How to be a Man: Know Thyself_1.0

This is one in a series of articles about what it means to be male: what I believe it means to be a man in today’s world. If this is the first article you have found, you can start here with my introduction. I have numbered these so you can get a sense of which ones I think you should read first.

My journey to adulthood was punctuated with a great deal of directives. Real men do this. Real men don’t do that. I believe I grew up during an era where drugs (primarily cocaine) became the drug of choice among upper middle class families and, along with alcohol, the balm of choice for mostly miserable lives. The 1980’s was the bridge between traditional gender roles – a society that expected men to be bread winners while women stayed home – and the modern era which was punctuated by workplace equality, LGBTQ rights, and new ways of thinking. It seemed like most of my friend’s parents didn’t really like each other all that much and many would use drugs and alcohol to escape their miserable existence. The 80’s was when the pace of change really started to pick up, and that change was creating tension at home and in society at large. People started talking more about single parent households, rather than shunning women who were forced to raise their children alone with little to no financial support and certainly disengaged fathers. Men, to that point, had been told their job was to go to work, have fun on the weekends, and let women raise the kids.

When you think about popular movies of the time, parents were almost non-existent in the narrative or caricatures of what a parent should actually be. But art imitates life, as they say, and there were a large number of parents who were, to put it simply, out of touch. The Breakfast Club, Karate Kid, The Goonies, Sixteen Candles, Gremlins, and the aptly titled Home Alone, were just a few of the titles we watched – all depicting adults as disengaged, nonexistent, or one-dimensional personas to further a plot. You might argue that Karate Kid had Mr. Miyagi, but his role functions mostly as a spirit-like guide with mystical powers leading the hero on his journey. Not a real-life person with complexity. And yes, I know Home Alone was released in 1990.

What strikes me as really interesting is that the overarching lesson of my adolescence (the 1980’s when I was in middle school, high school, and college) was that kids were being told not who or what to be, but rather just not to be what the adults of the time represented. There was almost no “do this,” and a whole lot of, “don’t do that.” It was also a time when both parents started working more and, like me, a generation of “latch-key” kids came of age. Watching cartoons after school and calling our moms to tell them we made it home OK. At least some of the time. Our fathers had no role models at home, because that was how they were raised. In turn, they weren’t given the tools to engage and educate their boys on what being a man could be about. If you think back to tribal customs and use modern pack animals as a guide, you can see the value of tribal rearing. That everyone in the pack or group plays a role in helping to guide the young on how to survive and thrive in their environment. I can only imagine that the slow erosion of that began in ancient times and has moved further and further from that concept as man and technology have advanced.

What I realized after my first two children were born was that I didn’t actually know who I was. Like most young men, you sort of grew up thinking that your world view was the right one – whatever it was – and that your job was to impose that on others. You see the vestiges of that in today’s ruling class. The people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who feel empowered to tell others how things are. A great example of this is the boomerang of remote work and return to office mandates by older men (typically), who believe that it is the right way to run a business. However short-sighted it may be. I am one who believes that history will look back on the post COVID era and the return to office mandates with the lens of, “what the fuck where they thinking?” and, “how did that make sense to anyone?” But I digress.

In my 30’s I began to seek out ways to understand myself better. Affairs with co-workers, adventure races, a master’s program, reading business books, and a half-assed attempt to get really fit didn’t really help me. I started to realize that I didn’t know myself all that well. The more certain I was of something, the more I realized I was dead wrong. And that’s the rub, as they say. Not only that, I realized that who I was – my personality, if you will – was not well suited to certain things. It turned out that what I was good at was not what I was doing. That period kicked off, what I hope, will be a lifelong journey of growth and learning that I have yet to experience. Each year, each day, is an opportunity to open my mind to new ideas and new concepts. It is also an exercise in realizing that I know very little and that can be quite humbling. But also liberating. Most importantly, I learned that each of us has the power to shape our own path. Our own journey. And if you are on a path you don’t like, no matter how hard it appears, you can actually make changes needed to live a more fulfilling life.

But how?

Get to know your personality. There are ways to delve into this. I remember having a conversation with a person who believed personality types to be total junk and snake oil. I never studied psychology beyond a few courses that I had to take for my major, but I think there is value in getting feedback of all kinds. I took a free personality test on the 16 Personalities website. I believe this is based on the Meyers Briggs framework. You should know this is generally considered "pseudoscience" by the scientific establishment. I am not making a case for or against this. What I am making the case for is using something to help guide your understanding of yourself. There are many many different types of tests like this that can help you understand yourself better. And that’s what I recommend you seek out. Find any input that can help you improve that understanding. Like many things, treat it all with a healthy dose of skepticism and NEVER fall into the trap that one way is the ONLY way.

For me the 16 Personalities website helped me start that process. The final output (all for free) resonated with me (especially the flaws) and set me on the path of how best to work to my strengths. There have been other tests, workshops, work activities, and honest one-on-one conversations that have helped me to gain a greater understanding of myself. And that’s the biggest take-away here for all of you. Unless you are a buddhist monk, chances are we all have opportunities for growth. I might argue, significant growth. There is no right way and no wrong way, at the risk of sounding like a monk myself! Self-understanding should be an ongoing journey for you. One which yields dividends in all aspects of your life. Learning this for myself has pushed me to urge my own children that there are no good experiences or bad experiences. Simply, experiences. Some you learn a great deal from (usually what people might label as “bad”) and some you learn very little and feel good about (what people might label as “good”). Thinking about things that way helped me to handle much of the adversity I faced in my life. I have certainly had my fair share.

As you start this journey, I would encourage you to think about three questions:

• What are you good at?

• What do you like to do? (I often have found that this doesn’t align with what I am good at)

• What are your weaknesses?

I also would encourage you to build a “say yes,” mentality to approaching your life. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Not to the point of harm or self-destruction. Push yourself to the point where you may find yourself learning about your limits in ways you probably wouldn’t have learned had you not done so. I can honestly say that, for me, sex is better, work is better, my relationships are better, and my fitness is better than at any other point in my life because I have followed that approach. I learned to ride a motorcycle late in life, I tried psychedelics, I opened myself sexually, and expanded what I thought was the right way to have a relationship all within the last decade. Things I would not have done had I remained on the path I was on. A path where I was completely comfortable in believing that I was certain of the “right” way to live my life. Things are not perfect, I have struggled financially most of my adult life. Yet, I am more balanced than at any other point in my life. All because I try to face life with the humility that learning who I am is something that will continue until I die.

Know thyself. Learning how to be a real man – by that, I mean an authentic man – will follow. I can guarantee that. As you get to know me better, you will find that I am a student of war and law enforcement. What happens to people under great stress has always been interesting and fascinating to me. There is a scene in the HBO Series (Yes, I read the book, but haven’t picked it up in many years), Band of Brothers, which also really happened in history. The scene in the second episode where Lt. Richard Winters leads a group of his own men to take out German artillery installations. There is a moment where you see Damian Lewis (the actor who plays Lt. Winters) convey quite masterfully the sense of obligation he has to eliminate the big guns firing on soldiers far away. In that moment, I see that character as someone who knows himself. He isn’t engaging in false heroics. He is someone who understands who he is, what his role is, and what he has to do. And that, to me, is one key ingredient of what being a man and manhood is all about.

Hope you find the path that leads to self-knowledge.

M

The thoughts and ideas expressed in this essay are the opinions of the author.

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