Joyful Jubilant Learning

What it is to be Male

Thanks to The Ho‘ohana Community of JJL for creating this space to learn from men; this is a terrific topic. When I saw it, I first thought, I’d like to write a story, to capture the example of a great man I’ve known, to let their actions speak. But as I thought about it, I was drawn back to the thought that “Western” society has lost its sense of what it is to be male, or at least its sense of the positive nature of innate maleness. We have popularized the Wise Guy, the Clueless Guy, the Jock, the Nerd, the Tough Guy. We’ve railed against the violence that men have perpetrated and the elitism that for centuries characterized male-dominated industry and community groups.

But what have we left Men with to be proud of? More specfically what are we offering young men to aspire to? As a father of boys, this question really really gets under my skin!!

My hope is that we (all) would more intentionally embrace what it is to be a Man, that we wouldn’t apologise for the way we’re “wired” (and sink into passive niceness) nor would we use it as an excuse for callousness and insensitivity.

It’s been my good fortune to have met and to know men who serve to point out the best in Maleness. From them I’ve learned ...

1) That there is a Warrior Element in the Male.

We want to be tested and found strong, able. We want to fight for a cause, for something bigger than us, for something that gives us pride. We want to fight to protect “our own”, whether that’s our own family, our own home, our own business, our own brand, our own reputation, our own health. We want to exert power and have control.

And this is a great thing. We’ve simply misapplied it too often. But what if we applied it to our business, our health, our community and based it on positive values rather than on our gratification alone?

Where there is no noble pursuit, no daunting challenge, no villain to stand against, no outstanding vision, we tend to go one of two ways. We can go spoiling for a fight over trivial matters, get our blood up over fairly banal offences, turn our neighbors into villains and fight them. Or we can sink into a rusty malaise from which it’s difficult to awaken.

2) That there is a Nurturing Element to the Male.

We most often apply this element to things. And this is good. We not only build a boat or a bookshelf; we polish it. We meticulously gather resources for our pet projects. We care for our garden, taking pride in new growth and in our skill at producing it. We clean our five-iron after golf, ready for its next outing. We maintain our website. We labor over our manuscript...

But often we shy away from turning this strong point toward people. Perhaps we think it’d be sissy, perhaps  we think we’ll mess it up, perhaps we don’t think at all.

I believe a man can bring his talent for recognizing and “polishing” the awesome and the beautiful not only to his roles as artisan or sportsman but to those of lover, father, brother, mentor and comrade.

3) That there is a Collaborative Element to the Male.

And this is despite decades (centuries?) of media preaching the Gospel of Frank Sinatra and the Gospel of James Bond – in which doing it “my way”, on my own, relying only on my own might and my own smarts is seen as the measure of a Real Man.

WW2 was not won by individuals but by individuals banding together to create a synergy of creative thinking and raw determination. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of men (and women!) put a dozen men on the moon (and those men traveled there in teams). It gives me a profound sense of pride to see men banding together to discuss their challenges as parents and to commit to support each other. I’m proud to be a co-collaborator with some brilliant women and men on several business projects and two community ones.

Even the Lone Ranger would have been screwed if he hadn’t had Tonto to watch his back!

I say THANKS to the Blokes who have kicked my backside, called me out, heard me out, acknowledged my talents and generously shared their wisdom with me over the years.

The picture below is of something my 7-year old son left behind as he rushed off to school one day. It captured the seamless way in which he had blended his nurturing and warrior aspects in the one game he’d been playing. And he’d invited us all into that game.

May we find ways to similarly blend these strengths of maleness in our lives.

Pete Aldin
www.freakedoutfathers.com
www.greatcircle.com.au

Editor’s Note:
Pete previously wrote Anxiety Writes the Script for JJL, contributing to our Make A Difference Forum last September. I have seen this picture before too, and upon seeing it again, I had to take the liberty of pointing you to the very first time Pete had written for me within a Talking Story Forum, a jewel of an article called, The Wise Son, also very much in keeping with our theme this month!
~ Rosa Say

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Post author Peter Aldin is founder of Great Circle Life Coaching. For over a decade, he has provided coaching, workshops and training to assist people in sharpening up their personal and professional relationships and communication.

Visit Pete’s two online projects at www.freakedoutfathers.com (Do you have any of the symptoms of Freaked-out Fathers?) and www.greatcircle.com.au.

Anxiety Writes the Script

I love Rosa’s title for this forum: Joyful Jubilant Learning.

Most of my learning (and perhaps I’m not alone in this!) has not been from books, nor courses, but from Life itself.  Events that paint a picture.  Failures that teach me what not to do next time.  Successes that teach what works.  Conversations that  help me ‘join the dots’ and nurture new ideas.

It was one of these conversations last year that joined some strands of my reading and reshaped my thinking completely.  It came from an unexpected source.  It also served up a large dose of parental guilt, something us Gen X-ers are prone to.  I’m over that now, but the lesson itself stuck.

When Youngest Son was 4, we recognized his theatrical talent and joined him up with a children’s drama class.  We would take him up the stairs to his room for the six weeks he went, and leave him in the capable hands of the teacher. Then whichever one of us was on taxi duty that day would retire to a downstairs room to drink coffee and read a book while we waited.  Youngest Son didn’t enjoy these experiences – didn’t warm to the class - so after six weeks we stopped taking him.

Last year when he’d turned 7, he brought up the subject of those 60-minute drama classes.  And he began to articulate some of the separation anxiety he had been feeling at the time.  The comment that gut-punched me was this: “Daddy, I was so scared.  I thought that you had been killed in a car accident.”

While I had been comfortably sitting down stairs, nearby but out-of-sight, his little mind had created this entire scenario in which he’d lost me forever.

Here’s what I learned and the difference that conversation has made in my life since:

1. I recognize my human bias toward filling in the blanks.

Consider this sentence: then Martha opened up the door, only to be confronted by a terrifying green ___________.

Can you keep reading without filling in that blank space? I couldn’t. I’d have to know what Martha was confronted by, so I’d insert my own conclusion: Martian, dragon, wall of mildew… anything that gave me closure!

When I can’t see where my next contract or client is coming from, it’s natural for me to assume that my marketing and hard work is achieving nothing. I might even give up just before the major breakthrough because of my assumption.

When someone is not answering my emails, I might fill in that silence with thinking that they are rejecting me, or offended by my ideas or consider me irrelevant.

Recently at my children’s school, the school council sacked the Principal. In the wake of this, when asked by parents to provide a reason for the dismissal, they refused.  This resulted in terrible rumours flourishing amongst the parent body, rumors that threatened to severely damage the man’s reputation. Because I had facilitated coaching and P. D. work within the staff - and because I had often sat with the ex-Primcipal and listened to his challenges his hopes his philosophies - I knew without a shadow of the doubt that these rumors were untrue.

But the other parents did not. They filled in the blanks the best they knew how.

In the absence of truth, lies flourish. In the absence of information, anxiety writes the script.

The human bias is to fill in blanks, usually with erroneous ideas.

2. When I’m aware of my bias, I do my best to suspend judgment.

When the person’s not answering my emails, I now find my self-talk changing from “They don’t like me or my ideas” to “Maybe the e-mail got swallowed up by their anti spam software”.

Or I simply tell myself that I just can’t see what’s happening or what’s around the corner, so there’s no point making something up and believing that it’s reality.

3. I’ve made it my goal to communicate more clearly with my children.

Realizing that other people - particularly those most precious to me - usually do the same (i.e. allow anxiety to fill in the blanks in their information), I do my best to remove those blanks from my communication. 

With my kids, I’ve stopped asking “Do you understand?”, in favor of “What do you think I just said/meant?”.

I offer my reasons for setting certain standards or rules.

When I’m communicating something I want them to remember, I remove as much unnecessary language as possible:

“When you’re home with Grandma, don’t open the door to anyone, no matter who it is; ask her to answer the door.”

is far better than

“When Mom and Dad have to go shopping or to a meeting – even though we hate leaving you home – we know Grandma is looking after you well.  But she can only do this if you remember that you must never answer the door when someone knocks, no matter who it is.  Not even if it’s someone in a uniform. Not even if it’s a priest, a charity worker, a policeman, a friend of Dads, a friend of Mom’s, a friend of yours …Grandma’s a grownup, she knows the difference between stranger dangers and good people. one day you will too but for now just let her answer the door.  Do you understand?”

That kind of overkill begins to create blanks all of its own, usually blank stares.

Where are you allowing anxiety to write the script in your life?

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Post author Peter Aldin is founder of Great Circle Life Coaching. For over a decade, he has provided coaching, workshops and training to assist people in sharpening up their personal and professional relationships and communication. Visit Pete’s two online projects at www.freakedoutfathers.com and www.greatcircle.com.au.