By Bruce Cook
I don’t know if this counts as ‘vulnerable’ in todays terms, but it’s potentially embarrassing... so here we go.
I recently watched Top Gun - Maverick while on a transatlantic flight to the sunshine, and more than once I found myself filled up with emotion. My breath would get choked, my eyes began to well up, and I could feel my cheeks getting warm and undoubtedly turning red. I had to look stealthily to my left and to my right to see if my family or any of the other passengers had noticed… What's wrong with me!? This is a frickin' action movie.. get it together!
This was not sadness I was feeling. It was something more powerful, and special. It happened at various times - when Maverick made his epic virtual flight through the canyon, when he saved Rooster, when Rooster saved Maverick, and when Maverick was reunited with Iceman. Hell, it even happened at the very beginning of the film when the old ‘Danger Zone’ theme song played over new images of US Navy fighter planes launching and landing on an aircraft carrier while shimmering heat waves rose from the deck and distorted the view - bringing back instant memories of the original 1986 blockbuster.
My emotions during the aircraft carrier scene are hard to explain but I think there’s just something about the experience or creation of a really cool moment that you know has touched or inspired an audience.
When I was running the Scottish Rocks basketball team, in my maiden season, before the first home game, we decided to replace the long-standing traditional pregame playing of the audio from Braveheart’s ‘Freedom!!!’ scene with Runrig’s rocked-up version of Loch Lomond. I knew that song always made me, an American transplant, suddenly wish I was Scottish.
The first time we played it the whole crowd sang along from the outset and with the crescendo of the drumbeat they instinctively started bouncing with Scottish pride and the emotion was palpable. Meanwhile you could see on the faces of the opponents that they were thinking ‘what the hell have we just walked into…’.
And there I was, the Scottish imposter doing everything I could to hold back the tears of pride as my heart pounded and and I stood there on the sideline with my clipboard. Something had to give… so I laughed. Huh?
Often the only possible release from this sudden and unexpected flood of feeling is to spew a burst of laughter - which also feels inappropriate and fraught with the risk of snot and spit, so this must also be suppressed. But why? Why hold it back?
I first remember feeling this feeling - this sudden welling up of positive emotion - when I was in my early teens. I’m not exactly sure when or from what, but I knew the feeling felt powerful. Back then I didn’t really know what caused it, but I assumed this sudden emotional flood resulted from experiencing something special for the first and possibly only time. I assumed everyone knew this sensation and I felt it should or could be harnessed for use in some positive way.
As a young teen I tried to sum up this feeling in what I then thought was a clever title for a future book or a project or a blog. Well, probably not a blog since this was the late 70’s. Anyway, I grabbed a scrap of paper and I wrote down “Once in a lifetime emotions” and stuck it in my Velcro wallet. I don’t know where that scrap of paper is today, but I know I carried it around for at least a decade, maybe two.
What I have since discovered is that only some of us are lucky enough to frequently feel this feeling. Many of us get emotional over a sad movie, or a Hollywood love story, but I also feel it when an underrated team overachieves, or when a shy kid nails the big note on X-Factor, or when a young bench player steps up to unexpectedly make the big play in the big moment. It happened recently when Mac McClung suddenly became the toast of the town in front of all of his heroes. I get it when any supposedly average performer gives more effort than anyone thought they could - even in defeat, like when the humble hardworking employee gets the big promotion when all they were really after was to just be certain they didn’t screw up.
It nearly knocked me to my knees more than a decade ago when the curtain raised and I suddenly saw my 7 & 8 year-old daughters performing ‘It’s a hard knock life’ in the opening scene of ‘Annie’ at our local amateur drama club. Oh man, there it goes again. OK, now breathe…
It happened for me when the hometown boy hugged his mum (mom) after winning the big title, and again when that same boy - now a man - politely but sternly corrected a journalist who failed to recognise the great success of America's female tennis players in recent years. Genuine, unrequired class - and it sends a surge of emotion that momentarily renders me speechless... and breathless.
I get this amazing feeling all the time… and I know others do too… for their own reasons and events. Many of us - unfortunately - aren’t so easily overcome in this way, but I think (or at least hope) that most can recognise the type of acts and efforts and moments that might trigger this emotional flood.
So what’s the point? Why am I sharing all this mush? What can we learn from it?
I guess the point is that this not-so-unique emotion always comes from the sudden (and often unexpected) positive acts of others. Conversely, we can create this positive emotion by doing good things - either within our own world or to/for others. We don't necessarily know when we're doing it, but it comes when we do our best, or try our hardest to do good. And the feeling is infectious. Creating it feels just as good as receiving it.
A dear friend sang beautifully at our wedding and the minister had to wipe a tear. My daughter fell off the balance beam only to respond with a kick-ass floor routine and her coach welled up. Rooster flew like Maverick and I had to find a tissue. I love it. Now go make someone cry.
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