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Being a man who honors his feelings with no apologies, I had a great time having dinner with what is thought as traditional men and I was not uncomfortable or bored by what I call typical man talk. I found myself more comfortable within myself and not feeling as if I had something to prove or protect. I felt as if I could hold my ground as a more divine masculine man living outside the man box. The internal work I have been doing on myself has allowed to accept myself as the man who I am, stand in my truth, and not feel as if I had to measure up to the more traditional men in the society or the men sitting with me at the dinner table. We laughed and talked together with no feelings of stress or feeling less than, at least in my mind.
I have historically been a physically smaller man of 5’8” and slight of build. I was also raised in a women’s household and I have also felt more comfortable within the company of women. I am also a hair designer and artist which allows me more creative freedom, as well freedom in my manners of living and dressing. Let’s put it this way, I am a creative, expressive dresser. Everything I do in my lifestyle is an expressive form, the way I speak, sing, paint, write, dress and the way I address life. I still feel I am a masculine man with a strong feminine side of expression.
In my mind and heart, I don’t feel any less of a man, but my society has not always treated me as such. I was not staying within the man box and my validity as a man was always questioned. Even though I felt strong internally, but I had fears interacting within the traditional man box.
Being the eldest of six children, I had to exercise the duties of a caretaker and I had to become my mother’s helper as she was a single mother. I learned the art of listening, the art of being emotionally present for the people. I learned to be compassionate and nurturing as a way of life. I learned the art of listening and responding in solution to the outside world.
I learned, women’s ways or the importance of the divine feminine, as I now express it when I speak of my history, my beginnings. I did not know it then, but it was such a gift to experience the value of nurturing, honoring and loving human beings. I learned to be humble when loving.
I was very fortunate to be mentored by many male artists, a lifetime of male friends and honorable members of my family. I was raised in a female-dominated household, but I learned the ways and means to be a man from my environment and life development. I began to pick and choose what I thought worked for me as a person and human being. I learned early the differences between male and female power and how it was displayed.
I developed a lifestyle of living on the edge of the society, I found my freedom in being both male and female in my everyday life. I found balance and I valued it. I found I would rather feel whole rather than be divided and displaced. My sense of creative living could be expressed because I had a choice and there were no rigid boundaries of can do and can’t. I had the option to pick and choose what attributes worked for me to be happy, functional and content. I valued living outside of the manbox.
Being a child of the 1960’s, I was allowed to continue my methods of living with the burst of the flower children. I was allowed to be androgynous like David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Prince. I was allowed to experiment with putting a different puzzle together to make up my content as a man. Boys could be men with long hair, sometimes make-up and flowery words of love. I was allowed to be a poet of compassionate words and visions of wisdom. It was okay to have feelings I could express with contained emotions. I could be a nurturer of the society and no one batted an eye.
I spent most of my life in defiance of being put within a man box. I spent too much time fighting against something and almost everything. Eventually, in life, you begin to learn to fight for something and not just fighting against everything. I learned the attitude of acceptance and acceptance does not mean being in approvable. Acceptance means` giving respect to the reality of other human beings opinions and lifestyles. I learned to respect my own opinions and therefore opinions of others.
In my development of a being a better man, my intentions to live the lifestyle began to cut me out of the mainstream of every day. I had to acknowledge the value of my story and history, look at what I could add to the universal story for creating a more evolved modern society. In that acknowledgment I then allow myself to come in from the cold and come out the mental cage of the fear of not being respected, understood or listened to. It is all about the presentation and looking for opportunities to exchange conversations to enrich the communication.
I can live outside of the man box and I don’t have to be a traitor to my other fellow men. I am still in the man circle, the circle of many types of expressions of what men are being in these modern times. It is time to create a different container for the modern man to reside in. To me that container is a nurturing one built on compassion and support, using our male skills to enhance the community we live in. A good leader is a person who has vision and humility. If men are to be good leaders for our future generations, we must learn to unite our communities in support for the society and ourselves as men.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo by Thiago Barletta on Unsplash