Andrew Miller: Schools don’t teach kids how to deal with emotions, people need to pause before reacting

C’est quoi être un homme ? Les combats sont-ils inévitables? I was in my greyest school uniform, pointless half-mast tie and scuffed shoes — when the poor French teacher shouted in English “if that’s the way you want to behave, you can go to the headmaster!” It’s a common error to conflate someone’s behaviour with the way they want to behave. We were never taught the basics of managing emotions at school — it wasn’t on the curriculum. Our lowest common denominator was scrambling in the chanting schoolyard — “fight fight fight!” — followed up with the equally obscene, lacerating cane. True power was ultimately backed up by physical domination, like the chimp enclosure at the zoo. In the institutional hypocrisy of chapel, yelling was used to enforce silence before we heard that the discernment of right from wrong — thanks Eve — differentiates us from other animals. “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men,” wrote the apostle Paul. Vengeance is the loving God’s exclusive privilege. It wasn’t easy to be peaceable with my temper, but no-one taught me how to manage that unwelcome visitor, nor held me when I was frightened of myself. No-one hugs an angry boy. They are sent outside. This is no sob story — we were all the same — which is why it is so odd that education about our overwhelming emotions was absent. Many fathers were too busy getting purple-faced at the footy to cover anger management on the weekends, and mothers who feared that their son was a chip off the old block lacked traction. Years after school, in a humble, crowded bistro in France — good food and bad toilets — I went to use the facilities. As I made my way through the crowded bar looking for the loo, a young local man grabbed my forearm and started shouting in my face. I could not have followed his logic even if I had paid attention at school, punctuated as it was with generous gobs of fortified saliva. I shook his grip from my arm and went to pass, but he aggressively pulled me so close that his hot breath stung my eyes. The blood was rising in my neck, my jaw clenched hard, and my free left hand grabbed for his throat as I twisted my right arm clear, pulling it back to make a fist. Just then a seasoned waiter pirouetted expertly between us, and without spilling a drop created enough separation for my assailant’s mates to contain him. I went to find the calming urinoir, and waited for my pulse to slow. Living peaceably sounds good, but there comes a time when we all have to decide whether to stick up for something. And if so, how far we will go. Are we prepared to cross that difficult Rubicon of being disliked? Or go further? I would have hit that random Frenchman, but for the waiter’s intervention, and that instinctual reaction to choose fight over flight has bothered me ever since. “You would have been within your rights to clock him, mate.” Perhaps, but the better man walks away, which requires humility and a stronger sense of self than I found in that indivisible second. Conflict — especially war — is often based on a competing sense of entitlement. In the extreme it is inflicted in the name of God, on both sides. Are we arguing from fine thoughtful principles, or simply because we’re on a team? Sometimes the only pleasure left in modern politics — or life — is seeing the defeat of some unlikeable character. It’s never a healthy motivation. We must teach our kids to pause before reacting. Maybe then we will get thoughtful leaders who know the importance of restraining the hawks — who understand that war, like domestic violence, is always unspeakably terrible. What is it to be a man? Do we have to fight?