This popular adage is wrong.
“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened” is something people like to say to anyone getting emotional at the end of something good. As a director and teacher, I regularly interact with students going through painful endings: high school, a beloved ensemble, an international tour. I have a number of students who’ll be experiencing this next week when the musical they’ve worked on for months hits closing night.
And what I want to say to them is this: DO cry because it’s over. Cry because it means something to you, and you’re sad that you don’t get to keep doing it.
Later, you’ll also smile because it happened. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Bottling up intense emotions because of external pressure is very often a bad idea. Certainly it’s a bad idea when the emotions are a perfectly appropriate response to a precious experience ending.
Cry because it’s over. Later you’ll smile because it happened.