What is it to be a man

 

Subject: What it is to be a man.

It's strange how the temperament of a nation changes or is induced to change by the movers and shakers in the society, supported by the press and the media when a fashion is established and an intellectual unwillingness regarding the  'mores' or norms prevalent within the society at any particular time, precludes rational thinking.

We used to be a nation of stoic, rule guided people who, on the whole felt an underlying decency, tinged with a lack of sentimentality which anchored us on more practical, less emotional outbursts which we left to the French and the Italians. Today we wear our hearts of our sleeve overly keen to show our grief at events we can only have a passing knowledge of. The flowers and the vigil, the somber faces and the seeming obligatory  statement of grief have become the face, not only of our leaders and parliamentarians but of strangers who come forward and express their sorrow.

Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing but I fear it's part of a decent into a world of play acting for the sake of being seen to play act. There are moments of true emotion, for instance when the nation mourned Princess Diana. It had  a strange almost surreal effect on everyone, the collective guilt maybe, the frailty of a young woman so poorly treated by the Royal family that ordinary people felt pity for her. The haunting lyric sung by Elton John and the condemnation of the Royal Family by her brother in the Abby as he read the eulogy were real life theatre to which we the observers got sucked in. 

The massive outpouring from the crowd gathered at the roadside as the funeral cortège passed through the streets, the car inundated by flowers thrown onto the bonnet as it made its journey to her family home.

Emotion is a funny thing it catches us unawares, something triggers it in our psych often the underplaying symbolism is what makes us reflect, a Welsh choir singing their national anthem or the sight of those huge Kiwis on the rugby field, taunting the opposition with their Hakka, displaying an overt display of masculinity (a rare occasion these days), on a tiny island set in the Southern Ocean, standing up to rugby playing nations across the world . These are the things which bring a tear to my eye, the symbolism of the small standing up to big, David v Goliath but we seem more intent these days to search for the chance to show our manufactured grief when ever the opportunity presents itself. I feel it's mawkish, sentimentality for the sake of sentimentality, like a scene in a play we rush on and declare our sadness to events we can have no connection with but feel duty bound to express it. The sight of parliamentarians in parliament queuing up to say the same thing seems over emotional and false it lacks that trait we all had when I was growing up of buttoned up masculinity, let the girls cry but we lads had to show a strength of resolve to see things through. Maybe it's the feminising of our society that leads us to try to emulate women in so many things these days, having lost our own mojo in the uncertainty surrounding what it is to be a man living amongst the current gender displacement which leaves us all confused.