Losing it All

I didn't want to see John Terry's face on the front cover of the Times today. I'd seen enough of it at the time. I don't want to see anyone looking as sad as that.

I saw the penalties in the Champions League final and it was really hard to watch, even though my knowledge of football is less than extensive, to say the least. So much riding on each shot! So much rain! Even I had to watch whilst peering through my fingers from a Dr Who vantage point behind the settee, and I wasn't really supporting either team.

And after it was over, of course, Manchester United looked pretty damned happy and the Chelsea team and supporters looked very upset.

But John Terry, as Chelsea captain, looked beyond upset - he looked like his world had ended, and I suppose that, in many ways, it had.

But come on - in a world where there's been two huge disasters, in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and in China, with thousands upon thousands of people killed or destitute - - why should we be bothered about a highly-paid footballer's distress? Especially people like me, who don't know much about football at all?

For various reasons, I think. Firstly, because human beings really, really can't understand numbers beyond a few, certainly not in an emotional sense. If we hear about fifty thousand dead it doesn't seem a thousand times worse than fifty dead. We may know it is - - but we don't feel it.

I reckon it's because people evolved, thousands and thousands of years ago, to live in smallish groups. We can care very deeply about our smallish group - family, friends etc - but anyone in need of our caring outside of that group needs to be drawn to our attention.

So when we see, say, a child who's survived the earthquake, it brings it home to us: that child suddenly is part of the group that we care about. But "fifty thousand" is a number that we can't imagine.

And when we see John Terry's stricken face, it brings it home to us too. And I don't think that caring about one means that you don't care about the other: I think it's just a fact about how people's feelings work. I think it's hard for anyone with any degree of empathy to look at that photograph and go "oh, for goodness' sake, it doesn't matter, it's only football".

And another point that struck me is that for all we go on and on about men being able to show their emotions these days - - well, they can't, in general. Not without running the risk of embarrassed laughter from any other men - and perhaps some women too - in the vicinity. There's still the feeling that "big boys don't cry" no matter how traumatic their experience. If you tell me that's not the case, well, I don't believe you.

So football matches, especially, and other sporting events, intermittently, are the only places where any public display of emotion from men is permitted in our society.

And, actually, I think that's wrong too. I think repressed emotion is very bad for people and leads to all sorts of health problems. I don't mind at all that men at football matches show how upset they are. I do mind that they can't show it in other circumstances too.