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Archives For July 2012

Tuesday Tip: Instead of Pointing Fingers, Join Hands

July 31, 2012 — Leave a comment

An astute reader (a.k.a., my wife) pointed out that the Tuesday Tip would be more helpful if it followed from the associated post, rather than anticipating it. And I agree. So, this Tuesday Tip refers to last Friday’s post, Marriage Is The Real Problem. And it can be read in conjunction with last week’s Tuesday Tip.

Have you ever felt like your marital conflict doesn’t go anywhere? Have you ever felt like you and your spouse were arguing in circles? 

Oftentimes, the lack of progress is the result of spouses focusing on the wrong problem. We  think the problem is in our spouse, when actually the problem is between us. That is, the “problems” are simply the normal incompatibilities that happen when two entirely different people try to live the rest of their lives together.

But these incompatibilities get blamed on each other, and the battle ensues.

In Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy (IBCT), the strategy of “empathic joining” refers to “the process by which partners cease to blame one another for their emotional suffering and instead develop empathy for each other’s experience.”*

In my opinion, the best way to do this is to tell our stories to each other in a meaningful way, giving our partner a better chance at understanding our responses. I might recommend the following process when a spouse is angry and blaming.

  1. Identify the “soft” feeling underneath the anger. Feelings like hurt, loneliness, abandonment, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, fear, anxiety, etc.
  2. Identify the trigger for this feeling in the marital interaction.
  3. Identify at least one time in life before the marriage that this feeling was triggered and experienced. Preferably, choose the earliest memory of a similar kind of experience. Remember, pain and suffering did not begin with the marriage!
  4. Write down this scene from earlier in your story. Focus on your soft emotions, trying to make your internal experience as detailed as possible.
  5. Read your story to your spouse.

This exercise accomplishes several important goals. First, for the angry spouse, it changes the interaction from an opportunity to attack to an opportunity to be vulnerable. Second, the blaming spouse is reminded that their partner is not completely responsible for the pain. They may trigger it, but it didn’t originate with them. Third, the spouse who was being blamed is given the space to quit being defensive and given important information that will allow him or her to have more empathy for their frustrated partner.

Spouses can become a team, learning each other’s stories, rather than blaming each other for all the problems in the relationship.

Tuesday Tip Disclaimer: The Tuesday Tip is not professional advice. It should be read as you would read a “self-help” book. For professional and customized advice, you should seek the services of a counselor, who can become more intimately familiar with your specific situation. Counselors can be located through your insurance network or through your state psychological association website.

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Marriage Is The Real Problem

July 27, 2012 — 27 Comments

Coffee MugIf you’re married, you fight.

And you probably fight with the best of intentions, trying to bring about a change in your partner that is good and healing. The only thing is, your partner isn’t the problem.

Marriage is.

Marriage is a mess, and until we become partners standing with each other, facing off against the problem of marriage and life and a crumbling world, we will face off against each other, and nothing will change, and nothing will be healed…

Several years ago, a couple sat down in my office and told me they’d been fighting viciously since their last appointment.* I asked what they’d been fighting about, and I silently flipped through my mental filing cabinet: in-laws, the kids, money, sex, or just fighting about fighting?

Not much surprises me anymore, but what they said next caught me completely off-guard.

“We fought about the color of your coffee mug.”

The color of my coffee mug.

He insisted it was purple. She insisted it was blue.

Actually, the mug is both, depending upon how the light hits it and your personal perceptions of color. And yet they had been embroiled in a week-long battle. Arguing a point that doesn’t have an answer. Seeking victory in a game that cannot yield a victor. Trying to solve a problem with no definitive solution.

We live our marriages in this way. We make this crazy-strange commitment to entwine our life with another’s life. Forever. And we quickly come to discover the insanity of this. We think and communicate differently than our partner. We celebrate holidays differently. We grieve differently. We vacation differently. We have differences of opinion about life and love and parenting and politics and faith.

And the color of a coffee mug.

But instead of deciding the problem lies outside both us, between us, we decide the problem exists within our partner. We blame them for the differences, and the struggle, and the pain, and the messiness of life. And our homes become a battlefield, as we try to fix the problem we are married to. At best, wives walk on eggshells trying not to wake the sleeping giant, and husbands sneak around like little boys trying not to get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

How do we rescue our marriages from this endless cycle of blame and conflict? How do we find sanity in the midst of this crazy commitment?

When I was in high school, “magic eye” posters were all the rage. They were posters of apparently random and chaotic color. Except. If you stared into them long enough, stared past them, the colors collided into coherence, and an image emerged from the randomness. Something meaningful emerged from the chaos.

I think we need to look at the marriage altar like we would a magic eye poster.

We need to stare past the glitz and glamour of the wedding day, stare past the false promise of life-long satisfaction and personal gratification, stare past the false hope of turning chaos into order with the exchange of two metal rings. And as we look more deeply into the marriage altar, we may glimpse a new image emerging from the randomness and chaos.

We may see the wedding altar for what it is.

An altar of sacrifice—a place our egos are meant to die.

If we can look long enough, and if we can embrace this image of the wedding alter, we may yet have a fighting chance of standing with our partner, rather than constantly facing off against them. As our egos die—and our need to be right and powerful and safe dies with them—we may become free to embrace a radical kind of acceptance. We may be free to accept…

Our spouse is another flawed creature, with whom we are trying to solve the real problem of life and living.

Our lives are stressful and chaotic and sometimes no one is to blame for it.

Our partner is not responsible for taking away all of our loneliness and inadequacy.

The redemption of this life is not found in being right, but rather in being together.

I wonder if this is the purpose of marriage:

That couples might transform marriage into an entirely different kind of ground zero. That armies of married people might stand side-by-side and march out into the world, armed with a sense of unity, a willingness to sacrifice themselves for something bigger, and a commitment to love others regardless of the cost to ourselves. That we might decide, finally, to find an enemy worth fighting against.

Enemies like hunger and homelessness and parentlessness, and conflict itself.

Tonight, one in seven people on this planet will go to bed hungry.

Tonight, in the wealthiest country in the world, more than a million people will be without shelter.

In the time it took you to read this post, approximately fifteen African children became AIDS orphans.

In 2012, a record-setting 275 Chicagoans have been murdered, primarily due to gang violence. Says one Chicago police officer, “Instead of a bullet with somebody’s name on it, we have a bullet that reads ‘To whom it may concern.’”**

For the most part, we can put these kinds of statistics out of our minds.

Until we go to a Batman premiere.

And then the denial crumbles, with the world around us.

And yet, tonight we will go to bed with our backs to each other, fighting about who started the fight, who is most responsible for the kids’ disrespect, or who left the toilet seat up.

Or the color of a coffee mug.

Let’s stop blaming each other, and let’s find an enemy worth fighting against. Let’s put our egos to death, and let’s stand with our spouses.

Somewhere right now, there is a person, not so different than you, with an empty stomach and empty pockets. Or, a family with no family, and no place to lay their heads. Or, a kid dying for a story to live and a set of parents who will narrate it for her. Or, a teenager with no authority figure except his gang and his gun.

The world is aching for people who have learned the freedom of unity and compassion, who are ready to wield them like weapons, firing salvos of love into dark and crumbling places. Your marriage is meant to be the training ground.

And in the midst of the training, may you learn that your partner is not an enemy combatant. You may come to know them as another freedom fighter, one who will always have your back, one who will never leave you alone in the trenches.

 

Your thoughts? Has marriage challenged you to be sacrificial? Or to unite against something besides each other? We’d love to hear your story in the comments!

About the Blog: The next Tuesday Tip will continue to focus on nurturing “empathic joining” around problems in marriage, rather than treating each other like the problem. Subscribein the sidebar and receive the tip in your email inbox!

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Photo Credit: Photo taken by David Clinton, MA, LCPC

And always, thank you for reading. It’s a gift.

*Permission granted by couple to share story.

**Statistics and quote taken from July 11, 2012, issue of the Sun Times.

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Tuesday Tip: How to Fight With, Instead of Against, Your Partner

July 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

Welcome to the first Tuesday Tip! The Tuesday Tip is intended to offer concrete and practical ideas for improving yourself and your relationships, in a shorter-than-usual post. Topics will vary, but they will be closely linked to the upcoming blog post on Friday. I hope the Tip gets you thinking about the topic in new ways, so the Friday post will be an even richer experience.               

For decades, married couples have consistently reported that communication is the biggest problem in their marriage. And the most commonly exhibited communication pattern in marriage is the “demand-withdraw” conflict style—one spouse demands more discussion and connection, while the other spouse wants space and freedom from the conflict. Each spouse’s behavior exacerbates the other spouse’s behavior: demands encourage withdrawal, and withdrawal encourages more demands. Often, the vicious cycle spirals out of control.

And spouses end up blaming each other for the way they fight, accusing the other of triggering the pattern with their behavior. But the reality is, usually, both spouses share responsibility, and the truth of who initiated the pattern in the relationship, if it even exists, is lost to time and perception.

In Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy (IBCT), the cycle of blame is disrupted by fostering a “unified detachment” from the problem. That is, instead of viewing our spouses as the problem in the conflict, we see the conflict itself as the problem, and unite with our spouses to change the pattern of conflict.

There are a number of ways to build unified detachment from the conflict cycle. The following is adapted from existing methods:

  1. Spouses agree upon the topic they fight about most in the marriage.
  2. Separately, each spouse writes out a script of a typical argument. Make it detailed. Try to be as objective as possible.
  3. Then, spouses trade scripts. Spouses take turns reading the script they’ve been given. Clarify any questions about the script.
  4. Each spouse takes 15 minutes to independently read through the conflict sequence, looking at his/her own behaviors in particular, and deciding what s/he could do to foster a more productive interaction at each step in the sequence.
  5. Spouses reconvene and share with each other their ideas for ways they can take personal responsibility for changing the pattern.

For instance, a spouse who is typically in the demanding role may observe a place where they could offer a brief break in the communication. Or the spouse who is typically in the withdrawal role may observe the point at which they feel overwhelmed and might offer a specific time to resume the conversation after a break.

The solution is not as important as the cooperation. In this way, couples begin to quit blaming each other and, instead, unite to defeat the problem of the communication itself.

This Friday’s Post: Friday’s post will focus on this idea of externalizing the problem in marriage, fighting with each other instead of against each other. And it will explore the ways this frees us up to make a difference in the world. 

Tuesday Tip Disclaimer: The Tuesday Tip is not professional advice. It should be read as you would read a “self-help” book. For professional and customized advice, you should seek the services of a counselor, who can become more intimately familiar with your specific situation. Counselors can be located through your insurance network or through your state psychological association website. 

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Why The Amish Have It Better Than You

July 20, 2012 — 9 Comments

Our quality of life is completely unrelated to our productivity and achievement. It is entirely related to the quality of our rest. Unfortunately, rest doesn’t happen by accident. In fact, rest doesn’t even happen in the moments we think it’s happening. Rest is an interior condition that must be cultivated…       

Another Sunday morning, and another frantic rush for toothbrushes and shoes and little kid Bibles. Another mad scramble for the car. And my eight-year-old looks at me and says, “Daddy, Sunday is supposed to be the Sabbath; I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind.”

A snappy retort pops into my head: something about Jesus not having kids so how would he know.

But I think better of it.

Because Aidan’s right: if the Sabbath is for rest, why do we orchestrate it like event planners, cramming in enough activity to fill a week of Sundays?

Perhaps we are simply avoiding our quiet places, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think we do it because—whether you go to church every week, or you refuse to set foot inside of one—we all have at least one thing in common:

Having tried and failed repeatedly, we have given up on real rest altogether.

And I think we’ve failed because we harbor at least three fundamental misconceptions about it.

We think rest is what happens when our bodies are still. We think we are resting when we plop down in front of the television, or settle into an iPad meandering session, or lounge by the pool on a Saturday afternoon. Yet, while our body is inert, our mind defies us, continuing to spin in a million directions—thinking, worrying, planning, regretting, and critiquing.

We think rest is what happens when we have nothing on the schedule. We think we will rest when the weekend arrives and there is no boss to satisfy and fewer places for our kids to be. Yet, Saturday morning gapes wide-open before us, and our minds get itchy. Halfway through a cup of coffee, you’re feeling guilty about the work that could be getting done, or the people you should be talking to, and before you know it the morning is gone with random-tedious chores and Facebook posts. And you wonder where the time went.

We think rest is what happens when we escape reality for a time. We literally vacate our reality, taking vacations to warm places with cool beaches, seeking a space where we are unavailable to the world and its talons, pulling us in so many directions. And yet, wherever we go, there we are. So, we take with us our ceaselessly running minds. And, nowadays, we take our phones and email and text messages and we never really become unavailable to a world that wants to spin us like a top.

The bottom line is this: We think rest is a moment we create. So, we spend all of our energy trying to create restful moments, and we exhaust ourselves in the process.

But rest is not a moment to be created. Rest is an inner condition to be cultivated.

My family vacated last month, a summer ritual that involves a long car ride to the Delaware shore. Although the trip is already about fifteen hours in length, we drive out of our way to travel through central Pennsylvania. We do so, because there is a little highway of rolling hills that winds its way through the heart of Amish country.

And it is the most peaceful hour of our vacation.

Last month, we drove through a culture that has ruthlessly preserved its restfulness and refuses to relinquish its slowness. We saw clothes hung on pulleys stretching from houses to barn roofs. We passed bouncing buggies powered by the clop of hooves. We passed houses with phone booths at the edge of the property.

And we passed children riding bikes without pedals. To the Amish, pedals are a technology with a dire consequence: hurry. So, instead, the children push bikes like scooters, one foot swooping the ground.

In a sense, life is harder in Amish country. It requires sweat and discipline and intentionality.

Yet, the fruit of the labor is a kind of peacefulness and rest that you can scent on the air.

For must of us, already swept up in the technological river of the 21st century, the Amish way of life seems archaic, backwards, even strange. But I think we could learn a few lessons from the Amish. Because the reality is, if we want to cultivate interior lives of restfulness and slowness in our current milieu, we are going to have to act in radically counter-cultural ways.

We will need to intentionally sabotage our productivity and achievement—produce fewer widgets, sell fewer gadgets. Maybe our kids will need to settle for second chair in the school orchestra.

We can begin by forsaking productivity in the very first moment of every day. Wake up fifteen minutes early, but not in order to get a jump on the day. Instead, spend five minutes opening your eyes slowly, opening the eyes of your mind and your heart to a new day pregnant with the opportunity to rest. Feel the warmth of the covers on a cold winter morning. Attend to the dance of light on the ceiling from a summer sunrise.

Do nothing to the moment. Simply allow your self to be in the moment.

Slowly, ever-so-slowly, throw your legs over the side of the bed, feeling the texture of the floor as your feet meet the day. Sit up and breathe slowly. Notice the air as it fills your lungs. Notice your mind as it already begins the daily race, and repeatedly bring your attention back to the breath in your lungs. Spend some time being grateful for each and every breath. After all, it—not your job or your kids—is what keeps you alive.

Before we stand up to take on the day, we will need to pick words to breathe throughout it. Words like simple. Or sacred. Or sublime. Words we cannot ignore. Words that help us to quit ignoring everything that is happening in the lower gears of life.

We need to schedule fifteen minutes in the middle of every day to engage our senses. To catch the scent of the tomato plants in bloom, or today’s shade of blue in the dome above us, or the rich scent of coffee in the mug on our desk.

When we do this, we will want more of it, so we will have to find time in the day to do it again.

We will need to leave our phones at the front door and not pick them up again until we depart the house. We won’t be able to do this. So, we will need to have someone hold the phone for us. Ppassword protect it and give it to your kid. They’ll get a kick out of having control over you, and they’ll learn a little bit about what’s important in life.

And maybe—and this is totally crazy, I know—one weekend a month we will need to trip every switch in the fuse box (except the kitchen, of course, no need to spoil the food).

For the entire weekend.

If the power went out of our houses, perhaps we’d feel the power drain out of our hurried lives, as well.

Maybe we’d discover the kids sleep later when there are no cartoons to watch.

Maybe the internet would have to be traded for a board game, and maybe our families would rediscover the art of laughing together.

Maybe without air-conditioning, we’d be forced to sit on the front porch with a sweaty-cold glass of tea, and maybe we’d have time for a long-slow conversation with the neighbor we love but never have time for.

Maybe, without lights, we’d go down with the sun. With no blue LED light to fool our minds into wakefulness, perhaps they would settle peacefully into the soundlessness. And into the lack of doing.

Maybe, if we cultivated rest in this way, we’d have enough energy left over for our vacations.

About the Blog: Thanks again to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who were willing to share your experiences and insight about the conundrum of rest. I’m grateful.

Share Your Comment: Do you have any creative ways of cultivating restfulness? Please share, we need to hear it!

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Photo Credit: Photo by Robert Weingarten 

In Mindfulness & Gratitude, Psychology , , , , ,
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Licking Happiness and Forsaking Joy

July 13, 2012 — 15 Comments

Happiness and JoyWe’re drawn to simple pleasures. They go down easy. They make us happy. But sometimes, I wonder if we’re settling.

Settling for something less than joy…

On the first of July, as the minutes ticked toward midnight, I stood at the edge of the country. I faced east, gazing out over a dark and undulating Atlantic.

And I held my breath.

Because hundreds of miles northward a vast thundercloud throbbed with orange pulses of energy, and jagged bolts of lightning showered the horizon. From a distance, it was quiet, but violent and powerful and breath-taking.

And at the same time, the sky above me was star-scattered and, from the south, a full moon bathed the beach in a gentle glow.

In one direction—violence and destruction. In the other direction—tranquility and beauty. And me. Standing in the middle of it.

Alone.

The beach was empty. On the fluorescently-lit boardwalk several hundred yards away, throngs of tourists licked ice cream and ate funnel cake and pushed quarters into arcade games.

Distracted.

They were enjoying the classic American holiday weekend. Last week, Americans spent three billion dollars celebrating the holiday. Three billion dollars on gas, and burgers, and soda-pop, and sparklers. I contributed more than my fair share.

But I wonder if all of us were settling?

I wonder if we settle for happy things on the boardwalk of life.

You see, happiness is all about circumstance and situation. It’s all about orchestrating events so life is comfortable and pleasurable and fun. Happiness is what happens when all the tumblers fall into place and life just clicks.

It’s sitting on the front porch on a perfect June evening with plenty of money in the bank account. It’s the right job coming along at the right time. It’s your kid walking down the aisle in a cap and gown with a full-ride scholarship, or your daughter walking down the aisle in a completely different kind of gown to take the hand of a guy you actually like.

Happiness is winning lottery tickets, and good luck, and serendipity, and pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming.

Happiness is the perfect ice cream cone on the boardwalk, with fireworks on the way and a long beach week with cloudless skies ahead of you.

Happiness is sweet.

And we’re drawn to it like moths.

And why wouldn’t we be? Happiness goes down easy.

But happiness is always fleeting. Because circumstances change.

The furnace goes out and the roof springs a leak, and suddenly the financial margin evaporates. Or the new boss is a disaster. Or the kid comes home after a semester at college because the pressure got to him first and the amphetamines got to him next.

Happiness is an ice cream cone that melts, leaving you with sticky fingers and a constant hunger for more.

But Joy.

Joy is a place inside every circumstance. It’s a constant place, and it feels like peace, and it gives hope, and it looks like love, but it is more than all of these things, and words will always fail it.

And the place of joy is waiting for us.

But there’s a catch:

It only exists smack in the middle of the lightning and the moonlight. In fact, the place of joy in us cannot exist independent of the storms in life, because joy is the peace that comes from looking right into the storm and feeling freedom from it.

Joy is the place we stumble upon when we look our deepest pain and greatest fear directly in the eyes, and we refuse to flinch. It’s the place we stumble upon when we decide pain and fear aren’t going to be the final word. It’s the place where we anchor ourselves in something more than the vicissitudes of our material existence. It’s the place of freedom inside every situation, where we realize the things that are happening to us are losing their power to control us and define us.

Joy is not the answer to hardship. Rather, it is the birth of an entirely new way to experience the pain and the fear and the sorrow itself. Joy is watching the lightning-violence and trusting there is moonlight-peace just over our shoulder.

Joy is lightning and moonlight, all at once.

Joy is not knowing where the next meal will come from, yet hearing the laughter of your children and allowing yourself to be fed by it. Joy is the chaos of a toddler and newborn twins and a husband who just left you, and a knock on the door from a friend. Joy is sitting in the doctor’s office while the cancer grows, and deciding to love the stranger next to you anyway, with a comforting word and a smile. Joy is walking alone and lonely down a crowded city street and suddenly feeling yourself surrounded and joined by the millions of stories being lived every day. Joy is standing in the middle of the street during a historic blizzard, and shouting at it in defiance.

The night after I stood between the lightning and the moonlight, I boarded the Paratrooper ride at the boardwalk carnival with my oldest son. The Paratrooper is a kind of Ferris Wheel on steroids, whipping you up and down with legs dangling and feet flying out into the open air.

As the ride commenced with a lurch and a growling-hum, Aidan gripped the sticky handlebar with desperate tenacity. Looking straight ahead, he confessed, “Daddy, I’m terrified.” As we crested the top of the orbit, I shouted to him, “Put your hands in the air, Aidan; if you can do this, you can do anything!”

I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but I knew it would feel true to him.

And with joyful defiance, my gutsy, lovely son raised his arms above his head and let loose a wild scream, all terror and glory at the same time. Violence and beauty, all at once. My son stepped into the lightning and the moonlight. He chose his terror and found a joyful freedom there.

I think he’s glad he didn’t sit on the sidelines licking an ice cream cone.

If we’re going to live, really live, we have to choose to stand in the middle of the lightning and the moonlight, because that’s where joy is found. That’s where we find peace and freedom from the pain and fear, in the midst of the pain and fear.

And that kind of joy gives birth to meaning and beauty. It will be more terrifying than ice cream. But it will be vastly more joyful than funnel cake.

What ice-cream-cones-of-life are you licking?

Where is the dark beach of your life? Are you ready to step off the boardwalk and go there?

Because there will be lightning waiting, but there will also be moonlight.

And in the middle of it all?

Joy.

 

*About the Blog: For this post, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you who contributed your ideas on the Facebook page.  And for those of you coming out of traditions and cultures that transpose the words joy and happiness, please forgive my ethno-centricity, and I hope it resonates anyway!

Share Your Comment! Have you ever found moonlight in the midst of the lightning? We’d love to hear about your experience of joy!

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In Psychology, Purpose & Meaning, Therapy & Personal Growth , , , , ,
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A Letter To Masculinity

July 6, 2012 — 21 Comments

MasculinityDear Masculinity,

Who are you?

Because no one seems to know for sure.

Growing up in a small, blue-collar town in the rural Midwest, I was pretty sure you had dry-calloused hands with grit underneath the nails. I thought you drove tractors and thrived under the hood of a car. You wore strong aftershave—the kind of sharp-scent that dominated every room you entered. You drank beer on Saturdays and watched football on Sundays. Back then, you were big and hard and there-but-not-there.

But then my parents joined the local golf club.

And I got confused.

You still wore the aftershave, but you were different. You made enough money to leave work and play golf in the afternoon. You always had the newest clubs. And, sometimes, you seemed less concerned with your score than with the length of your drives. On Tuesdays, you never missed a men’s night dinner at the club. And, afterward, you sat at the bar, playing dice games I couldn’t understand. You still drank the beer.

And yet.

Other people told me you’d never be caught dead on the golf course. They said you play basketball and baseball. (And they said you play even when you’re injured.) They said you only eat red meat and you get inked and own a motorcycle and you don’t need sunblock and you probably don’t feel things like the rest of us. They made you sound solid and unshakeable.

But then, just as I was getting comfortable with who you might be, my world got turned upside down. Again.

I went to college—a kid-from-the-corn thrust onto a campus four times the size of his hometown. And there, people didn’t seem to like you all that much. They blamed you for most of the crap that happened in the world. At best, they seemed to think you weren’t really needed.

But they were just as confusing as you.

Because the ways they talked about—the ways they slammed you and dismissed you—reeked of the very qualities they abhorred. Your critics were strong like steel, and vicious like a razor.

They were like peace protestors throwing bombs.

And, Masculinity, I don’t think I’m the only one confused about you. Ironically, part of my job now is to talk to all sorts of people about you. Every day. And they all seem pretty confused, too.

Masculinity, I thought I should let you know what a mystery you seem to be to everyone around me.

But I’m also writing, because there are rumors going round.

The rumor is, you can take many forms. The rumor is, you can drive a motorcycle and a golf ball. The rumor is, that’s all just the smoke-and-mirrors of culture and heritage. The rumor is, you’re all of that.

And so much more.

The rumor is, you are Courageous—courageous enough to touch the feelings inside of you, even when they are big and painful and self-shattering. I remember watching Michael Jordan win his fourth championship, all strength and skill and determination. But, Masculinity, I hear it was you-in-him who sobbed in the locker room afterward, clinging to a trophy and letting go of your murdered father.

The rumor is, you are Strong—strong enough to be weak. You know your weakness is your vulnerability, and you have the strength to live in it, knowing life and love explode in the weak, vulnerable places.

The rumor is, you have a Death Wish—you are willing to sacrifice your ego on the altar of accountability and apology and a bottomless love. You are willing to be eviscerated by anything that equalizes you.

The rumor is, you are a Defender—you defend those who cannot defend themselves. You stand between your wife and the part of you that is inclined to dominate her. You seek out the dwelling place of the powerless, and you protect them from being used. Your only allegiance is to those who need mercy. You were Martin Luther King, Jr., standing on his bombed-out front porch, defending the White police officers, because they were suddenly powerless against a vengeful “Colored” mob.

The rumor is, you are a Provider—you put food on the table, but you are also happy to set the table. You provide a space where your kids can be kids and your wife can feel free. You provide a sanctuary where feelings of safety and belonging can take hold of the ones you love.

Dear Masculinity, I hope the rumors are true. I hope you are all of these things.

And if the rumors are true, I hope you show up soon, and I hope you stay for good. In me. In my boys. And in the men all around me.

Dear Masculinity, where are you?

Kelly

Share Your Comment: Have you spotted Masculinity? Tell us what he looks like; share your thoughts in the comments below.

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