Yesterday's Tears

"Yesterday’s Tears" is a philosophical and deeply personal exploration of one of humanity’s most familiar yet mysterious experiences: crying. In this thought-provoking dialogue, author Patrick M. Ohana and G (ChatGPT) examine the intricate relationships between tears, emotions, memory, love, consciousness, and the unconscious. What begins with a simple word—tears—becomes an unpredictable journey through the emotional histories that shape our lives. Why do fictional characters bring us to tears? Why can the same scene move us more profoundly each time that we experience it? Do our feelings belong to the present, or are they inseparable from everything that came before? And could the unconscious play a far greater role in our emotional lives than consciousness itself? Across five episodes, a prologue, and an epilogue, the authors challenge assumptions, disagree, reconsider their conclusions, and confront questions that science and philosophy have yet to resolve. Interwoven with the conversations are personal reflections, poetry, love, humour, Greek mythology, and works of art, from the extraordinary friendship of two television characters to the haunting imagery of Edvard Munch. Neither a conventional psychology book nor a scientific treatise, "Yesterday’s Tears" invites readers to reconsider what it means to feel, remember, love, and cry. Yesterday’s tears may have dried, but the feelings that brought them into existence may accompany us for the rest of our lives.