If Tears Had Color

This is something that recently crossed my mind. If the reason we are crying would be connected to the color of our tears – what would it be? We all cry and not just for one reason, so how would it be if we could know the reason someone’s crying by the color of the tears?


There is also a symbolic description of what each and every color presents, and it is proved that colors have influence of peoples feelings and emotions. There was an experiment on this – they put a man into the room with red walls (and everything else inside was red) and after a while when they let him out, he became noticeably more aggressive than he was before. And what do you think, why the hospital’s and other medical institution’s walls are green? It is said that the olive green color represents peace, which is especially needed in hospitals where everyone is sick and in panic for his/her own life and health. So, let’s go back to the subject, we know that our emotions as well as our tears are very hard to control, but if our tears could reveal the reason of crying, how would it look like?

1. Red tears

I guess that red is the color associated with so much more things than any other color, except for black, maybe. It is most often connected with love, blood, passion… Well, since we (often) don’t cry from passion, we’ll have to look at some bad connotations of red color, something that would be worth crying. The ‘negative’ side of red is that it represents (and evokes) feelings like anger, malice, rage, aggression, wrath, hate, violence. Very intensive emotions, that demand an action. So, if we cried from an anger, hate, not expressed aggression, our tears would be red. It could be a good indicator that someone is in one of these moods, and needs to calm down a little.



2. Yellow tears

Yellow has lots of good ‘aspects‘, it is the color of the Sun in the first place, than it is connected with life, energy, wisdom, intelligence, joy, happiness, even gold! The other side of a (golden-yellow) medal is that this is the most upsetting color for babies, so remember not to paint the baby’s room yellow. Bad emotions that could provoke crying attached to this color are betrayal, dishonesty, deceit, jealousy, illness, cowardice, fear, caution. So if any of these feelings and emotions provoked our crying, our tears could be yellow.



3. Blue tears

An ancient Chinese belief says that this is a spiritual color, it denotes sky and Heaven. It may represent water and cleanliness too. It is a cool color, the opposite of red and yellow and it symbolizes tranquility and calm. Some people say that it is good to keep the water in the blue bottles – well, here’s the connection. Ok, that’s good, let’s go to the ‘dark’ side of the blue. P.S. There is one unresolved question – why is this color considered masculine? You know how people always buy blue stuff for boys and pink stuff for girls… Well, the only bad thing blue is connected to, besides declaration that it suppresses the appetite, is depression. So, blue tears equals depression. This would be the most serious cry for help.



4. Purple tears

Purple is a mixture of red and blue, we all discovered it when playing with watercolors. So, it’s the same in symbolism – it combines the emotions of these two colors. The mixture brings harmony and calm in aggressive red and revivifies the tranquility of blue. It also symbolizes the royalty and magic. It is not so frequent in nature, so it was connected to royal families’ portraits, because of its cost (to make it artificially) and only such persons as kings and princes had money for it. If we cried purple tears, it would mean that we are nostalgic, frustrated, sad or maybe even insane! So, hope not for the purple tears!



5. Black tears

Well, even if we are not completely sure what does black stand for, we can assume that it is nothing good. We even use it to describe some really bad things, or things we don’t understand, like Black hole, black mailing… Though it is scientifically explained as an absence of colors (so, it’s not the color at all), as well as white, our eye still notices it the same way as red or blue. There are little good meanings of black – like elegance (little black dress or black suit), or sophistication and formality. But in Christianism it is used to mark grief, it should be worn for 40 days after someone close to you dies. In psychology, it denotes loneliness and remorse, so if this sounds familiar to you, you’d better expect black tears. It is also called ‘the color of the night’ when dark forces act; black represents world opposite to the daylight one, we can see that well showed in movies. Also, it stands for bad luck and misfortune, so here’s the plenty of reasons why someone could cry black tears, if we exclude mascara.



6. Green tears

The first thing that crosses your mind when you think of green is nature, isn’t it? Or money? Well, this color is similar to blue by its coolness and calming effects. It is said that green can improve one’s sight. Good attributes of this color are its connection to eternal life – like evergreens (literally and metaphorically), health, freshness and safety. Darker tones of green remind of money and military – something that can represent safety. It is also used to express immaturity (that originates in relation to fruits or vegetables, when they’re not ripe yet) and we say that someone is a ‘green horn’ when he/she is inexperienced. Bad aspects are the symbolization of envy, discord and jealousy. So, if you can get so envious that you cry about it, now you know what you should expect.



7. Transparent or ordinary tears

According to this division, transparent tears would mean or the cry with happiness or cry for no reason. Anyway, nothing new. Unfortunately, we cry so rarely with happiness and so frequently for no corresponding reason, though we think we have it. Nevertheless, these tears are all we have.



 Well, this is it… I hope that this SF tears crying guide was interesting to you, because, unfortunately, I can’t leave you with nothing else than regular tears and a message not to let them out too often.