For too long, we have been led to believe that to show emotion is to show weakness. Suck it up, we’re told, stop being a crybaby. You’re stronger than that. No one wants to hear it.

In his wonderful book, A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son, Michael Ian Black points out how pervasive this regressive admonition is in our culture, even infusing itself into modern tellings of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. To hear it be told by many present-day preachers, Jesus picks up the cross, carries it alone, and while being tortured, continues on with no show of emotion, simply absorbing the pain and suffering of the world. But, Black points out, “On the cross, Jesus finally succumbs to his pain, calling out to his father, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In that raw, agonizing moment he fully sheds his divinity and becomes one of us. Giving voice to suffering does not make you less of a man. It makes you more of a human.”

It’s interesting that in one of the famous stories about Marcus Aurelius, he shows himself to be one of us. When his tutor died, Marcus cried uncontrollably. Antoninus, Marcus’s stepfather, understood this completely. “Neither philosophy nor empire,” Antoninus famously said, “takes away natural feeling.”

The same goes for you. No matter how much philosophy you’ve read. No matter how much older you’ve gotten or how important your position or how many people are counting on you. It’s ok to break down sometimes. It’s ok to call out. It’s ok to cry. It’s more than ok—it’s the most human thing you can do.