Of Men and Boys

The definition of a strong man is a misunderstood and important point in life. The strength of a woman suffers the same fate – but being born in male form I am able to discuss with greater fluidity and implicit experience about the masculine spirit. Maybe one day I’ll write about the experience I’ve had with strong women – for those have been some of the greatest benefits to my strength as a man. But for now –

It’s our duty as men to instruct other males and younger males. Like with women, we too have a lot of images and advertising about the wrong kind of strength glaring at us through our lives. Can you imagine a hero so great that he’s a mixture of Superman, Batman, and the Ninja Turtles? If you can’t – then at one time not only could you imagine thusly – but further, you could be that hero.

But being the hero is missing the point. A boys imagination sparks and speaks and is spoken to from, and by his innermost instinct – protection. The heroes looked up to- whether business heroes, gladiators, superheroes, or dare I say it – fathers; are all images shouting into the reality of our 'cave behind caves' wherein lays our masculine strength and his sole desire – to protect.

Why need money? to protect. Why exercise? to protect. One can get wrapped up and attached disorderedly to the action instead of understanding the action correctly - as a response to the desire of pure masculine strength. That's how our lives begin going out of balance - that's how sometimes, when the beast that is the instinct of our protection is not whipped consciously, we men ourselves become the very thing that terrorizes what we only desire to protect.

The solution is to live from inmost desire; instinctual, holy desire - to protect. Learn by first protecting yourself from anxiety and fantasy and do so by being aware that you're hurt and scared. We fear that we won't be able to protect ourselves, and from that flows all other anxiety. If we can't protect ourselves then how will we protect our friends or wife or children? And our answer to this is all negative activity even if it seems positive on the surface - in the long run, it will fail - because we still are not protecting ourselves but looking outside of us to hold onto things that once in place, will give us security; and men find this everywhere - women, money, sexual prowess, biceps, chest, arms, mind...

Our heroes protect themselves and their loved ones; their happiness yells for our strength to emerge from its cave behind caves.

Further, even our heroes seem indignant to allow a woman to help them; the lack of protection from a father who hasn't dealt with his own denial of masculine strength and becomes too wrapped up in his attachment to the response to that void, coupled with the overt protection from a mother usually leads men to resent women and act out of that pain (the feeling of emasculation) trying to resolve their issues with their mother through every woman they meet - this doesn't happen to everyone, but take for instance the following statistic from [Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14 p. 403-26] - 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes.

The purist instinct - the protective instinct keeps an open heart to all that emboldens the force inside of it as it's sole purpose is to protect, that's all it knows. Incredibly often, that power lies the strength of a woman to pull a man through. Amongst other things, a disordered attachment to a feeling of emasculation is a major reason men cannot accept one of the greatest benefits off all - women.

Most often than not, men are left to help themselves - and even in that respect often they fail because they have a faulty definition that includes strength requiring overt solitude. The issues of men that come back to feed on themselves like a loop through media must be correctly ordered and framed and often severed or pieced apart - to seperate the echo and call to masculinity from the faulty teaching on how to be thus. For that we have eachother and the future generation has us. Just look at how far the baby on the table has come!

From bouncing around years ago on my birthday to being a manly Superman, Batman, Ninja Turtle mahcine!

If we as males did correctly our job to be examples and heroes, and dare I say it again - fathers- to the Super-bat Ninja Turtle Boy-man; and continue to do so by being good examples to each other and first, ourselves; if we can open our hearts and allow the roar from our cave behind caves to stand in the atomic glow of the sun - then we can A) be assured that we have another strong partner in his older brother and B) have begun creating an enviroment that has a far better definiton of a strong man for my dear friend Maximus...

Next time we can discuss the strength of a woman and her instinct to protect that which she loves and it's evolution by hand of her offspring, adopted or natural. Have a good weekend my dear hearts.