk down the street sobbing all the time, but I do think it's OK to kind of have these moments where you pull the veil back and say, yes, I'm struggling or, hey, I'm really excited, or I'm having this moment that I want to share with you.

It is this, like, actual, like, biochemical release that is going to ultimately make things better for you, make things healthier.

That's really the ultimate goal of the book is just to have more people realize, oh, yes, this is like a universal thing.

I'm not alone with this kind of -- these feelings I'm wrestling with.

My name is Brandon Stosuy, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on crying in public.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Remember, you can always watch more Brief But Spectacular videos on our Web site.