From Kalonzo to Obama, tears say what words fail

Wiper party leader Kalonzo Musyoka is overwhelmed by emotions as NASA leader Raila Odinga narrates the ordeals he (Kalonzo) has gone through including the bomb-scare at his residence and the ailing Spouse. This was on 01/02/2018. [Photo/Pius Cheruiyot]

A 2005 anthology described tears as vehicles of feelings that go too deep for language - the sorrow of exile, the sparkle of ecstasy, the weight of memory and the wound of empathy.

In Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination, Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley say tears serve as gatekeepers to a level of emotion that, like holiness, eludes a certain range of normalcy.