J P Roos: Miserable men: life stories, depression

J.P.Roos

Miserable men: Finnish men's life stories in a European perspective

(published in: Christa Hämmerle (ed) Plurality and individuality. Autobiographical cultures in Europe, IFK, Wien 1995)

One of the prize winners in the autobiography contest arranged in Helsinki in 1989 was a 40-year old man writing under the pseudonym of 'Tumma' (Dark). His writing tells about an intelligent and enterprising man whose life seems quite ordinary from the outside but which, in fact, isn't. This is a radically condensed version of his story (with mostly direct quotations; the whole story is about 50 pages):

"I am a man born in L (a small city in south-eastern Finland) in 1948 which means I celebrated my 40th birthday this year.

My mother was always at home. In summer, she did gardening and, in winter, handicrafts and took care of the house and me. My father worked first as an unskilled general worker, then as a ditchdigger and after that at the Finnish Post Office.

There haven't been any really significant events in my life in general and also my childhood memories consist mainly of quiet home life.

Every year in secondary school, they asked us what our fathers did for living. Most of them had more or less fine occupations. As for me, this was probably the most painful situation of the school year. I realized that there was nothing lower than being a ditcher.

In the beginning of upper secondary school I lost my ability to concentrate. Until then, I had been able to read even the most boring texts without difficulty. Now, however, I got stuck in my reading all the time and could read practically nothing.

It was in upper secondary school that I also started to withdraw myself from social relations. Somehow it started to be difficult for me, even that little amount of contact that I had had with people so far. I didn't learn to dance either or how it felt when a girl's warm, flexible body was dancing against yours.
(passes the undergraduate examination with good grades)

The most dominating thing about my time in the military was the overall gloominess: the surroundings, the food, the clothes. Physically it was so strenuous that it was difficult for me to keep up with the others at times.

One of my memories has to do with the weekend leaves. I am sitting in the bus heading for Lappeenranta. Just after the stop at the bus station in Kouvola a young, beautiful, blond girl gets in. The bus is almost full and the girl comes and takes the seat next to me. My heart starts to bump faster. I would like to say something to her but I can't think of anything. The girl gets off at S. A couple of weeks later I'm in the same bus again and the girl comes again and sits beside me. I try to look calm and do a good job at it obviously. However, I am squirming inside. I take my notebook and stare at the crossed out service days. I kept thinking if I would say something about that to the girl but decided that she probably wouldn't be interested in that subject. Then again, at S. she gets off and I never see her again.

I completed my military service in January 1969. As I was reading an issue of 'Me kuluttajat' (Consumers) magazine I noticed a question in the readers' column about the training of translators. I felt that it was my line of work.

I started to prepare myself for my student career full with mixed emotions. I felt a bit awkward about my roommates, me, the stiff constant worrier, among these free and careless spirits. The teachers at the language institute were nice and the athmosphere was quite intimate and pleasant. I have no bad memories about that time.

I started to think about working as translator again. Naturally, I also considered vacancies in teaching and almost applied for one job in the Savonlinna coeducational school. I lost my nerve, however, because I didn't really trust my skills. Besides, I was curious to see what kind of life Helsinki would offer me.

(it didn't offer much, works for a while in a bookstore)

I was disappointed and angry. At that time (1978), a great number of Finns moved in Sweden so I got the idea to step into a new adventure and try my luck in there.

   (Father dies, in 1978) I had grown apart from my father. We had never had a close relationship except when I was a child. I probably thought that my company wasn't worthy of him and so I became more withdrawn.

   In 1981 I started to feel that it is a good time to return back home in Finland if ever. In spring 1981 I sold my apartment and moved into a one room and kitchen apartment in Alppila in Helsinki. I had no job at sight . . . I figured that if I didn't find any work in Finland I'd go back to Sweden. Practically, it came close to that. (gets a job, has difficulties with the closest co-worker, resigns)

I had somehow become uncertain of myself. I tried my luck also in the field of freelance translation, but then the demand for my services started to decrease and finally I got no assignments at all.

Sitting at home alone thinking about everything I felt somehow paralyzed. I began to feel that I have no energy to try anything by myself. (then goes back to the bookstore) I have been working at the bookstore now almost two years and, most of all, I have enjoyed the company of pleasant co-workers.

In fact, I manage to make ends meet pretty well financially as I don't go in restaurants, I don't have a car and I don't drink or smoke. I am even able to afford a trip abroad on my vacation.

It seems that my hopes and dreams about getting some translation work are totally in vain. I cannot really understand how it has come to this. I don't have any confidence any more to apply for jobs in that field as I have so little experience. Or is it so that I am, myself, the only one to blame for the situation and not the circumstances?

I am very reserved and withdrawn by nature and I haven't learned the skill of spontaneous social intercourse. I'm unable to relax and approach new people. I haven't been able to set any specific goals for myself or, at least, I haven't been able to pursue these goals persistently enough. Apparently I am basically a lazy person and I should put more energy in my efforts when I'm trying to achieve something. I am not too efficient, I can tinker away a lifetime with some small detail.

   When thinking about future I have always usually pictured myself surrounded by people, my own family . . . Until this very day I haven't had the chance to talk seriously about anything like this with any woman. Sometimes I feel that people are running away from me. I have no close friends at all. Is it unreasonable from me to expect some human warmth in my life, both giving and taking? Is my life going down the drain? Maybe in this, too, I cannot blame anybody but myself.

   I haven't learned to be satisfied with my life. I haven't been able to find work in which I would feel important and in which I had the opportunity to develop my skills. I haven't found a person to share my life with. What have I achieved then and why am I living? I don't know the answer. This isn't exactly what I had thought life to be.
   What am I expecting from the future? That I would stay healthy, that I would have enough energy to work and to have some hobbies."

The core of this story lies in the description of a series of lost opportunities by a gifted, ambitious man, who comes from the semi-rural Finnish working class and who has done pretty well at school. His education proves out to be of no value, his efforts in creating personal relationships fail and even his bravest attempts to make a move towards something new go down the drain. All that is left is discontent, loneliness and regrets over lost chances.
"This isn't exactly what I had thought life to be" is a classic autobiographical statement which doesn't so much refer to the adversities and the tragic turns in life as to the uneventful nature of life and to the feeling of emptiness. In this case, the man's story, in all its uneventfulness and in revealing a life with truly few human contacts, is exceptionally grey. Still, as a description of the basic problems in life of an ordinary man it is quite illuminating. The for Finland typical elements of drinking, family and special achievements are lacking from the story and, for example, the pleasure felt in nature, which is usually an element in these stories.
After I first read it, this story has stayed on my mind. The fact is that this autobiography is quite unusual, especially at the time it was written (1988) when long-term unemployment, loneliness and lack of hope for the future were not yet very common or publicly dominating phenomena in Finland, as they are today. Anyway, after reading several other autobiographies it became obvious to me that this particular story, in all its conventionality and extremity, told something about the basic characteristics and disposition of the Finnish man: the existential loneliness, the melancholy, dwelling on the lost opportunities and choices, the negative attitude to life and the inability (or unwillingness) to communicate. Most importantly, though there seemed to be no connection between my personal life and the life of the autobiographer, I found that this story touched me personally, it was very Finnish and described my own habitus as well. This is partly because I recognized the situations and options he put forth all too well, though I - as well as most of my male colleagues - have been able to avoid coming to such an impasse as he describes. But the advantage of exceptional (although not extreme) cases is precisely that they bring to the fore such traits that everybody is aware of, but which are not too dramatically present in ordinary lives.
A few years later, when I was reading the autobiographies written by men for the "Eläköön mies" (Long live the man, 1993) contest I was confronted with the same feeling of familiarity. No matter how different the stories were in their external form or how extreme the situations and the courses of life described may have been they all had something which touched you, something Finnish, something typical pertaining to men's life. I am still unable to say, however, in which sense these characteristics are exclusive, a common experience shared by Finnish men only.
In the spring of 1993 I spent one month in Geneva reading the autobiographies written by Finnish men, one after another. Despite the fact that part of them were basically quite positive and optimistic the overall impression they gave me was quite oppressive: I cannot remember many times in my life that I would have been as depressed as that even though my life circumstances were excellent in principle: freedom to work in peace, a pleasant environment (the Villa Rigot in Geneva), pleasant fellow workers. In short, the reading experience was upsetting and unforgettable. I often wondered why was that, when, like I said, the stories themselves and my personal life or my class status had not much in common with the events or the atmosphere prevailing in the autobiographies: the gloominess of life, difficulties, alcohol, problems in personal relationships, low self-esteem, maltreatment, strict parents etc. The answer must be found somewhere in the level of the common cultural experience basis: Finnishness of the story, the very same melancholic tone found in Finnish popular music (tango!; except those falsely cheerful love songs which attract some Finns...). Nearly all Finns identify themselves with this story but for men it is, actually, the cornerstone of their emotional life by means of which they can express their feelings much more accurately than with their own words. Aki Kaurismäki's film "Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö" (Match factory girl) is a good example of an extremely caricatural fictional story, packed with so much "Finnishness" that watching the film in the practically empty movie theater in Paris was truly an overwhelming experience.

   The basic life story (meaning here the repetitive, meaningful elements which have been extracted from a large number of separate stories according to my personal interpretation) of a Finnish man 40-50 years of age can be characterized briefly as follows:
Childhood home which lacks in positive emotional expressions, a strict and distant father, a submissive mother generally disappointed with life, a shy but probably active child (the shyness is somehow taken for granted).
"...everyone had to find the grounds for respect and pride from somewhere else. Home offered nothing but submission. And surprisingly enough, submission by all members of the family. Submission? To whom? To nobody, except to the form of life based on it." (Man 93/188)
School makes a child timid and seclusive, maybe wild but very weak in terms of self-confidence, or security. It also leaves him with a large number of slowly healing wounds, feelings of failure and hurt from insults suffered. In Tony Jefferson's study on Mike Tyson, he notes that Tyson as first a big, intimidated boy, and then, when he overcame the anxiety which made him passive, he became the masculine, aggressive type (Jefferson 1994). Now, in a sense, I would like to claim that typically, many Finnish men need a very long time to get over this anxiety threshold, perhaps in some aspects he never gets over it.Except, of course when drinking, which makes drink such a central feature of the Finnish man's life.
   Timidness and low self-esteem contribute later to the difficulties in the man's relationship with women. Women are viewed at a distance, the most important thing being to get a woman and to perform. Military service is seen mainly from a negative angle: the injustices, the mistreatment, as a meaningless and depressing experience. Home-leaving takes place as force play either in anger or due to an internal necessity without any particular reason. Miscellaneous jobs or some sort of training is obtained fast without specific goals or meaning. The right woman is found, often without spending too much time in looking after one. Pregnancy leads to marriage and life becomes dominated by work, saving, narrow living conditions, building a house far away from home. The man gets along with his wife either well or not so well after the first ecstasy of love has subsided and finds the real life experiences and pleasures outside home. Even work becomes uninteresting. Health problems begin to appear. Children either disappear from view or they become problems. The years of crisis in the 1990's led to unemployment, difficulties at work or, alternatively, to early retirement. Life hasn't given much but it has taken all.
In the very best case, the man has a house, he doesn't have too many problems with his wife, he has a good relationship with the children and his job is pretty secure (this last point is not self-evident). Therefore, he can feel contented. Sometimes a Finnish man can even feel happy, or at least satisfied with his life. However, it is very seldom that one can speak of him as having an 'optimistic attitude towards life' but rather as having some kind of basic negativity or basic pessimism which influences the way he experiences things or, as an attitude the main feature of which is a kind of neutrality, life's monotony, experiencing life neither as positive nor negative.
   "This life isn't so easy that it wouldn't hit a thinking person with deep depression" (127/Man 1993, b 1924)
The positive dimension, therefore, means rather that the negative aspects are not mentioned, that misfortunes are stated matter-of-factly and the person doesn't dwell on them. Instead, life is seen as a continuous activity, full of struggle and work... I may not be quite completely wretched and unhappy. At least, I'm not the most miserable creature on earth, there are those who are in a even more pitiful situation than me. Moreover, those who feel that their life somehow strongly contradicts with certain basic elements of 'Finnishness' are the ones who perceive their life on the basis of this contrast and are quite ready to be objects of the so-called real life as well.
On the other hand, there are so many negative options and the essence of them includes endless despair, seclusion, alienation and lack of positive relationships. Negative is, thus, experienced as suffering and positive described as action, without the dimension of experience...
Therefore, 'well-being' or 'happiness' don't really exist. Instead, there is only intensive activity/work and a lot of miserable depression. This means that the alternatives are either action without depth or gloom, introversion without action.
It is clear, however, that some changes take place in this story between the generations (compare Roos 1987): an heroic tale can be found in the story of the men born in the years of the war and the Great Depression/period of reconstruction: hard work, self-sacrificing, taking risks, achievements, self-respect and self-esteem. Satisfaction is derived from overcoming one's adversities, from coping.
The contents of this kind of story seem to become more hollow in the end. While the number of adversities and difficulties to overcome reduces the meaning of these achievements becomes less important. In other words, my opinion on this matter differs a bit from Matti Kortteinen's (1992) view which emphasizes the stability of the ideology of coping, stretching over generations but finding new forms. I would opt for the basic life story I have described above in which, in its most extreme, action is replaced by melancholy. Normally, action does not exclude melancholy, the basic tone of the story.
   The fundamental lesson of the Finnish man's life story is the following: never leave undone what you could have done, never leave your friends, never leave letters unanswered, initiatives without response. "Most I have regretted the things I haven't done" says a man, who has during his life done a lot of stupid things, "for a long time I have mulled over the question 'why didn't I' - much faster does the harm over a stupid act get forgotten than the memories of indecision, giving up and hesitation, which don't leave you easily" (20/ Man 1993, b. 51)
How to interpret this phenomenon? Why is the image of the Finnish man often so miserable, depressing, lacking any way out of the situation, full of hopeless loneliness, bitterness, hostility, disappointments, losses, remorse, guilt? And is it really so? Can we make this claim, even on the basis of the Finnish written life stories, generalizing to the whole of Finnish society. And what about this in comparison with other countries?
   Of course. this is a claim about culture, and as such depends on many other things, such as the generally acnowledged melancholy of the Finnish culture (a male melancholy, NB), the popular music, the alcohol culture, the literary tradition, the well knowwn communication difficulties etc. Also, the Gallup polls are rather eloquent, notwithstanding the fact that most Finns describe their life as rather or very happy they also feel that their life is miserable (two thirds of a representative sample of over 15 year olds in October 1993, Helsingin Sanomat 6.12.1993). This only shows that happiness and misery are not too strongly related.
   Elizabeth Badinter (1993, 60) notes "European and American men's literature (of the 70's and 80's) shows well the scale of feelings in which men live: anger, pain, fear of women, powerlessness, a feeling of losing one's on place, self-hatred, disgust of others etc." This fits the Finnish men's life stories quite well.
My first hypothesis is that the life story of a person is basically rather similar, everywhere. Many of the events included are quite common and frequent. The point is that the emphasis in these stories varies quite distinctively: some see certain events very significant in their lives whereas others consider them unimportant. And the culturally significant signs, nuances are there only for the properly attuned reader to see (or rather, feel).
   In other words, the story of the Finnish man is quite similar in itself with the stories of those having relatively the same social status but they tend to emphasize things in a different manner: probably more melancholic, maybe less social, more anguished and lacking self-confidence.
   A first test of this hypothesis, fails miserably (sic!). When reading the interpretations of my Norwegian colleagues concerning their collection of men's life stories, a completely different picture emerges (Almås-Thorland 1994, Danielsen 1992). In their narrative, Norway has developed, prom a patriarchal, rural society into a "Frauenland" where men and women live in gender equality and where men like it. Whereas in Finland, even though one cannot say that men are miserable because of a long standing policy of equality, it would certainly be wrong to say that men express satisfaction.
   But Almås and Thorland's interpretation is even more intriguing: they see "rurality", Norwegian peasant culture as the basis of both gender equality and men's satisfaction. In the Norwegian peasant culture, men find the roots of their self esteem, which lets them accept the gains of women without anxiety. This is because peasant culture has been held in high esteem and because it has nationally a central identity creating role. Almås and Thorland describe the "mythical" Norwegian peasant (man): hardworking, strong sense of his worth, no braggard, a bit shy, but calm and modest. (p. 4). All this is in complete contrast to the Finnish cultural understanding of peasant culture and, of course, to the theses about Finnish men in this paper. In Finland, peasant culture is important and peasant values are held in esteem, but still "peasant" is not something valorised, but rather seen as "slow", "clumsy", "just ordinary". And the qualities of Finnish men are typically seen to be related to this peasant background so that the misery of Finnish men has very strong rural roots.
   Thus, we have two societies with a lot of common, but completely opposite interpretations as to the life situation of men in these societies. This is an extremely intriguing task for future research.

Literature

Almås, Reidar - Thorland, Ingunn: In search for lost rurality. Gender identity and the rural urban continuum in Norwegian life stories. XIII World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld 18-23, 1994
Badinter, Elizabeth: XY - de l'identité masculine. Editions Odile Jacob, Paris 1992
Bourdieu, Pierre et al: La misère du monde. Seuil, Paris 1993
Danielsen, Kirsten: Slike gutter. Eldre menn forteller om sitt liv. Pax Forlag 1992
Kortteinen, Matti: Kunnian kenttä. Hanki ja jää. Helsinki 1992
Moore, Barrington Jr: Injustice. Ther social bases of obedience and revolt. Macmillan, London 1978
Nurminen, Eija and J.P.Roos: Models of parenting, between generations and classes in Ulla Björnberg (ed): Parents in the 90's. Contradictions and Comparisons. Transaction Books, New Brunswick 1992, 123-140
Siltala, Juha: Mies ja kunnia. Otava, Keuruu 1994
Smith, Joan: Misogynies. Reflections on Myth and Malice. Faber and Faber, London 1989
Todorov, Tzvetan: Frêle bonheur. Essai sur Rousseau. Hachette, Paris 1985

Back to beginning