I have lived over six decades debating my personal and societal worth, as a “real man.” I was either too “butch” or too “fem.” I was too expressive or too book worm. I could be a great father and afford a family or I was a hot mess. I had to stop and reevaluate my journey, look at the hills and valleys. I wanted a true view. I have watched the power struggle of men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights and I have lived through Ozzie and Harriet, “The Love Generation,” “The Me Generation,” until the days of Donald Trump. I have lived a beautiful and sad life. I am still searching for my valid voice.
As an artist, I have had expressive freedom, but I was always in the midst of struggle. It has been a journey of searching for balance. I wanted to be a free spirit,” a living expressive form.” I didn’t know it meant to respond in an ongoing conversation. I found out I was not always telling the truth or my truth was tailored to answer my internal needs. I was the “so called” head of the household, but where was I heading? I knew I was existing in a world that “was coming to an end” and is in its “last days.” And, those days have arrived. It is time to step up and shut up. As my mother would say, “…talk is cheap, action speaks louder than words.” So to my thinking, a real man, today, is being a supportive, loving human being and an aware team player.
As a human being, I want to use my ego to the protect and empower our species. I want to achieve success in developing strong partnerships using new tools and new skills. In order to have success, I have to access my assets:
I can be strong as well as soft. I can lead as I can follow. I know how to speak and I know when to hold my tongue. I know the value of a listening ear. I love first and not just wait to receive love. All this has been achieved because I was willing to change for the higher good of all. It doesn’t matter if I am a man, I can react with an open heart. I have worked in the world of women and felt at times I had no voice. I have worked in a world of men and felt at times I had no voice. I can allow maternal love to exist alongside my paternal love. I can give and I can receive. I am an overachiever and yet I never think I am enough. I crave intimacy and I am afraid of intimacy. I procrastinate and I am overworked. I have learned to accept I live in a shared world. It is not a man’s world or a woman’s world. It is our human world of being. I want my female child to be safe and be able to be a successful business woman. I want her not experience sexual harassment or racism. I want her husband to honor their commitment of marriage and any of their future children. I want to be respected for my individual talent. I know I have to be loving to get the love I desire. I have to learn to be comfortable with the change of power. I am a human being becoming.
I now live to be an authentic human being and a modern man, a more real me. I have ongoing issues, joys and challenges. But bottom line, my issues and how I handle them on my life’s journey is all I have to offer to this world. My personal story and daily performance affects me and all those around me. What that truth translates to me is, I have to check in on my internal emotions daily and sometimes hourly. I have to find the balance between the water and the fire. If I take care of me and what occurs inside me, what flows from me will not pollute the environment. And my fire and my water will either put out the fire or dry up what is too wet. I want leave the places I have been in a better position than they were before I came. That is one of the most important of things I feel I can do to be my most authentic. By being a man of loving solution, I strive for the authenticity of being in the midst of a real life, for myself and for those around me. I want to find value in my being a valuable human being.
We must tell the stories of real lives until the truth is heard and the echoes of our bell jars resound in strokes of living color and human embodiment of fire and water. It is our purpose to sing our personal songs, spoken words, while reciting the lines of our reflections of living. Our actions and our voices are the echoes of truth that create the world we live in. We have to change the echoes and the vibrations by passing them through the test of fire and water. We must use a loving eye. Not sentimental nor naive, but using the act of love, the natural gauge of truth, celebration and reality.
I want to put a fire under my fellow men. We need to learn to nurture more by acting with more compassion in our world. Because we have the power to strike, does not mean we should raise our hands to strike, in anger or fear. Power is a gift of service, just as solution is gift of love. I think it is time for men to turn the page and change the story of the modern book of life. We have the water and the fire. It is time to fan the flame and up our game and truly be men of power. We should put out the fire of fear and hatred in all of its forms. We should water the garden of sustainable, balanced living. We should be waiting for the fruits of growth and abundance, not lands laden in lack or degeneration. And we must remember, we are not losing because we are sharing power in a true partnership. We should follow the example of partnership given to us by nature, the way the flowers and trees share the water and sun.
Men have controlled this planet for quite a while. This is a time of change.
We live in a world where 1% hold the majority of power and resources on the planet. Humanity is waking up and the predictions about 2012 have been correct. It is not what media portrayed it to be. It was the end of the times as we knew it. More corruption is being exposed. People have been manipulated and deceived for hundreds of years while the people in power focus on total control of human consciousness. But the tactics are not working. More people are becoming awake at a critical mass. More of us are realizing the true personal power we contain within ourselves as individuals in a collective state of being. It is our job, as humans on this planet to team in love. We can be the healing we seek. We need shared power and resources. We need to be the water for this garden of the earth.
Great article. What you have said is long overdue and needs to be implement.
I feel your drowning and your burning, and your realisation that each of us has to find a very personal responsibility to this Life. Likewise after six decades I look back with a WTF…? Was that my life? Who am I, really? Why wasn’t I told? Why didn’t I listen? Why did I believe (and at times, live) lies? Now with the maturity to finally say, ‘Hey, I don’t care what my story has been to date, only love can get us out of this mess’. I didn’t know men thought the way you do. Thank you for expressing your… Read more »
“And we must remember, we are not losing because we are sharing power in a true partnership.” What power? My dad’s life consisted of fighting a war, working day and night to support a family that he ended up being exiled from, working even harder while existing in a 12 by 12 room at his parents house, finally finding true love in his last years before dying, just a few years after retirement. My life has been totally different. Sure, it “man sucked” a bit. I dealt with some of that, but I’ve actually had opportunity to live, enjoy life… Read more »
Great article and messageTerrell, as the great Thich Nhat Hanh says,“Our own life has to be our message.”
Thank you.