THAT'S MEN: Hope shone through young men's discomfort
THE FAMILY group sat around a table in the pub early in the evening: father, mother, sons in their 20s or early 30s. The mother looked like a woman who had been battered about by life, and maybe not just by life. The father looked like a man who was used to being in command of situations.
Every now and then one of the sons might make a quiet remark to one of the others and the father would pounce. “What’s wrong with you?” he would demand. Mild enough words but spoken with great aggression and the body language was of one who might just be ready to strike out. The sons exchanged embarrassed glances and the mother looked into the middle distance: Everyone had been here before, many, many times. I suspect they had grown up in an atmosphere of threat and possibly of violence.
After a while the door opened and a young woman came in. She had been passing by she declared and she had come in to give the mammy and daddy a lift home. I got the distinct impression she had been summoned quietly by text. The parents finished their drinks, got up and left with a certain amount of huffing and puffing. At once the atmosphere changed. The body language went from tense to relaxed. Smiles replaced guarded looks on faces. Muttered remarks gave way to laughter.
It had been like getting a glimpse of the life to date of this family: bullying, resentment, nervousness, rescue. A Zen writer called Osho said that everybody carries a wound that they are trying to protect. The children of this family very likely carry a wound inflicted by what they saw as they grew up. The father has his wound, the mother hers, the onlooker his.
People protect their wound with drink, violence, love, hate, giving, taking, pride, shame and in a myriad of other ways. In a sense, protecting your wound influences your whole life path.
How will these sons protect their wounds? With violence? Beating up their wives? Not necessarily. Their embarrassment and their glances of mutual sympathy at their father’s behaviour suggests that they will not follow this path.
The embarrassment also suggests something else: that they realise this sort of aggressive behaviour towards family is socially frowned upon.
Men who carry out domestic violence tend to assume that this behaviour is two to three times more common than it really is, according to an article in a forthcoming issue of Violence Against Women. It is possible that this belief is what makes it easier for them to do what they do. Women who believe the same are, perhaps, more likely to put up with it.
These young men’s embarrassment, therefore, by showing that they do not think this sort of aggression towards family to be normal, is actually a sign of hope that the cycle ends with them.
A READERwho asks not to be named e-mails to say that my views on early retirement in last week's column "are rubbish". I had made it clear that the prospect of retiring to watch daytime TV was, in my view, a dismal one.
Says my reader: “I retired at 60 and have enjoyed the past two years immensely, I have done some of the things I always wanted to do, like learn Irish, learn to swim, and so on. I also do voluntary work, literacy tuition which I enjoy. I also have more time for my three children, eldest is 21. Leaving work was like getting out of jail. I liked the work but not the organisation. I served 30 years. You might ask why did I stay? Well, I was stuck. I could not have gotten an alternative because of the nature of my job, my age, lack of qualifications, etc. My retirement days are full. I have never seen Jeremy Kyle or any afternoon TV including horse racing. So don’t knock it. There are a lot of people worn out by the age of 65. All I miss is the full pay.”
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book,
Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living
, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is available free by e-mail