v46

"We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them;

we stifle the humanity of boys.

We define masculinity in a very narrow way.

Masculinity becomes this hard, small cage,

and we put boys inside the cage."

["We Should All Be Feminists",Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

In my early 40s, when I would reflect on myself - who I'd become, who I was becoming - I'd reached a point where, quite frankly, I didn't expect to change much any more.  I expected minor course corrections, certainly, in my slow spiral toward becoming that cranky old man who shakes his fist in the air and mumbles at them 'darn kids' to "get off my lawn!" but I'd not anticipated a sizable refactoring of who I am or how I think and feel.  I anticipated a slow but steady path toward my twilight years, and little else.

But life, particularly these past few years, has brought me something very different.  Outwardly, I'm not a radically different person than I was two years ago.  I'm in love with the same wonderful woman, raising the same awesome kid.  I have the same house and the same job.  I mostly enjoy the same hobbies.  But inwardly, I find myself thinking differently and feeling and seeing the world so very, very differently.  So much so, in fact, I scarcely know where to begin.

This weekend I found myself watching the third season of a show I've been watching over the last few years, and realizing I was seeing it from an entirely different perspective, because it strikes on particular topics I've been contemplating a lot these past few years: the nature of masculinity, of relationships, of our culture, of our changing world, of the need for our culture and mankind itself to evolve and mature.

When I started drafting this post a few weeks back, I began with a quick review of my last "v" post, intending to continue from there.  I wrote about how I feel about my body and my current health and getting older, blah blah blah.  I had a paragraph or two on whether or not I'm getting better at handling stress (spoiler: no).  I'm still working on not being such a sarcastic prick at every turn and am, in fact, getting better, though sadly I now hear Dan doing it and have to correct him too and know it's my fault for leading him down that bitter path.  Oh, and I'm still a shitty judge of character when it comes to others.  I had paragraphs of reflection on that but it was all very... tepid.  Banal.  Now deleted.

The real change, and it's been considerable (but also only just beginning) has been in the way I see and digest the world day to day.

This past year in particular, as I've gotten more in touch with my own vulnerabilities, I had shed as best I can the mask of toxic masculinity and its prescription for stoicism.  I've found it worth noting that when one is living with the mask, even the inward journey of self-discovery can suffer from the lies we tell.  We don't just delude others, we wear it for ourselves.  And much thought that arises from the subconscious, much "gut-reaction" to the things others do and say is frighteningly programmatic.  When you spend time in your own head wondering about how and why certain things go on in your own head, it's easy to get a bit lost.

There is, of course, much benefit, especially when you can approach it with honesty.  For instance, I've gotten more in tune with not just where my various stresses come from, but why.  I'm now better able to admit, to myself and others, where precisely my "work stress" comes from, as an example, instead of leaving it only as the generic socially-acceptable "things at work have been busy".  Busy is not what stresses me.  Busy means the day goes quicker.  Hell, busy means less guilt over 'goofing off' because I'm not busy.  Work stress derives largely from particular social interactions with certain individuals.  Sure, it's sometimes the work itself, but far less often.  It's the dealing with challenging interactions under a code of acceptable language - because they're coworkers, because they're employers, because I'm a consultant who has to couch things in the gentlest of terms as much as possible.  As much as I've sometimes been a socially awkward person in certain ways and at certain times in my life, I have over time developed a particular set of skills that work for me, empowering me to better handle some scenarios and come across as very bold and confident, whether I actually am or not.  But those particular skills - the attitude, the choice of language - don't fit the work environment well, and certainly not in all scenarios, and therefore sometimes put me at a disadvantage.  Ergo, stress.  Knowing and admitting the source of the stress doesn't simply hand-wave it away, of course, but it helps immensely in planning what to do about it.

But to get back to a more general sense of the crux of things:  a fire was lit in my brain I can't put out, and it's a little tricky to even describe the nearly ever-present extent to which it now burns.  It reminds me of something odd that happened in my early 20s.

I had spent a lot of time instructing at the front of a classroom, and my focus became instructional techniques themselves.  I became an expert on the subject, and worked as a Standards Officer, watching others instruct so I could debrief them and provides suggestions for how to improve their instructional skills.  It included everything from their use of chalkboards (dating myself there), whiteboards, or other instructional aids to where they stood and how they spoke.  There are actually a considerable number of subtleties in the way classroom lectures work at their most effective (which sadly, is still not terrible effective despite their popularity).  I got very good at watching how people taught.

But it messed with my head.

When I returned to university for classes, I could sit through a lecture and absorb none of the material.  I could tell you where the prof stood, their intonations, how they moved, how they posed questions, how they used the training aids... but beyond the key points, all details were lost.  My focus had shifted, and it was a struggle to push it back.  It had a considerable negative impact on my studies for some time.

So now, in similar fashion, I've spent so much time this past two years pondering the nature of gender and gender-equality... (What is masculinity? What is 'male'?  Why are there gender roles in the first place?  Am I a feminist? What kind? What needs to change?  What can I change in myself?  What can I do to help facilitate change in others?) ...that I am now suffering from the same inability to "turn off the scrutiny" that I did with instructional techniques so many years ago.

In the interest of becoming a better man, I've stumbled down a mental rabbit hole I'm not sure I can easily climb out of.  I'm not sure I want to climb out of.  I'm not sure I should want to climb out of.  I feel like Roddy Piper donning the sunglasses in They Live.  I'm astounded by how pervasive it is when you're paying attention.

I listen to women talking to men and hear the non-confrontational timidity with which they present things and I reflect on what it is they don't, won't, or can't say.  Is this how they've been conditioned to talk?  During this Christmas season I wasn't seeing the children's toys so much as pondering the nature of said children's toys.  What messages do they send?  Do the parents realize? 

I do my best to remind myself not to judge.  The point of this journey of self-discovery is not about those people I'm observing; it's about me.  It's about me examining the ways in which I can become a better (and ultimately even happier and more fulfilled) person.  Enlightenment is one of the more challenging and painful parts of that.  It has to be.  Enlightenment is not a place to be found or a goal to be achieved, but a state of constant evolution.

Those timid women?  When the Tao Te Ching describes the use of acquiescence as a leadership and survival skill, it's no coincidence it describes it as "Know the role of the male, but stick to the role of the female" to do so.  That shit dates back to about 600 BCE.  This is a very old problem.

I find myself paying a lot more attention to the ways in which I and other men around me interact with women now.

Those parents?  They are buying the things that are popular and the things those kids are asking for because it's what we've all been convinced is appropriate.  The parents are unwitting victims just as much as the children are.  It's what they were taught.  They're buying their kids the same kinds of toys they enjoyed as children, in the perpetuation of cycles we've not (yet) sufficiently challenged. 

I reflected on my own choices in entertainment and on my own "Christmas toys".  I spent much of the Xmas break playing one game I've been playing for months, where I lead a guerrilla war against alien oppressors in which I give no hesitation to civilians in the streets being caught in my rocket blasts or flamethrower path, and another new (to me) one where I ran around stabbing and slashing innumerable people and creatures with my lightsaber because... of some reason in the cut-scenes I've obviously not found memorable.  I finished that second one though, so I'm soon to start an another old PS3 game, this time where I get to do Mixed Martial Arts.

I'm working very hard on myself these days, trying to make myself pause and really hear the opinions of others, asking how the differences in the experiences of their lives has led them to a different place, mentally, than mine.  But I'm not very good at it yet.  It takes practice.

I ponder the things in my own past that have led me to this place, mentally, and think of some for which I probably owe a few apologies for things I can only hope are long forgotten.

But I have hope for the younger generation.  Dan?  No interest in things like "first person shooters" and I hope it stays that way.  He recently introduced me to a cute, cooperative game called Snipperclips. 

He may yet free me from my cage.