Tag Archives: manhood

Man Cave

Real Men and Crying

The post below was originally published on my blog on May 7, 2010… the day of my grandpa’s funeral.

"Wedding." Award-winning photo used by permission from Jeff + Jeanie at stu-di-o.com. Click photo to visit their site.

As I get ready for my grandpa’s funeral today, I’m reminded that a real man is not afraid to show his emotions.

As men, when we’re happy or excited about something, most of us will visibly and audibly celebrate. When we’re angry about something, we have no problem letting the world know. And yet, when we’re upset, hurt, or sad about something we often try to “hold it in” for lack of a better description.

While something could certainly be said about the degree of discipline it takes a man to hold in his tears, I would argue that it takes a lot more discipline to let them out.

Most men, if we’re gut-level honest with ourselves, would say that we typically don’t cry for one of two reasons. The first reason being that we don’t want to appear weak.   And the second? We just can’t make the tears come out no matter how hard we want to.

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Man Cave, Uncategorized

Real Men Are Fighters

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http://www.whitchurchandllandaff.co.uk/News Clippings.htm

A real man is a fighter.

He fights… for what’s right, for the people he cares about, for the power of love, against adversity, to make a difference. He fights… for the cause, for answers, for truth, for honor, for justice. He fights fires. He fights apathy. He fights for his life.

He fights in France and he fights on the oceans and the seas. He fights with growing confidence and growing strength. He fights on the beaches and the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets, and in the hills.

He never surrenders.

The strength of his hands may be required from time to time, but his fight is not physical. He does not fight for bragging rights or to prove someone else wrong. He does not fight for the sake of fighting itself. He does not fight in a fit of rage.

He fights for principles and values. For people, not things. He fights the good fight and though he may be fueled by passion, he’s bridled by experience and tempered with wisdom. He knows that the most powerful weapons in any fight are the ones that no one actually sees him use.

Real men are fighters.

P.S. Fighting in France has nothing to do with being a real man. I just thought this was a good opportunity to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

Man Cave

Real Men and Picking up the Tab

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Men eating dinner while aboard the Atlantic Clipper. (Photo by Bernard Hoffman//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

When dining out at a restaurant with another person or group of people, a real man is just as likely to pick up the tab for the people he’s with as he is to graciously accept someone else’s offer to pay. A real man doesn’t argue over who’s going to pay. He either pays for his own meal, pays for both his and the other party’s, or if the other party attempts to pay for his meal, accepts their offer without making a fuss.

There’s no middle ground here.

There’s nothing masculine about arguing with another person over who gets to pick up the check after dining out. It’s like dancing. When it comes time to settle the check, the first person to speak is the one who gets to lead. If you’re the first to speak, then you get to lead. If not, just go where the other party takes you without stepping on their toes.

This really is a finer (and in many ways lost) art of manhood, I think. To continue with the dancing metaphor, it’s the difference between looking like a couple of junior high kids at the 8th grade sweetheart dance and Gene Kelly. The latter pulls it off with grace and style while the former just fumble around the floor trying not to let their hands fall below the predetermined, chaperone-approved line on their partner’s back.

The next time you’re out to dinner with another person, either pick up the tab, pay for your own meal, or graciously let them pay if they offer before you speak. Don’t try to appear chivalrous by going back and forth with them only to fold a few seconds letter with the same end result.

I learned this from my dad who likes to pick up the tab for other people. I’ve seen him pick up the tab over and over again throughout my life and I’ve rarely seen another man accept it without resorting to the obligatory give and take, back and forth debate before letting him actually pay. I’m not sure, but these types of scenarios may even offend my dad. At the very least, whether it offends him or not, the men who dicker back and forth with him about it just end up looking silly… at least in my humble opinion. And yet, on those occasions where I’ve seen other people offer to pay for my dad’s meal, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed him argue with them. He just rolls with it… usually.

I mean, think about it, what’s at stake here? At most (if you’re at a fancy place like Taco Cabana or some other swanky joint like Sizzler or Jack in the Box) we’re talking $50 to $100 maximum. In the grand scheme of life, being able to pick up a $50 or $100 tab, while generous, is not necessarily some great feat of manhood. In fact, just about any dude with a credit card has the ability to do this at will.

Just as picking up the tab for others doesn’t make a man more masculine, the converse is also true. Letting another man pick up your tab when he asks to does not make you any less of man. It’s not like the man who offers to pay your tab thinks you can’t afford the $50. If he thought you couldn’t afford to pick up your own tab, he wouldn’t have invited you to the Taco Cabana. He would have invited you to Taco Mayo, where even the poorest man can eat like a king.

The man who offers to pick up your tab is doing so out of a spirit of generosity. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in my brief stint as a professional raiser of funds, it’s to let people who want to be generous, BE GENEROUS.

Well… now that I’ve beat this issue to a pulp, I only have one other thing to say in relation to picking up the tab. No matter who pays, NEVER EVER skimp on the tip. There’s nothing that screams, “I am not a real man!” any louder than leaving a lame tip.

15% is the standard so unless your waiter or waitress is just a complete jerk, never leave less than that. In fact, in keeping with the generosity theme, if your service is half-way decent and the person serving you is even half-way friendly, why not leave a 20% tip and make their day?

The next time you dine with someone else and they offer to pay for your meal, all you need to do is respond with a simple and authentic THANK YOU. Instead of putting up the obligatory and, in most cases, contrived fight, just make a mental note of the occasion, enjoy the rest of the meal, and the next time you dine with that person, remember to take the lead and offer to pay for their tab before they have a chance to speak.

Music Scene

Real Men and Waking Up Early

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As I sit here basking in the glow of my 13 inch computer in an otherwise dark room this morning, I’m reminded about one of what I consider to be one of the great tenets of manhood; that is, waking up early.

As a child and then a teenager, I was always amazed each morning at how early my dad woke up. No matter how early I got up each day, without fail, he would already be awake and laying on the couch wearing his Nike hoodie, reading the paper.

The funny thing is… the man is not an early to bed kind of guy. This is a man who regularly stayed up late to watch Letterman in its entirety. The even more amazing thing to me, that I’ve only learned in the past few years, is that he never uses an alarm clock.

I never understood that facet of my dad’s life until recently. You see, for most of my life I’ve told myself a story that wasn’t true. And while I’ve definitely told myself many stories that aren’t true, the story I’m talking about right now is the that I was not a morning person.

For most of my life, I’ve been a snoozer. When I was a kid, my parents had to institute a 10 a.m. reverse bedtime during the summers and weekends to prevent me from sleeping all day. And boy did I ever balk at that one. In college, if I didn’t have early morning classes, I could (and often did) sleep until 10:40 or so no matter how late I stayed up.

That was my sleeping in pattern for most of my life.

A few months ago, that all changed. A guy who’s blog I read, posted about the idea that each of us has several internal stories (plural) which may or may not be true that we tell ourselves which make up our STORY (singular).

I’ve always been a firm believer that our lives are stories, and his post got me thinking about my life and the stories I’ve told myself that maybe weren’t true.

The timing of that post couldn’t have been better. Just a few days earlier, I’d heard a man speak at a luncheon who’s own story really resonated with me. A very successful business man and person of faith, the speaker spoke on the importance of being a man of discipline. A man of discipline himself, he spoke about how men of discipline wake up early: A) because it’s difficult; and, B) because life is short and sleeping through too much of it really is a waste.

The combination of the post about the stories we tell ourselves that aren’t always true and the idea that men of discipline wake up early couldn’t have intersected more perfectly in my life. I left the luncheon thinking to myself, “Self… I want to be a man of discipline even if that means waking up early.”

And so that night, I set my alarm to go off the next day at 5:00 a.m. When it went off, I got up. I read a few chapters of a book I was reading at the time, I prayed, I sat in silence, and I ran a mile. Despite the fact that I was exhausted by 2 p.m. that afternoon, it was a great experience.

It wasn’t until a few days later when I read the aforementioned blog post that I was really able to articulate what I’d already been feeling about my own story as a morning person. Since that time (it was last November) I’ve been re-telling myself that story almost every day when my alarm goes off and I stumble out of bed at 5, 5:30, or (on bad days) 6:00 a.m.

As Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Waking up early has been a great help in my attempts to stop and look around every once in a while.

Some mornings I go for a run. Some mornings I take a walk. Some mornings I read. Some mornings I write. Some mornings I reflect on who I am or what I’m accomplishing. Some mornings I think about my marriage. Some mornings I talk to God. Some mornings I just listen for his voice. And some mornings, (rarely but still occasionally) I waste almost 2 hours perusing the Facebooks, or the Twitterz, or my Google Reader RSS subscriptions.

I’m hesitant to say that waking up early has changed my life, but honestly, I can say I’ve seen a marked improvement in my quality of life since last November when I started waking up early.

As a man, I think there’s something deep in my core that calls me toward self-improvement and challenge. Waking up early, though really a small thing, has been a challenge that I’ve taken on successfully. Not only have I had more time to myself each morning for personal and spiritual reflection and development, but each day I get out of my bed before the sun comes up, I reinforce the idea that I have control over and can change the stories I tell myself.

The little victory I’ve had over my sleep story has started to make me question other questionably “true” stories that I’ve been telling myself for too long. It’s amazing how one little victory combined with a few more early morning hours of introspection each day can make all the difference in helping us become the men we want to be.

For me, realizing I could wake up early was not only a victory over a very real physiological and mental myth in my life, but it was also one of many early steps in my realization that I still had a long journey toward becoming a real man… a journey I’m still learning from and enjoying almost every day before most people are even awake.

Sometimes a real man does things that are difficult simply because of the discipline it takes to do so. I want to be a real man. I want to be a man of discipline. For me, a big part of that means I wake up early.

What about you?

Man Cave

No Man is an Island Jack

In 1986, Robin Williams starred in a movie of great acclaim, Club Paradise. The title of this post, a line from that movie, is my homage to the film and to the fact that real men need other men.

This line has stuck with me through my life mainly because of its humor. There’s a scene in the movie where one of the characters tells Robin Williams (whose name is Jack) that, “No man is an island, Jack.” Another one of the characters hears this line, doesn’t realize there’s a comma in there or that it’s a famous quote, and immediately makes a song out of it. “No man is an island, Jack.” becomes “No man is an Island Jack” and Island Jack is born.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNHQn2B-hd8]

While the Club Paradise movie may or may not be the best inspiration for a blog post on what constitutes a real man, that famous line from it certainly is.

While times of solitude are certainly important for real men, a real man knows that he is not an island and that he needs friendships with other men if he’s going to make it in this life.

The problem with our culture in the U.S. is that too many of us are caught up in the false notion of independence as a virtue. If you don’t believe me, just take a few minutes and think about the title of the document that kicked off the revolutionary war that started our country. (The funny thing about the Declaration of INDEPENDENCE was that it actually required a great solidarity among men to make it happen and carry it out to fruition… but we forget that today sometimes.)

In today’s world, and for the last couple hundred years, men have been taught to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and to make their own way. It’s the whole, “Go west young man, go west!” idea played out to its worst extremes.

And yet the reality remains that men need other men. The earliest people to inhabit this earth knew this instinctively. As a matter of fact, for most of human history, with the last few hundred years being the exception, people lived together in tribes. In the grand scheme of things, the idea of the independent and self-made man is a relatively new (and largely unproven) idea.

Life is going to be difficult at times and the people who depend on us need us to be strong men who go to bat for them and get us through those times. When life goes to crap, we only have so much inherent strength within us that we can draw from to make it through. When that strength is depleted, where will you go to replenish yours? Don’t put that on the woman in your life. It’s not her burden to bear. No, when life requires more strength than we as individual men can muster, we need to draw from the fellowship of other men who have been through whatever it is that’s depleting our strength.

When life get’s tough, we need other men who know us to the core. We all have friends who know us to some degree, but when life requires great strength, we need men who know our strengths as well as our weaknesses. Men who will call us out when they see us on the verge of making a colossal mistake. Men who will lift us up when we fail and stand beside us in adversity.

Do you have men like that in your life? Does your life look more tribal or more nomadic? If you answered nomadic, I encourage you to find other men who also realize that life is a journey and that journeys are not meant to be taken alone.

I think this idea is part of what made the men of the Greatest Generation so great. The men of that generation went to war together. They fought the enemy and the elements together. At times they slept back to back in foxholes at night supporting each other. They never left another man behind. And despite how the horrors of war impacted many of them in negative ways, they developed a great appreciation for the value of fellowship with other men.

I want to be the kind of man who has deep bonds of friendship with other men. I want men in my life who know my struggles, who know my strengths, and who aren’t afraid to run out onto the battlefield and pull me back to safety when they see me wounded. And I want to do the same for them.

No man is an Island Jack but a group of islands is an archipelago… think about it.

*Thank you Jimmy Cliff for the sweet reggae.

You can find more “Finding Manhood” essays here.