Refreshing To See Grown Men Cry
Originally printed in The Sydney Morning Herald
I can’t recall a more soap-like sporting drama than the one that has unravelled in the Australian cricket team over the past few weeks. One would normally only expect such twists, turns and tension from an award-winning playwright or movie script.
The big names on the cast list have also been stunning. Smith, Warner, Lehmann ‒ Captain, Vice-Captain, Coach. A director or producer could not have chosen a better list of characters if they tried. And, I suppose, they still well may.
Yet, it was the tumultuous final scene that had everyone on the edge of their seats. Entirely unscripted, all of it was unexpected because it contained none of the ingredients from how we’re taught Aussie men behave. Whether it was genuine or acting, I’ve never seen such behaviour before in Aussie sport. And I’m not talking about the cheating ‒ I’m talking about the crying.
All of the polish that we’ve become so conditioned to expect from these post-match sporting postmortems, was torn asunder. Like a nation of voyeurs, we sat back on our couches and peered at these culprits, these fools, these fathers, these young men - as every single one of them broke down in front of us and cried.
Young boys grow up, looking up. When we’re little blokes with short legs, we look up and watch how the big blokes with tall legs do things. Young chaps take what the older chaps say at their word. They expect that the way things are done, is the correct way to do them. Young men simply have not experienced enough. So they expect the older men, the ones with more experience, to show the way.
Of course, it’s not until we grow those tall legs ourselves that we learn that some things we’ve been taught along the way, are not necessarily the best ways at all. We also learn that just as there are a myriad of exciting moments along this path, life can also force mistakes. It can also dish out chapters of pain and chapters of stress, times that can damage and hurt.
To show emotion as a male, especially in public, is a sign of inner weakness in this country. The best way ‒ we get taught ‒ is to bottle it up, hold it all back or push it down. We can laugh as much as we want. We can listen to the older blokes laugh out loud until the cows come home. But we never see them cry.
The irony, of course, is that it's actually a far braver thing to display your emotions in public then it is to hide them away. If a sign of strength includes courage, then it takes guts to let out raw emotion on national television ‒ just as it takes guts to show them at home in front of loved ones.
There is nothing weak at all about having a good old cry, for crying is simply the body needing to let out a build-up of pent-up steam. When happy emotions spillover or overcome us, we smile and let out laughter. Why then do we try to so hard in this country to halt the reactions that sad or stressed emotions can trigger? It’s only natural to let these fall out of us.
Every so often in Australia, we might think about looking-up to a politician. However, we always tend to revere our national sports people. That positioning entitles those who make it into this public sphere, a powerful influence over young Australians. This partly explains why there has been so much anger around such a seemingly insignificant mistake.
Chopped down overnight from their hero heights, the public apologies we witnessed were surreal. One can only suspect at the river of emotion and pressure that ran right through each of them. For men so trained to win, here they all were losing in such an embarrassing and spectacular way.
Whatever caused the outpouring of tears: self-pity, self-frustration, self-disappointment, self-preservation, mental exhaustion, shock, guilt, remorse, regret, acting, anger - it doesn’t really matter. I doubt even these men themselves could deconstruct their emotions, in order to pin down a spark.
The fantastic thing is that they dropped their guards and let go. There were no sniffles, close calls or teeterings. What we observed was untapped emotion set free. Like a memorable theatre act or powerful film, we almost basked in the raw poetic justice of it all. However, we also felt the drama and understood it. As the lights came back on and we pulled ourselves up gingerly ‒ we couldn’t help but debate its resonance.
Every Aussie kid knows that it’s a crap thing to cheat. Unfortunately, it is these same kids who also grow up to think that it’s a crap thing to cry. Seeing these fallen heroes drop their facades, ‒ be it real or rehearsed ‒ was spellbinding and refreshing. We rarely get gifted these wonderful cracks in such a tightly-disciplined veneer. And alongside its drama and jaw-dropping spectacle, Australians were at least left with some new interesting layers to consider and to think about.
