Note to Reader: you may be so entrenched in your romance of self, your own suffering which the world says that you must endure, that you’re stuck in purgatory. Destined — by your own doing, I might add — to continuously cycle between existential crisis and just enough hope to stay alive.
Danger, Reader.
…
I’ve written about this idea before:
There’s a transitory space which we all have to endure to move from boy to man, child to adult, immature to mature.
As I’ve continued to survive the unstoppable rotations of the blue marble, I’ve started to see something that’s really very humbling.
I’ve gotten stuck between the chapters.
I’ve put empty pages full of indecipherable scribbles between the chapter of boy and man.
I’ve romanticized my suffering. Become addicted to my swaying emotions between uncertainty and hope. Lived off the scraps of doing just enough to keep my eyes open, but not enough to bring me the horizon.
…
Here’s the gist:
We’ve gotten in the habit of taking ‘suffering’ at face value. We’ve let our feeling of suffering itself be enough.
Because we’ve felt it.
We’re swimming in it.
Every day.
We’ve concluded that suffering is just part of the gift of life.
But…have we ever asked, “how much?”
What have we done to minimize suffering?
What have we done to understand its source, taper its advancement, and dissolve it?
Often, instead of pressing our body and mind to peak at their limits, we do just enough to make ourselves feel like we’re still on the path.
We continue to create, but not at our best. We move our bodies, but just enough to not become overweight. We work just enough to pay our bills and go to Banff or Cancun once a year.
Why?
Because we’ve fallen in love with the emotional wreckage of ‘enough.’
But there’s an intensity that we all have to face in order to suffer correctly.
To get more.
To feel better.
To suffer less.
The question is, can you feel it?
…
Let me pivot for a second.
It took me a very long time to realize the power and necessity of the male friendships I have. I was raised in my most influential years by my mother. In that space when, to me, boys should be spiritually, mentally, and physical pressed into transformation.
A rite of passage to manhood.
But, I just didn’t have that. So, I came into manhood pretty soft, lacking attributory male traits that make me courageous and decisive.
There was so much friction in my friendships.
Honestly, there still is…but in a good way.
…
After I lost the most important person in the world to me, I started learning about emotions and trauma and mindfulness, the stereotypical male weaknesses, and I saw those things as the wall between my friends and I.
It made me think my friends were impossible to connect to. I thought that they were the problem.
But it wasn’t them.
There’s a nuance to relationships and how well we bend and mold to each other in a way that benefits both people.
It was me who was too afraid to jump the wall.
And I felt pretty f*cking stupid when I realized that.
…
Hard lessons come with swift knowledge.
I’ve entered this world of psychology and the human condition so deeply, that it’s become a constant hurricane of disorientation.
It has made it really hard to maintain any footing.
This was the start of my romantic suffering.
Because I was trying to outsmart my challenges by thinking more than acting…
Yeah, you know what that got me.
I stopped being human.
I stopped stepping out into the world of friendships, love, and hobby.
I took everything out of my life that would test me, push me, get me to strive for great love and stretch for personal greatness.
I’ve gotten real weird, man.
It’s like…being an odd vampiric otter.
Cute and seemingly harmless, but the sun hurts my over-dilated eyes and I uncontrollable try to suck smiles out of people.
Who wants a kiss?
…
My friend sent me a text saying that he just earned his place to fly solo as a border patrol pilot. And they’re sending him off to train in Blackhawks…
6 years ago this guy was a fitness trainer at a local gym.
Now he’s a f*cking veteran pilot. ‘Saving the world’ in his own way, facing fear and challenge, being the active wall of the United States, and giving life to his tiny family of three.
And that’s just one of my accomplished friends.
I’m proud, of course. But also, wtf??
To me, when we find ourselves being outgrown by those who were our peers…we have to wonder:
What have I been missing?
I’d say my masculine edge.
That very thing that presents itself when reality gets tough, when emotions blur goals, and our motivation is tested when we’re hitting redline.
…
If you’re not a Peterson fan, so be it.
Most likely you haven’t actually listened or read enough of his material to understand him, but I digress…
“To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause? That is hell.” — Jordan Peterson
Strip your bias of the man, and read that again.
…
Point being:
Maybe you’re like me. Right now, at this moment.
Maybe you’ve found yourself in a romance with your suffering.
Maybe you’re so close you don’t see it.
What will you — what will I — do about it?
Step to the other side.
For me, I’m called to act. To be more in my masculine. To face fear. To demand more of myself. To be more in contact with the world.
And for all of us, that’s the key.
To act more/differently/courageously.
Because to not do so is to be stuck in transit. To continue to create unrecognizable garbage that gets us nowhere.
…
If you’re like me, you’ve romanticized your suffering. You’ve gotten used to being in an anxiety built by ‘just enough’.
But that’s a rotating door, not a staircase.
It’s not that you can outrun or outwork suffering, it’s that you get an option: chosen or unchosen.
You suffer regardless.
And stagnation, acting mediocre, avoiding the uncomfortable, not putting in your best self no matter what the craft, is the worst suffering imaginable.
We can suffer forward at least.
And we can suffer less because of it.
It’s just really f*cking tough as I’m finding out to continuously push ourselves past that edge.
But we need to do it anyway.
We need to get past the romance.
…
Suffer your best.
Suffer your convictions.
Suffer your most daunting challenges.
Truth and Love, Reader.
…
If you like my writing and the things I question, you might(I mean…probably) also like my newsletter.
Substack is where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get not just my medium stories, but chat with me directly, have access to my all of my content in one place, and have access to The Art of Questioning audio. Only at https://zackaryhenson.substack.com
There are so many great stories on Medium! If you want to have access to some of the best writing by thousands of creators, start your membership with the link below, which will also support my writing.
Remember…question everything! https://zackaryhenson.medium.com/subscribe
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
From The Good Men Project on Medium
 |
 |
 |
 |
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—–
Photo credit: Jackie Tan on Unsplash
