I Am Man
To be a man is to lose yourself a thousand times, and still get back to work. A quiet reckoning on grief, legacy, and forging meaning in the dark.
Dealing with loss is a skill men have stoically developed for millennia; from ancient French caves to Wall Street board rooms, we've taken bad news and marched forward - hearts quietly wounded - towards the reflection of our own mortality.
Brave men embrace the end of things like an old friend from bygone days. Strong men obstinately defy fear and sit upright in their pain as their hopes bleed out before them. Great men make the decision to say "yes" to life every day despite stacked odds, pressure to hide their vulnerability, and the increasing awareness over time that their lives are no longer their own.
What does a man do when he realizes his own life - the thing he thought was himself - is just a tangled web of expectations, responsibilities, love, resentment, & the nagging whispers of internal dialogue? One of greatest losses a man must learn to accept is the loss of himself.
In fact, when a brave, strong, great man reaches his horizon, he will have lost himself a million times along the way. He will have conjured purpose out of meaninglessness, hewn ambition out of despair, and perhaps inflicted a new life or two upon the world in moments of gorgeous passion.
Men have to be strong. Men have to be fierce. Men must have the audacity to defy the angry voices and exhausted criticisms echoing through their balding skulls. Men must light their own paths through the hand-carved catacombs in which their deepest fears lurk. Somehow between demon hunting and fire-starting, we must also find time to make a living so we can feed ourselves and our families.
Sometimes being a man can seem like a terrible game invented by an unbridled sociopath - a game where the only objective is to keep a straight face as you watch everything you've ever loved slip through your fingers, disintegrate, and disappear into a river in slow motion. Oh, and at any point your dick might just stop working for no good reason.
What delusional sense of optimism would keep a man going through these times? Perhaps this optimism (or hubris) evolved long ago when our ancestors made love in cold forests and buried their dead children in the snow each winter. The only force which could drive a man to try again after such a loss is the ferocious pursuit of meaning. Men will use invisible hammers to forge meaning where there is none - all so we can get back to work and see this goddamned thing through.
Because of this insane will to find meaning, I'm alive - the final link in an unbroken genetic chain spanning back 10,000 generations. Despite a couple hundred thousand years of crushing losses, my fathers tried again and again. Their ghosts live in my DNA. Their robustness lives in the sinew which anchors tired muscles to aching bones. Their unrelenting pursuit of warmer valleys lives in my strong legs and my sturdy feet. Their endless quest for beauty lives in every piece of art I create, no matter how small.
I am a human man, and regardless of the humiliating setbacks I'm certain to experience in the future, and despite the torturous losses I've already endured (mostly by my own hand), I'll get back to work. I'll keep saying "yes" to life, even though I never asked for the privilege. That's what men are supposed to do. That's what we've always done. I know you will, too.