How calm is calm?

In many movies, there is a scene where a female witness a fatal accident and a kin died. Someone inevitably come by her and says, "Calm down..."

Is that really the only instance we need to calm down? How calm is calm? A karaoke singer? An office worker? A pedestrian? A cook? An artist? Or tai chi practitioner? Or a meditator?

Intensity (or lightness) of calm is meaningless without evaluating its reasons. I have a Chinese calligraphy at home. The four words are 宁静致远. It means "A calm man sees far." I believed its a missing piece within the western philosophy, that calmness is an important value for a matured and useful man. A man running around not knowing what he's doing, has little value to the society, and can even bring harm. However, I cannot discuss about calmness anymore from western standpoint due to lack of references.

In Buddhist meditation, calmness is developed in order to see things with clarity. There is a description for the level of calm one ought to attain, but not beyond. For any calmer, one looses the ability to contemplate, but rather indulge in a long period of mindless bliss. Buddhists called it the 4th dyana (or concentration). At 4th dyana, the state of mind is known as equanimity. Meaning one is able to see things as equal without biases. Thus one see things as they are.

Seeing things as they are is one of the most valuable principle in our life. Seeing yourself terminated at your job, and seeing it as it is, you see that you are incompatible with that job or the colleagues, and you may even see it coming. You would take it easy and go off gracefully. Everyone will be happy. In fact, seeing things as it is, you may not even take up the job in the first place, and may have found your ideal job.

Developing calm should be a lifelong preoccupation. 4th dyana is for meditators only. Without the help of meditation, there would be no limit of calmness in our daily activity. You should be as calm as you can be.

Here comes another problem. Is calmness = inactivity? If so, we cannot exercise or work furiously in the midst of calm, yet we need to do these in different situation. So what shall we do? I do not intent to answer these questions here at this point. So this is for you to contemplate, calmly.