If someone dies it is sad. Funerals taken seriously is worth turning up to honor their lives. Able to take the right things serious like safety is important. It facilitates authority respected which factors into their power to make things better.
That said I don’t think it is wise to be sad or show sadness all of the time. 8 billion plus people in the World, many not Christians and if you believe in Heaven and Hell one person dying that doesn’t believe likely happens frequently – thus one could argue tears everyday all day 24/7/365 is the only appropriate response. Though that sad would likely lead to no inspiration for saving people – why should I believe in a God that makes His followers cry all day everyday? Wouldn’t really lead of feeling of saved.
Further the sheer magnitude of the problem makes humor in my mind – like staring at a Tidal Wave with a pale thinking how am I going to fix this? If someone gives you one paper to read no big deal, if they open an office with pages stacked wall to wall and say read it all with no end in sight you might think they are playing a joke on you, like drowning in a sea of paperwork, added 10000 pages of earmarks 15 minutes before the bill is passed.
Humor is encouraging though not always serious and not always problem free. Yet it might at times lead to mercy and grace, relatability that bridges divides, makes peace, and brings hope which I think might have more capacity to save at times then 24/7 mourning. Drowning in a pit of despair while problems need to be solved is not what I think I or society would want for engineers. Not to say I don’t think tears are useful, cathartic at times, show that things matter – though feel it might make others feel it which is not what I want. Further given some of the situations I have been in tears don’t fix problem, give oxygen to anxiety has been replaced with more calculated thinking less dependent on fear – pros and cons in it that might make self look unemotional or unapologetic.
Love that sounds legal, research, scientific, calculated, might sound less warm like I don’t feel the punches. But I have been on the street so much tears and despair doesn’t pick me up each day in these hard times. A-ing feel is not all wisdom, like living in fear and hopelessness, like no good can come of the day.
Power to less, words to less useful is useful but for who? Despair is power to less. If a coach was talking to a football team, tell them how terrible they are right before the match would fuel despair which I don’t agree with. Can’t say I have always gotten that right – I am not a football coach, I do want to see peace and change in the world.
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