A few days ago, I wrote about a life with contours. About the highs and lows, the mountains we gladly climb and the valleys we would rather avoid. I wrote that I do not long for sadness, loss or failure, while at the same time I do not want to live a life in which fear of a possible valley keeps me from taking every unfamiliar road. The landscape of a life truly lived simply is not flat.

Since then, one question has stayed with me. What happens when a valley becomes so deep that you can no longer see the summit and no longer believe there is a way back up?

I know valleys. I know sadness, uncertainty and periods in which I have wondered how something was ever going to work out. I know the questions that probably find most of us at some point in our lives. Do I matter? Who am I, really? Where is my place? Where am I going? Why is all of this happening to me? I have also learned to ask that last question from the other side. There have been periods when so many beautiful things happened, when I met extraordinary people, experienced love, travelled, found new opportunities and life seemed to give me more than I had expected and, at times, more than I thought I deserved. Suddenly, exactly the same question sounds completely different. Why is all of this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?

I consider myself fortunate that, despite the challenges and struggles I have faced, I am basically a happy person. I have never attempted suicide, nor have I ever seriously considered it. I do not want to claim an experience that is not mine. My valleys have, so far, remained valleys in which somewhere inside me there was still an awareness that the landscape continued, even when I could not see exactly how.

That is precisely why an audition on Australia’s Got Talent affected me so deeply.

Michael Webb, who performs as Magic Mike, walks onto the stage with a deck of cards. Judge Alesha Dixon shuffles the deck. Shane Jacobson chooses a card, signs it and the card disappears back into the deck. Michael then begins telling a story about a man named Jack. As the story unfolds, exactly the cards that belong in his story emerge from the shuffled deck. A Jack, a Joker, a King, a Queen, followed again and again by cards that seem impossibly positioned to appear at exactly the right moment. Even without the story behind it, it is an extraordinary piece of magic.

Watching it, I later began to see another symbolism in that deck of cards. I do not know whether Michael consciously intended it that way, and ultimately that does not really matter. A life can look remarkably like a shuffled deck. Once, everything seemed to have some kind of order. You roughly knew who you were, where you belonged, who belonged with you and where you were heading. Then life happens and the cards get shuffled. A relationship changes, someone disappears from your life, work takes an unexpected turn, your health changes, plans fail or several things happen all at once. The cards are still there. The order in which you understood them has disappeared.

Meanwhile, Michael continues telling us about Jack. From the outside, his life seems fine. A loving family, friends, laughter and companionship. Yet at Christmas or on his birthday, he can look around at a house filled with people enjoying themselves and wonder what is wrong with him. Why can he not simply enjoy it too? Eventually, he retreats to a quiet room to cry.

Then Michael says something that affected me at least as much as the statistics that follow. Jack is 28 years old and, in his mind, 28-year-old men are supposed to be strong. They do not talk about their feelings.

There is an entire world contained in those few words.

We have created a peculiar definition of strength. Being strong means carrying on. Being strong means taking care of yourself. Being strong means solving your problems while bothering other people with them as little as possible. We still tend to expect men in particular to keep themselves together. You are allowed to feel sad, as long as you eventually get back on your feet. You are allowed to hurt, as long as you keep going. You are allowed to cry, preferably somewhere nobody can see you.

The statistics show that mental health struggles pay little attention to that image. I deliberately stay with Australian figures here because Michael Webb is Australian and his story is being told on the stage of Australia’s Got Talent. In the most recent Australian figures for 2024, more than three quarters of people who died by suicide were men. The age-standardised suicide death rate among men was more than three times that of women. That does not, by itself, explain why more men die by suicide; suicide arises from complex and widely differing circumstances. It does make Michael’s words about masculinity and silence difficult to simply pass by.

I increasingly wonder whether we have defined strength almost the wrong way around.

Asking for help can mean that you have decided to fight. It can mean saying to someone: I cannot find my way out of this on my own right now, and I do want to get out. Help me. Look at this with me. Stay with me for a while. If your life has become a deck of cards whose order you can no longer understand, you do not have to arrange those cards neatly on the table before you are allowed to let somebody else see them.

Showing that they are in disarray can itself require strength.

The same is true of crying. Tears do not solve a problem or change the circumstances, yet they can express something that apparently needs to come out. Allowing sadness to become visible makes us vulnerable, and showing vulnerability requires courage when we have spent years teaching each other that strength means remaining in control.

Then comes the moment in Michael’s performance when we discover that Jack is not a fictional character. Jack is Michael himself. The story he has been telling through his cards is his own story. The room is silent and Michael visibly struggles with his emotions. Shane Jacobson sees what is happening and quietly says to him:

Don’t cry, mate. Those three words stayed with me.

Not because I blame Shane. Quite the opposite. Watch his posture and listen to the way he says it and you see someone who is genuinely moved and trying to connect. He wants to support Michael. He wants to help him through this difficult moment. His words come from compassion and warmth.

That is precisely why I find them so meaningful. This is what we say:

Don’t cry, mate.

Don’t cry. Hang in there. You’re doing great.

What does it say about us when even our loving instinct in response to another person’s sadness is that the tears should stop? I wish we could begin to place something else alongside that instinct. That we would not immediately try to put someone back together when they are falling apart. That sadness would not have to disappear before we could sit beside someone. That a man could cry without anyone seeing him as less strong. That a woman would not first have to prove that she has tried everything before she is allowed to say that she cannot cope anymore. That we would meet each other not only on the mountaintops where the photographs look beautiful, also in the valleys where nobody particularly wants to point a camera.

Social media does not always help us with that. We like showing the cards that have landed well. The journey, the dinner, the love, the success, the smile and the view from the summit. We are far less likely to show the deck scattered across the floor while we have no idea how to put it back together. Two people can therefore look at each other’s seemingly perfect lives while both are at home trying to pick up their own cards.

I do not want to place myself outside that observation either. I too like sharing the beautiful journeys, remarkable encounters, plans that succeed and moments when I am happy. That happiness is real. My sadness, doubts and uncertainty are real as well. One does not make the other less true. A life with contours exists precisely because all those different heights belong to the same landscape.

A valley, however, can become so deep that someone loses sight of that.

It probably does little good to stand on the mountain and shout down that somewhere below there must surely be another path leading upwards. Someone who can no longer see a way out does not need a simple piece of life advice. They may need someone willing to descend, stand beside them and help them search.

That is why Michael’s performance affects me so deeply. Not only because of his story and not only because of that incredible magic trick. He does exactly what he once taught himself not to do. He stands in front of a room filled with people and tells them that he has struggled. He talks about his feelings. He becomes emotional. He lets other people see what his cards once looked like.

That is not weakness, that is a man fighting.

And if asking for help means inviting someone to stand beside you when you can no longer see the way forward, then asking for help is not surrender. It can mean refusing to let the story end there. During his performance, Michael says that help is only a phone call away. I find that thought important, precisely because that first step can feel enormous when you can no longer see a way out. Yet the step itself can be very small: pick up your phone and call someone. A friend, a family member, your doctor, a mental health professional or a crisis service. One phone call, and there can be someone on the other end willing to listen. Help can be just one phone call away.

We do not know how the deck of our lives will be shuffled next. We do not know who we will still meet, which conversation will set something in motion, which door will unexpectedly open or how differently we may look back at today a year from now. Nobody can promise that every card will eventually fall beautifully into place. Life is not a magic trick and not every sadness acquires a meaning afterwards that somehow makes everything right.

I do believe that a person can lose sight of every possible way out while a way out still exists.

And if you are the person who cannot see it right now, I hope you will let someone else look with you before deciding that your story has no next page. Show someone your cards. Tell them you have lost the order. Ask someone to sit beside you. Seek professional help when you need it. Not because you are too weak to do this alone, precisely because you apparently still have enough strength to say that you want to keep going.

And if the tears come? Cry, mate. You do not have to hold them back for me.

Watch Michael Webb / Magic Mike’s full Australia’s Got Talent audition here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FJ1_-eAsq4

Help can be just one phone call away.
If you are in the Netherlands and you are thinking about suicide, or you are worried about someone else, you can speak or chat anonymously with 113 Suicide Prevention by calling 113 or 0800-0113. If there is immediate danger to life in the Netherlands, call 112.

If you are outside the Netherlands, contact the suicide prevention or crisis service in your own country, or your local emergency number if there is immediate danger.

Source for the Australian statistics:
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Causes of Death, Australia – Intentional self-harm deaths (suicide) in Australia, 2024 figures:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/intentional-self-harm-suicide-deaths/latest-release