Wimbledon

[JohnSkelton]

" I associate seeing people cry in public with raw, dreadful events or personal circumstances. "

Maybe that tells us something about how Murray felt at that moment, after weeks of hype and huge physical effort, being required to deny his true feelings in front of a huge crowd in order to be a chirpy plucky loser.

Maybe it's more about our unrealistic expectations of him rather than his momentary loss of emotional control. I thought it was unpleasant that he was put in such a quandary with no-one to reach put and comfort him.

It's not about my unrealistic expectations of him because I didn't have any expectations of him ... I agree the thing was wildly over-hyped, but then the players all benefit immensely from the hype-machine. I don't know how they could separate themselves from it - contractually they probably can't - but it's not like they are sweated labour.

I don't feel outraged that he cried in front of people. I do feel it a devaluation of emotion (or I don't think there's anything wrong with restraint in certain circumstances). From years back I'm on good terms with an ex-professional footballer who had an impressive career and is still involved in the game. He says that it's difficult for footballers to see that their world isn't the entire world, and to see that their disappointments are just that - disappointments. Difficult because they live in a very narrow world and are treated as very important within it. I can understand the emotion more in the context of a team game, because other people are involved, friendships are built up, there are implications for other people at a club if things go badly wrong. In the context of tennis it just looks - looks - wrong to me. I'm not shocked by it. I just don't like it (I admit I don't like tennis very much, which doesn't help ).

Remember how the Duchess of Kent consoled the losing Jana Novotna in the Women's Final a few years back?

Yes, I do. I felt the same way about that (in other words, Murray being a man isn't the problem I have with the reaction. I don't think it's a proportionate reaction whoever is doing the crying / needing the comforting).

[amateur51]

It's not about my unrealistic expectations of him because I didn't have any expectations of him ... I agree the thing was wildly over-hyped, but then the players all benefit immensely from the hype-machine. I don't know how they could separate themselves from it - contractually they probably can't - but it's not like they are sweated labour.

I don't feel outraged that he cried in front of people. I do feel it a devaluation of emotion (or I don't think there's anything wrong with restraint in certain circumstances). From years back I'm on good terms with an ex-professional footballer who had an impressive career and is still involved in the game. He says that it's difficult for footballers to see that their world isn't the entire world, and to see that their disappointments are just that - disappointments. I can understand the emotion more in the context of a team game, because other people are involved, friendships are built up, there are implications for other people at a club if things go badly wrong. In the context of tennis it just looks - looks - wrong to me. I'm not shocked by it. I just don't like it (I admit I don't like tennis very much, which doesn't help ).



Yes, I do. I felt the same way about that (in other words, Murray being a man isn't the problem I have with the reaction. I don't think it's a proportionate reaction whoever is doing the crying / needing the comforting).

We don't know that Andy Murray doesn't feel like 'sweated labour', JS. In fact we have very little understanding at all of why he cried as he did, except for the broad-brush, cod psychology that I tend to indulge in

But he did it and we have to accept that. He clearly could no more have stopped it than fly. The emotion was genuine and over-whelming from where I was sitting.

It may have been unpleasant, it certainly wasn't pretty, but it showed us something about his world that we didn't know before.

[salymap]

" I associate seeing people cry in public with raw, dreadful events or personal circumstances. "

Maybe that tells us something about how Murray felt at that moment, after weeks of hype and huge physical effort, being required to deny his true feelings in front of a huge crowd in order to be a chirpy plucky loser.

Maybe it's more about our unrealistic expectations of him rather than his momentary loss of emotional control. I thought it was unpleasant that he was put in such a quandary with no-one to reach put and comfort him.

Remember how the Duchess of Kent consoled the losing Jana Novotna in the Women's Final a few years back?

That was a lovely moment when the Duchess ofKent consoledthe weeping Novotna some years ago. If I may go slightly off-topic, is the D of K, who I believe likes to be known as Katherine Kent, still around? She used to be a leading light in,was it, the Leeds Piano Competion, but haven't seen her mentioned recently?
A charming and sympathetic woman

[amateur51]

That was a lovely moment when the Duchess ofKent consoledthe weeping Novotna some years ago. If I may go slightly off-topic, is the D of K, who I believe likes to be known as Katherine Kent, still around? She used to be a leading light in,was it, the Leeds Piano Competion, but haven't seen her mentioned recently?
A charming and sympathetic woman

I've not seen her for years salymap (not that she was a regular at Willesden Green Sainsbury's ) but there was talk years ago about her work as a Samaritans volunteer and this in turn arose out of her own experience of mental health issues.

Maybe she's just tired of the whole public royal thing and fancies watching the tennis with her feet up

[Richard Tarleton]

I've not seen her for years salymap (not that she was a regular at Willesden Green Sainsbury's ) but there was talk years ago about her work as a Samaritans volunteer and this in turn arose out of her own experience of mental health issues.

Maybe she's just tired of the whole public royal thing and fancies watching the tennis with her feet up

I'm not sure she could present the trophy any more after she became a Roman Catholic could she? I think Wimbledon is mentioned in the Act of Settlement and it would require an Act of Parliament to change it.

[aeolium]

I don't think it's a proportionate reaction whoever is doing the crying / needing the comforting

That may well be true, but crying is not something that's totally controllable especially after a very intense experience. If I cry at a particularly affecting (to me) piece of music or an affecting scene on stage, that is also a disproportionate reaction - no-one is really suffering or has suffered - but it's just something that happens (my fault entirely, I'm sure )

[amateur51]

I'm not sure she could present the trophy any more after she became a Roman Catholic could she? I think Wimbledon is mentioned in the Act of Settlement and it would require an Act of Parliament to change it.

[JohnSkelton]

If I cry at a particularly affecting (to me) piece of music or an affecting scene on stage, that is also a disproportionate reaction - no-one is really suffering or has suffered - but it's just something that happens (my fault entirely, I'm sure )

But you're not crying exclusively because you feel sorry for yourself. You're crying as a response to something outside yourself. The associations may be personal, but it's something out there separate from those associations involved - I think what I don't like about anyone crying after losing (or winning) a tennis match (to stick with this example) is that it's entirely wrapped in in the person doing the crying. Maybe it isn't, maybe he was upset for his mother, his girlfriend (why does the BBC endlessly show us these people? Tennis is like Hello Magazine with a net and grunting). But to me it looks like an emotion that is immediately selfish.

Maybe that touches a nerve because of the sense I at any rate get that there's always a recoil upon the self in emotion - always a nagging sense you feel sorry for yourself for being put in that position. But there's something or an other involved: even when someone you love rejects you, it involves otherness. Which crying about losing a game of tennis doesn't seem to (to me).

I wouldn't be too happy if someone at a concert began to cry, though (or haven't been the couple of times it has happened). But that's probably just emotionally repressed cold fish me .

[amateur51]

But you're not crying exclusively because you feel sorry for yourself. You're crying as a response to something outside yourself. The associations may be personal, but it's something out there separate from those associations involved - I think what I don't like about anyone crying after losing (or winning) a tennis match (to stick with this example) is that it's entirely wrapped in in the person doing the crying. Maybe it isn't, maybe he was upset for his mother, his girlfriend (why does the BBC endlessly show us these people? Tennis is like Hello Magazine with a net and grunting). But to me it looks like an emotion that is completely selfish.

Maybe that touches a nerve because of that sense I at any rate get that there's always a recoil upon the self in emotion - always that nagging sense you feel sorry for yourself for being put in that position. But there's something or an other involved: like someone you love rejecting you, it involves dialogue. Which crying about losing a game of tennis doesn't seem to (to me).

I wouldn't be too happy if someone at a concert began to cry, though (or haven't been the couple of times it has happened). But that's probably just emotionally repressed cold fish me .

As my therapist has said to me several times "And what exactly is wrong with feeling sorry for yourself?"

[Richard Tarleton]

(why does the BBC endlessly show us these people? Tennis is like Hello Magazine with a net and grunting). .

[JohnSkelton]

As my therapist has said to me several times "And what exactly is wrong with feeling sorry for yourself?"

Nothing, if you have a good reason for feeling sorry for yourself. Which people often do, life being often hard. But if someone feels sorry for themselves because the next door neighbour has a better car, or more money, then there is something wrong with it IMV. Because it's a bad reason for feeling sorry for yourself and because it suggests a disproportionate attention to your own desires and needs (not yours specifically, obviously. I just can't bring myself to type one's ).

[french frank]

I felt the same way about that (in other words, Murray being a man isn't the problem I have with the reaction. I don't think it's a proportionate reaction whoever is doing the crying / needing the comforting).

I don't think that people's reactions and feelings are calculated on the basis of whether they are proportionate or disproportionate: they are what they are.

I watched the interview clip purely because people had mentioned it on the forum and I wanted to have an objective point of view. I'm not sure that my reactions or feelings are either objective or proportionate, but I viewed the entire scene almost with disbelief. And squirming discomfort.

Having scanned all the newspaper headlines in the morning, my feeling was that the pressure on him to fulfil The Hopes Of The Nation and emulate Wade's Jubilee year win would have been of a kind that none of us have ever experienced. I can understand his reaction.

What I found a total horror was that he was forced to exhibit his disappointment in public with all that ridiculously, disproportionately emoting crowd. I didn't find it heartwarming, cathartic or bringing the nation together (as the BBC is required to do under its Public Purposes). Just hugely embarrassing and I switched it off

Says more about me than anyone else, I expect . Or perhaps that not watching TV I'm completely unprepared for such spectacles

[amateur51]

Nothing, if you have a good reason for feeling sorry for yourself. Which people often do, life being often hard. But if someone feels sorry for themselves because the next door neighbour has a better car, or more money, then there is something wrong with it IMV. Because it's a bad reason for feeling sorry for yourself and because it suggests a disproportionate attention to your own desires and needs (not yours specifically, obviously. I just can't bring myself to type one's ).

I think Murray was just over-whelmed by being asked to vent his emotions for the cameras in a publicly 'acceptable' way.

[Lateralthinking1]

This thread's changed quickly! It is now like Diana and the public outpouring of grief. At the time, it wasn't Britain apparently. People disagreed on what it was exactly. Some said 'like a Catholic country'. Others said 'pagan'. I have often cried to music, film, sport. Can't remember doing so to CD, video, snakes and ladders. It requires a wider environment, atmosphere, situation, awe. Elsewhere, I don't need a trigger. I am entirely capable of waking up crying for no reason other than life itself. Only situational upset brings any sense of satisfaction. Its meaning is unreal. Yes, sport, like art, is emotional, just as climbing Everest or Ben Nevis is emotional. Just as breaking your ankle before you get to the top and having to be taken to hospital in a helicopter is emotional.

I hate the money in the sport. I also know that the money from winning Wimbledon is no more needed by Murray than multi-millionaires need tax havens. The tears are therefore Corinthian even if the Corinthians had stiff upper lips. As for the megaphone spectator, he is not my favourite kind. I prefer tennis grounds to be a church. A quick 'quiet please' and most of the time they still can be. That is remarkable in 2012. The spectacle is about history, possibility, achievement, failure. The country is in - now what do they call it? - a depression. The amounts earned by players are the inequality but the point at which they strive for something else is almost egalitarian. Can they - can therefore we - emerge from the lowest common denominator? He's lost so probably not.

But to think that it could be done in just two weeks, albeit with difficulty. We can forget about the way that they started at age five and then were on a tiny court daily. A court that for most of us would soon feel like a prison, just as constantly being in a plane would feel. Hey, don't they do that too? If you look at their full schedule, the picture is clearer. It has the same appearance of grind as any 40 hour week in an office. That too can often be emotional at times. Imagine what it would be like there if it was of interest to millions of people. Perhaps the tears are in the tension. Competing is a drug. To those involved, victory is the only escape from it. They can't understand that they can simply walk away and win just by going for a stroll along the North Downs.

[JohnSkelton]

I don't think that people's reactions and feelings are calculated on the basis of whether they are proportionate or disproportionate: they are what they are.

Indeed. What I really mean, of course, is that I found the reaction disproportionate. Which is not at all the same thing as it being disproportionate. But I still think it's part of a trend of disproportion: an inability to accept there are distinctions between experiences and the reactions they ... decently entail. That sounds very old-fashioned, perhaps.

I'm not sure that my reactions or feelings are either objective or proportionate, but I viewed the entire scene almost with disbelief. And squirming discomfort.

So did I. That's two of us, ergo it's an objective and proportionate reaction .

Having scanned all the newspaper headlines in the morning, my feeling was that the pressure on him to fulfil The Hopes Of The Nation and emulate Wade's Jubilee year win would have been of a kind that none of us have ever experienced. I can understand his reaction.

I missed a sense of it being that over the top - do many people seriously believe stuff about The Hopes of the Nation? If they do I find it depressing that The Hopes of the Nation are bound up in winning a game. And unlike a lot of people who like tennis I actually like (some) sport very much and get very caught up in it ('oh I can't stand sport except for the tennis, of course' etc.).