Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be. Paul McCartney
A real man is one who fears the death of his heart, not of his body. Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya
Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back. Marcus Aurelius
To be a real man is to be unattached – not from responsibility or justice – but from those dependencies that inhibit responsibility and justice. Tarek William Saab
Real men don’t conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true but maintain the integrity of their own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him. Saul Bellow
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him. William Lyon Phelps
The first step to be a good man is this: You must deeply feel the burden of the stones someone else is carrying. Mehmet Murat Ildan
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. Friedrich Nietzsche
For better or worse, and I believe I know which, this is my season of sports watching, a feast of athletes performing at levels I could only have imagined for myself, striving for tangible goals in the form of trophies and championships, tangibility which too-often eludes this current incarnation of myself.
But beyond the competition of sports there is another competition embedded in the commercials which have become more and more numerous during broadcasts, which increasingly disrupt the “pace of play” and which seek to attract business through words and images which generally portray a very different view of men than the one suggested by the quotations above.
For those of you who have better things to do than indulge in an endless stream of sports broadcasts, allow me to share a bit of what I see through the lens of corporate image making. Men looking like complete fools as they gush over “good deals” and bungle assignments both domestic and public. Men shooting/punching/knifing other men and blowing up public infrastructure in movie trailers, men driving trucks at recklessly high speed through natural areas with no perceptible interest in nature beyond the playground it provides, men purporting to “save the day” while failing to acknowledge that the “day” which needs saving is largely of their own making.
It’s quite a show. It’s also a distortion of how many of the men I know conduct their lives, how they demonstrate the values and commitments which convey hopefulness, honor and compassion in their children, how they express the desire to play without demolition, how they incarnate the will to fulfill commitments which do not require vanquishing others, commitments which are not distracted by petty annoyances or conspiratorial beliefs that have little or no foundation in reality, which do not posit grievances and associated enemies as part of efforts to recapture a version of manhood that is as much concoction as fact, which eschews predation misdefined as some erstwhile dimension of courage.
Clearly there is no one way to be man as there is no one path to being a caring, competent father. The stereotypes which we continue to inflict across cultures and genders do us no favors but rather rob us of options for sound living that we badly need in these treacherous times. In more ways than most of us are aware, or want to be, we have made a mess of a great many things, messes which will not be sorted successfully with automatic weapons, smarter phones or trucks with indestructible chassis. Nor will they be sorted through a bloated and even unjust financial system which practices little or no transparency even as it maintains access to all of your own personal and purchasing preferences.
As part of the current madness, there are many (as there always seem to be) who want to return to a sanitized version of the “good old days” when “men were men” and others were subservient. I don’t recall those days as being particularly “good,” but I do remember men who did really hard jobs, day after day, in an attempt to provide for their families; men who pushed their children along in part so that they might attain some respite from war and its consequences, or lungs filled with coal and smog, or backs thrown out of whack by crumbling roads and infrastructure, even some distance from financial insecurity and class snobbery, children who might have a few more options than the fathers who helped raise them to enjoy the life they have been granted.
We have come a long way, but only in some ways. We are not particularly adept at the play which encourages rather than threatens spontaneous joy and cooperation. We are also not particularly skilled in educating and managing emotions without suppression, allowing us to feel deeply the burdens of others, to accept criticism without retribution, to fear the demise of the heart as much as the body, to stand for beliefs which are more than figments of our imagination, to smile at death as that fate which binds us all, to reject transactional living which reduces respect to utility, to examine the dependencies in our lives which impede our pursuit of more courageous living.
I have never been a father. And much like the world as a whole, it could reasonably be said that I am barely “half the man I used to be.” But with the half that remains there is work to do, care to provide, values to uphold, madness to mend, faith to explore, narratives to correct, climate to heal, discrimination to expose, children to support and inspire. Half a loaf, after all, is still a loaf.
Thanks to all of you fathers, to all of you men, who have chosen to pursue a higher calling, who are trying to do more and better within the circumstances in which you find yourselves and with the people in your orbit, even those who in some instances and for whatever reason may be disinclined to honor your otherwise honorable journey.
gapwblog 
Leave a comment