On Optimism.

I have always been a glass half full kinda guy. When all around people are heading for the exits, I remain rooted to my seat ever hopeful that my team will mount a meteoric recovery and score five goals in the last minute of the game. I can’t help it. It’s who I am. Some may say that I am continually setting myself up for disappointment, always dangling a carrot of hope where only a fool would choose. The beauty of being an optimist, however, is that we don’t tend to dwell on disappointment for long and are always looking forward. One of my favourite cartoons in fact shows a headless guy sitting up in his hospital bed. A visitor sitting as his side and is telling him ‘Cheer up; things will look up in a few days’. I smile every time I see that cartoon. It centres me; it reminds me that life goes on.

This past Christmas I received a truly wonderful and unexpected gift from my sister. Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, she had arranged for cine camera film from our early childhood to be transferred to DVD and had sent each of us a copy. I have always had very fond memories of these films and to now have the ability to share them with my boys was just amazing. Zack and Logan loved the movies. They laughed at the antics of their four year old Dad, had plenty of questions about life in the olden days and often confused their grandfather at age 30 with their ‘old man’ of today. They saw the films as I had seen them when I was growing up. But I’m all grown up now and for the first time I was able to see the story behind the story. I saw a father totally engaged with his children. I saw a mother who made mothering look easy. I saw a young couple so much in love. I saw a safe and happy childhood.

I grew up in a working class family where money was tight…..sometimes very tight. With four children and one income luxuries were few and far between. We never felt like we went without though. We went to the beach, we went to the Zoo, and we even went to London to see the Queen. We did family stuff. Sure we had our fights and I am probably guilty of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. I make no apologies though, because my parents gave me and my siblings what so many today are denied. They gave us a stable and consistent base to grow from. They gave us love, constant love. They made sacrifices, willingly. They protected us from the ills of the world and they allowed us to grow up embracing and not fearing the World. In short, they provided us with a springboard to optimism, the ability to look for the opportunity and not fear the consequence. Now that is a gift I hope I can give to my children.

What ya crying for Willis?

Society teaches us (us being the men folk of the world) that we shouldn’t cry. Even when our lives are crashing all around us and we have suffered more than our fair share of kicks to the nether regions, we are expected to maintain our composure, keep our cheeks dry and face the world with only a slight grimace. The indoctrination starts young. As children we are often reminded that ‘big boys don’t cry’ and overt displays of emotion in our teenage years are met with derision and insult by our peers.

But here’s the rub……boys feel every emotion that girls feel. Happiness, sadness, excitement, despair, hopelessness, grief, love, hate….it’s all in here. We may be less complicated than women but we are not less complex. We feel just as strongly and deeply as any woman. Yet we are encouraged, nay almost required, to never display those feelings…..unless of course we are on the losing end of an argument and are so clearly wrong. In the latter situation our ‘unwillingness’ to show emotion is typically interpreted as remoteness and disinterest. You can understand why guys get confused with PDEs (Public Displays of Emotion). Encouraged from a young age not to show how we feel, celebrated when we refuse to cry despite experiencing the harshest of protagonists, yet discarded as remote and disinterested when our adherence to all we have been taught is not the desired reaction.

But of course not all men are like that. Some of us have fought the stereotype and can feely blubber along with the best, displaying scant consideration for the audience of onlookers. Some of us have realized how wonderfully therapeutic a good cry can be and can self medicate whenever the need occurs. And all this without being remotely gay or even borderline metro sexual. Not that there is anything wrong with that….the gay part anyway. Metro Sexuals? Oh man that’s a whole blog post of its own. J

I learnt to cry because of my Dad. He taught me by his actions that it’s OK to cry if you are sad. It’s OK to cry if something sad has happened to somebody else and by extension it is certainly OK to cry if you get cracked in the nuts (phraseology courtesy of my 10 year old). One of my most vivid childhood memories involves watching an episode of Diff’rent Strokes with my Dad and noticing tears rolling down his face. I’m not sure what the episode was about and to be frank it’s irrelevant. What’s important is that in that beautiful moment I learned what generations of boys had been encouraged not to learn. I learned that if a big bear of a man can cry at the antics of Arnold and Willis then it must be OK for me to cry too. My father has taught me many things about life, some annoyingly correct despite my idealistic protests. This simple lesson about freedom, the confidence to show my emotions, however, ranks as one of the finest gifts he has ever given me. His gift of emotion has kept me sane through some very dark times, allowed me to soar above the clouds when life couldn’t be better, and imbued me with the confidence to always be myself.  In short his willingness to show his own vulnerabilities has allowed me to turn my own vulnerabilities into strengths to be celebrated.

So big boys do cry and should cry. I am not talking about self indulgent blubbering. I am talking about the freedom to let rip with whatever emotion they feel, be it the yelps and cheers that accompany the game winning goal, or the deep sense of loss and sadness that descends upon us when we realize that Bambi’s Mom/Mum has tasted lead. Let’s start teaching our boys to be free with their emotions and maybe, with time, the communication blocks that plague us later in life may disappear and more children will get to grow up in one home as opposed to two.  Thanks Dad.