Generating Authentic Power

Our society, it seems, is set up as an accomplishment-driven world. What this means is that we value and measure each other - especially as men - by what we can and what we have done. I must tote around my resume of accomplishments in order to be seen either as a man of my word or as a valued, results-producing go-getter.

But when men reach a certain age or level of maturity, accomplishments are no longer the measure of worth.  In the second half of life (as Richard Rohr calls it) our goal is more about creating worth through what we give rather than what we get or win. This all came to a head yesterday as I talked with a friend and contemporary (he is as old as me) who was signing up for a goal-crunching program in order for him to up his personal integrity.  This man said that in his life he has seen where he has often not accomplished what he said he would and that he has not "shown up as his word" far too often.

I asked him what he though integrity meant to him and he told me that it meant doing what you say you will do.  Well, that may be true, especially in an accomplishment oriented first-half-of-life society.  Integrity is the consistency between what you say and what you do.  But in the second half of life we lose the fascination with trophies and points, so integrity of our word takes on a different texture and flavor. "What if," I asked him, "you looked at integrity as telling the truth about where you are right now?"

The wisdom and power of integrity at that point would look like telling others how much being out of integrity in the past has cost you.  You could look at the wounds and scars you have and say, "This is where I failed to do suchandso a thing, and here is what happens when you don't do that." and so on.  How powerful it is to be fully present to one's failures and the lessons learned from them, instead of pretending that history didn't teach him anything and having him try to (once again) white knuckle through another program of goals and accomplishments. Doing the later would no doubt result in another imbalanced list of losses and a few wins, and further the evidence of his life that he cannot accomplish these huge piles of goals - and that therefore he must suffer one more hit to his pride and integrity in the accomplishment world.

Enough is enough! He does not need anymore evidence.  What he needs, if anything, is the ability to tell the truth and to be fully aware and present to his results and lack thereof. Then, standing in the truth, fully aware of the associated pains and joys of his life, he can finally claim his authority - authority in his own life and his authority for the wisdom he dispenses. It may be hard to face the truth, and even harder to stay fully present to it, but the power that reveals is immense.

Defending the Caveman

It is rare that I feel compelled to respond to another person’s op-ed words, generally because I respect the art of writing and as a writer myself, I understand that editors can take whole hunks out of a writer’s presentation leaving it tattered and sometimes less than coherent. But sometimes, a person strings together such misinformation and assumptions that not only is the premise fouled in the process, he (in this case) creates massive disservice to entire groups of the population. Such is the case with Barry Nolan’s recent “Take” in Boston Magazine (September 2012, 50:9, pages 39 ff) entitled Attack of the 50-Foot Feminist Agenda.

As Mr. Nolan portrays the situation, men have somehow de-evolved from the drum-beating, new-age, poetry reading cool guys of the 80’s into a backlash of self-righteous cavemen who claim to be victims of the feminist movement.  Nolan reports that said men, enraged at the disservice the femininely sympathetic court system has given us men, are now waging a war of inane politics that blames the victims of domestic violence and seeks to pull down every step of progress made over the last thirty years.  

Now hold on there, Bucko, you sort have swept a pile of crap into those assumptions.

First of all, the men’s “movement” was neither started by Robert Bly nor was it organized in order to bang on drums and dance naked around the fire. For thousands of generations, men have supported other men in becoming the best they could be, whether that was in battle (which it was for most of that history) or as husbands, fathers and members of society. While there are some lessons we need to learn from our sisters, these men’s circles existed because there are just some things that women cannot teach us and that are best given by our peers. Borrowing from Bly a bit, some of that work, like grief work, most women would prefer not to see anyway – it is not pretty.  But men’s work is about supporting men to be great.

And part of what can be great about men is taking a stand against domestic violence. Men can be valiant or violent, says Alison Armstrong, and we certainly have the genetics stacked against being valiant. Some 10-20,000 years of selective evolution has ensured that the genes passed on were not the nice guys, but the Huns, Vikings, Visigoths, and other conquerors who took women as the spoils of their murderous raids. And we all walk around with that genetic time bomb ticking away inside. To be sure, most men are prone to violence, but it is men who must stop that cycle and come down hard on perpetrators of any violence against women and children. Many valiant men have stood side by side with our sisters in the service of women and children. Thank all that is holy that we, as a society, have made progress in ensuring safety and justice.

However, justice is not a one-size-fits-all issue. And many times fathers have lost their rights as parents and their place in the home through the well-meaning divorce courts. Granted, a violent man needs rehabilitation before any element of his social system (courts, extended families, churches or neighborhoods) thinks of allowing him near those whom he has victimized. But those rulings should not be dolled out in equal measure when we confuse a “normal” divorce with court-ordered separations. The fact that not one father has ever been awarded custody in any divorce proceedings in the entire recorded history of the State of New Hampshire or that our liberally-minded state is not too far in front of that, suggests that courts may have a bit of an anti-father bias.  It is for that advocacy that groups like Fathers & Families and Fatherhood.org were first organized - to assist fathers in their quest to maintain meaningful relationships with their children, and to work with the courts in reducing the financial burden of alimony when it is either disproportionately large or egregiously long.

Alimony and child support are both righteous principles but, like unions that were built to ensure fair treatment of employees, sometimes even the best ideas get out of hand. An overzealous union can cripple a company or an industry, and an overzealous court, attorney or judge can throw a man into such a financial bind that he is never able to live a productive life again. These and other men’s organizations have been working to even out such adjudications where they have become crippling.

In Mr. Nolan’s defense, could there be zealots who seem to push too far? I have no doubt. But were there not some feminists in the early years who pushed a radical agenda to wake up the nation and the world to the plight of women? Absolutely! Sometimes leaders must sacrifice themselves by going way over the line for the good of a cause that can only move only steps forward at a time.  But I fear that the nature of Mr. Nolan’s article may do more damage to any progress either side has made.

The battle is far from over. There are movements afoot within the political parties to legislate women’s reproductive rights.  There are parts of our country where violence to women and children is not thought of as morally wrong – it is condoned or ignored. Incest, spousal rape, psychological abuse and physical violence are at epidemic levels, yet much of it is never reported. Those of us who care about such things must band together instead of slinging mud at each other and inciting to riot! Hopefully in the battle for domestic justice, we can do better than our political system that seems to ignore the real, serious issues and instead resorts to name calling and slander.  Get your facts straight Mr. Nolan. Get your ass into a real men’s group and let them assist you in getting your head out of it.  There is work to be done, and right now you are just in the way and causing harm.

When Knowing Isn't Enough

Whoopie shit!  So I write this blog and with Dave's great insights and help have written A Married Man's Survival Guide and now it's sequel, Thriving in the Jungle, and then something happens like this past week that causes me to question it all.  The occasion was when a close relative came to me because their marriage was about to fall apart. Real stuff that I have dealt with many times before with friends and buddies, but this one landed really close to home.

My first instinct was to think "What advice can I give that might make a difference?" But the pivotal phrase in that sentence is "make a difference" and all the advice in the world has never made any difference - to anybody.  That isn't what matters when the bomb goes off right next to you.  All that matters is that you are there.  All that matters is that you listen (without editorializing), just listen.

Oh to be certain, I have an opinion.  I have failed at marriage and have gotten divorced and I have lived through dealing with the monster that occupies the space between failure and the final decree.  And all I can really say is that it sucks - as in it sucks all of the life out of you, all of the oxygen out of your lungs - and you cannot think or breathe or move. And what is worse is that the way that felt for me is different than how it will feel for my brother or my kids or for you going through that same in-between space.

I (or you) can never know what it is like for another, no matter how well we know that person or the path they are walking.  We just have no insight into what they are experiencing, and even when they tell us of that unique brand of suckitude fron which they are presently suffering, we will only understand it in terms of what we have as words and history and feelings.  We won't understand theirs.  So all of that knowing is for shit - it has no relevance in the space in-between.

So we laid there and stared up at the ceiling and I listened into the confusion and pain. And as quietly as I could I let the tears of remembrance slide down into my hairline so I wouldn't interfere the telling and spewing that was happening beside me.  And eventually we laughed and went to sleep, so we could get up and talk and listen some more.

It's not over and I am not deluding myself into thinking that I made even an iota of difference.  But I did no harm by assuming that I knew more or different or better.  Sometimes the experiences and pains of life teach you that we all have those periods - those explosions - in our lives and what matters is that we aren't alone.  My pain has taught me compassion for the pain of others so that I can listen without opinion - and for a short while maybe it didn't hurt as much.