Rational emotions
I am not an unemotional person. But I do balance my emotions with pragmatism. Yesterday I read a news article about a horrible situation involving exchange students being mistreated by their host families. At the end of the article, I had to choke back tears when it wrote that one of the teens, who had been malnourished and neglected in the home he was staying in, was still thankful to the US for the opportunity to come to our country and get a good education. Now keep in mind that the conditions that he had to endure here were so bad that criminal charges are being brought against people. I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to that.
Now today, I’m reading an article about the Sears Tower getting renamed the Willis Tower. The absurdity of being outraged over this renaming is mindboggling. Here are a few quotes from the hyperemotional over reactors.
“You don’t mess with a landmark. It would be like trying to change the name of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a reference point. I think it’s disorienting to try to change the name.”
“Chicago is going to lose a big part of what is its identity and I don’t know what’s going to fill that space.”
Listening to that last one, you’d think they’re tearing the building down. Why do people overreact to their emotions like this?
Death is another one that people overreact to way too much. You’d think that people just started dying a few years ago. Everyone who has ever lived has died or will die. This isn’t a surprise, yet people act surprised by it everyday. People say things like “children shouldn’t die”. Ok, it’s sad when a child dies but it happens. Whether it’s accidents or disease or whatever, children and adults die. I don’t understand why people can’t just be sad that it happened, outraged when necessary (if it was preventable or murder, etc.) and move on. It’s not the end of the world, check your emotions, they are useful as long as you don’t overreact to them.