The Blessing And Curse Of Male Strength

There's a certain blessing and a curse that most men will experience at some point in their life. And maybe you are one of those men right now or you've been one of those men in the past. And that blessing and that curse is that the majority of men have the ability and the capacity to suffer and hurt and be in pain without anyone knowing, without anyone really having a clue that they are in deep emotional, physical, psychological pain, that somewhere in the recess of their heart and their soul, they are deeply wounded. And in some ways, in some points in a man's life that might actually be beneficial to get him through an extremely hard time and still be able to run the business, earn the money, put food on the table, pay the rent or the mortgage, that actually might be, in certain moments in a man's life, necessary. And we look down on men for doing that. You know, we talk about men as if they should never suppress, as if they should never, you know, push things down. But the reality of some men's lives, as most men's lives, is that there are moments in life where they feel like they have to do that in order to get by. And the challenge is that many of us as men have grown up around men who lived that way their entire life, lived with a pain and a hurt and a suffering buried deep within them that no one really knew about, that everyone could kind of feel, everyone could tune into, maybe they suffered the consequences of it, but no one really knew what was going on within that man. And so the. The blessing is that men have the capacity to move forward in pain, to move through life and execute while hurting, to perform, to get shit done, to create direction, to lead, to provide, to protect. The curse is that this can turn on us, this can turn on you. This can turn into an experience where you can be suffering and you can want help and you can need help, and it can feel like there's no one there for you because you've lived a life in such a way where self protection, where protecting that pain that you've been carrying inside of you for so long has become your way of being. It's become your way of living as a man. And I know what this is like. I lived that way for a long time. I lived that way for a very long time. And I wrote something about this blessing and this curse, this experience of carrying something inside of us that is hard to deal with, carrying something inside of us that is painful that no one maybe really knows about. And I don't have a title for this, but if it resonates with you. Please man it forward. If this hits home with you, share it with somebody. Because I've shared this with countless men and a lot have resonated with this. So here it is. I guess this is on the blessing and the curse of being a man who's hurting with no one noticing. There's a hungry ghost living in the basement of my heart. A hungry ghost who seems to know only the art of self destruction. He's never satiated, he's never filled. And like any good addict, there's no real bottom. There's no top to fill to the brim or walls to contain him. Only the vast, never ending spaciousness of empty. He seems to lay in wait until my consciousness is weary and strikes with whispers in my ear. Watch it. Smoke it. Text her. Drink it. Stuff it in your face. Burn it all down. The marriage, the family, your business, your bank account. Just fuck it all up man. Blow it all up. Destroy the whole thing because you are not worthy. Man. This guy reeks of self pity. He reeks of boredom and the kind of loneliness that lingers around those who seem to have been born without any sense of belonging in the world untethered from anything of substance. He doesn't merely wander the world alone. Instead he seems to pull everything into him, forcing oneness with the over consumption of whatever he can snatch into his orbit. He is a black hole, an abyss leading to a dimension within me I wish that no one knew about. But many have suffered the consequences. He dreams of one way tickets to Thailand and a fantasy of not being known by anyone for anything. Because he loves, loathes responsibility. He loathes responsibility. He craves to just disappear and is the total sum of a primal and deep urge to self destruct. He has many names, many myths have been written about him, many faces and many stories have been told about him and his path of destruction. He is mine and he is in me. Yet he is all of ours to deal with. And I think you might know him.

Now. I'd say that I've tried to kill him. And man, let me tell you, I have tried to kill him. But we've been fighting for so long that I can't tell who is trying to kill who anymore. I've poured so much whiskey down his throat I thought I'd drown him before getting him drunk. But he just laughed. He just smiled and waited for more. I've tried to smoke him out, but he seems to enjoy the sweet kind of oblivion that accompanies each and every Single, high. Almost as if he is oblivion itself.

I've tried to fuck him into submission, and yet no singular woman seems to ever be enough. Some are enough for a little while, but a while is always short lived versions and visions of the women yet conquered and memories of the women that have been won over seem to linger. But still he remains unfulfilled. Still he remains unsatiated. He is cunning. He is so damn cunning. And I hate how cunning he is. Honestly, how can one describe what it's like to face the part of themselves that knows their weakness when it's the very weakness and the intelligence of the weakness that they are facing? You see, fighting with this part of me was like flirting with death to see if it could somehow teach me how to live a good life. And in some ways I think it did. But hopefully now it's life's turn to teach me. Because that's the funny thing about this hungry ghost. The harder I fought, the harder I fight, the more it feeds, the deeper I hate it, the more it grows. Honestly, it wasn't until I held it in my arms, it wasn't until I held it in my arms that I saw its face change, morphing into the boy I once was, who was burdened with the impossible task of carrying a pain that no child, no child could possibly know how to handle. And honestly, it's enough to make a man weep. And thankfully, I've become someone who's strong enough to do so when needed.

So.

I wrote this, in some ways, about my battle with the shadow, my battle with addiction, my battle with the part of me that is always lingering in the background. Trying to convince me to not message a buddy when I'm struggling. Trying to convince me to not tell the truth. Trying to convince me to make the bad decision, you know, trying to convince me to move back into drinking or weed or porn or, you know, whatever vice it is that I've been dealing with. I wrote this about the part of me that I think every man has to confront at some point in his life. The part of us that convinces us. The part of you that convinces you that you should suffer in silence. That you are a stronger man for not opening up. That you are a stronger man for not communicating about what's going on. Not calling a buddy and saying, hey, I'm struggling. Not dealing with the pain that you've been carrying inside for maybe decades. And this is the part of us that I think every single man at some point in his life is going to have to confront. And if he doesn't confront it in a conscious and intentional way, life will likely bring him into that confrontation. Life will bring you into that confrontation. It will create circumstances. Because this part of you, this shadow, this predatory nature inside of you, this part of you that convinces you that you can just carry on in life and your relationships and your business and your career and your vocation as a parent, as a friend, as a brother, as a son, it convinces you and tries to convince you every single day that it's okay for you to go through life pretending like you aren't hurt, like you're not in pain, like you haven't gone through some shit, and that you don't deserve that your problems, your challenges, your pain, your hurt doesn't deserve to be faced or dealt with because of whatever problem, right? It's not as bad as other people's or you just got to man up or whatever, that, you know, whatever story it is that it tries to tell you.

So I share this with you, not to give you some advice, not to tell you how to live your life, not even to get your praise or approval or any of those things, I share this with you because I have seen too many men grapple with this part. I have been a man who grappled with this part for decades. And I've seen too many men not be able to put a voice to this part of themselves. And I see in our culture that so many men, old and young, are grappling with this part of them. And when I work with men, when we bring men together on weekends, I see the power of being able to openly talk about this aspect of us, of you. And so I hope that this has given some voice, given some language, given some verbiage to maybe the part of you that you've been battling, the kind of inner civil war that you've been grappling with. And so let me know what you would add to this. I'd love to hear from you. If you're watching this on YouTube, comment below. What would you add? What stood out? What resonated with you? Please man it forward to somebody. You never know what you know might hit home with them. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sa.