Enlightenment

It’s been four months since I last published a blog post. Maybe I have been lazy; but in my defense, I just completed three major milestones in my journey. First, after seven years of late nights and battling institutional bureaucracy, I achieved my terminal degree. Second, after years of reading and thinking, I finally discovered what I want to do professionally for my remaining years. Third, my deep dive into the space between my ears finally resulted in real revelation, the kind of enlightenment that provides a strong foundation on which to build a new future. I guess four months of no posting is an easy price to pay for these accomplishments.

I’d like to talk about the third milestone. Maybe I’m more screwed-up than I thought? Maybe we all are? Men like me spend our entire lives doing what we think are the manly things to do. We work hard, provide for our families, are there for our kids, and in the process put on hold our personal dreams. Although we intuitively understand why we do what we do, there is a nagging feeling that something is not right. We feel hollow, uninspired and maybe even angry. What’s up with that?

For many of us, our happiness and self-worth are linked to the feedback we get from the outside. Are we rewarded at work with money and accolades? Are we able to acquire symbols of accomplishment that result in others looking up to us as men who have “made it?” Do our families shower us in praise and admiration? Do our significant others pursue us for sex? The problem is that when these things become the anchors to our happiness and self-worth, we become completely disconnected from what should be our anchors, which are self-respect and self-love. The revelation I experienced was that these were personal traits absent in my life.

I’m not going to perform self-administered psychoanalysis to identify the reasons for my dilemma. I know its fashionable in our society to paint ourselves as victims, and our parents and wives are frequently the casualties in this process. For me, it was time to man-up and take ownership of my situation. Regardless of what were the precipitating causes for my lack of self-respect and self-love, it is completely my responsibility to own the situation and change it.

There are many books that I can reference that helped me get to this point of enlightenment, but the book that lit my fire was Dr. Robert A. Glover’s book, No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex, and Life. No, this is not a book that advocates being an ass to others. This is a book that simply argues that if we as men are unable to love ourselves, we will not be able to truly love others. And for reasons that are too many to reference in this post, there are real reasons why we as men get lost along our way and find ourselves in this situation.

My mantra going forward is selfishness and boundaries. Being selfish has a bad connotation and in some cases is not a trait we should be proud of. For me, being selfish means understanding what is important to achieving self-respect and self-love, and never compromising on these things. Boundaries are just that, limits to what I am willing to accept on a wide array of questions such as what I do for a career, where and how I choose to live, and what I choose to do in my personal time. My success in adhering to the demands of this mantra relies upon effective communication, a quality I’m not particularly known for in my personal life. It is imperative that I clearly communicate what is important and what I will not compromise on, and then live up to these standards. It’s about living a life of integrity with my values.

What does this all mean in practice? Going forward, my actions will not be driven by what responses I hope they will elicit from others. My actions will be based only on their compliance with what is important to me as an individual, as a man. This does not mean that the feelings of others, including my family, will be inconsequential to my actions. Nevertheless, I will not jettison what’s important to me to live-up to the expectations of others. I hope in this process that those closest to me will understand, respect, and even admire how I choose to walk going forward. I truly love my family and understand that without them I’m nothing. The direction I have chosen is to ensure that my capacity to love them back is protected, even enhanced. The journey continues.