Why You Feel So Lost as a Man

It took me nearly 40 years to just feel like a man, to feel like I was good at being a man, that I had worth as a man, that I was valuable as a man. And I've come to know that, as far as I can tell, there is in every single man's life a kind of odyssey that he embarks on to discover who the hell he is. And that there's a kind of calling, a longing inside, a burning to know what you're capable of, what you can do, what you can accomplish, what the hell your life is even for, why you're here, and what you ultimately mean. Do you matter to the universe? And I think a part of this is a desire to be potent, a desire to have an impact on others, on life, to do what Steve Jobs said, which is to leave your dent on the universe. I think that inside of every single one of you watching this, there is that desire. It's a desire to have the willingness to face the unknown and sometimes seemingly unconquerable obstacles that show up in your life for the sake of seeing whether or not you can actually make it onto the other side. Now, for years, I tried on different masks. I tried on different roles to stress test who I was, who I could be, to stress test masculinity and what the hell that even meant. I worked construction, I did yoga, I punched guys in the face at bars. I sang opera, for real, I sang opera. I raced motorcycles through the streets of Edmonton, Alberta. I benched as much as I possibly could. I lifted heavy shit. I slept with as many women as I possibly could. I built a life and then I crashed it all down, bottoming out just to see if I could make it through that. My life in many ways, as many of my friends and people who really know me, seems to be a kind of inadvertent attempt to push the boundaries and the edges of masculinity, of what it means to be a man. And I remember thinking to myself in my 20s, Are there certain things that I can do and still be a man, still be a good man, be an effective man? Will I still be perceived as being masculine? Was I masculine if I wrote poetry? What about if I superglued 2-inch metal spikes to my motorcycle helmet and did wheelies down the highway while I ran from the cops? Did that make me more or less masculine? What about the women that I slept with? Would sleeping with more make me more masculine and more of a man? Would I be able to feel like I embodied more manhood? What about their level of beauty? Did them being more beautiful or less beautiful impact other men's perceptions of me as a man? Now, I'd be lying if I told you that I did all of those things for the sake of trying to feel like a real man or trying to feel masculine. I didn't do it because of those reasons. I was literally just lost and trying to figure out who the hell I was. But every step of the way, I wondered, Does this make me any more or less of a man? Is this what being a man is actually about? I remember that question ringing around in my head. What does it mean to even be a man? Am I doing it right? Is this what it's supposed to look like? Am I embodying it properly? And through all of this, there's a few core truths that I found that I wanted to share. One was that I knew I was a man. That part was never in question. I enjoy inhabiting this body as a man. I love being a man. I knew I was one. That part was clear. I knew I biologically was a male. Number 2, I was for a very long time very unsure as to whether or not I was a good man. In fact, for a long time, I believed that I certainly was not a good man, or Whether I was good at being a man. Instructions largely unclear, too long, didn't read. You know, classic man shit. I didn't read the manual. And number 3, I knew that I was getting older, but I didn't feel like any type of real depth or wisdom was coming to fruition in my life in any way, shape, or form. And it wasn't until 2 major events happened in my life that I both started to understand what it means to be a man, and I started to feel like I was gaining some proficiency, some capability of actually being a good one, actually being good at being a man. And I wanted to share those with you today because every day I interact with men who are lost. They're lonely. They're unsure of whether or not they're a good husband, a good father, a good boyfriend, whether or not they're effective, at contributing back to the world, whether or not their life has any meaning. And maybe you're one of those men, you're watching this and you're like, I have no idea if I'm a good man. I have no idea if I'm on the right path. The first thing that happened in my life that began to inform whether or not I was a good man or good at being a man and helped me start to feel like I was really one was that I hit rock bottom in my life. And I had to scrape and claw my way out of a psychological hole that almost convinced me to Ctrl+Alt+Delete myself. And it wasn't until a really, truly intense and brutal period of my life, this brutal period of my life that lasted for way longer than I wanted it to, that I began to understand the part of crossing the psycho-spiritual threshold from boyhood into adolescence, into the maturity, the maturation of being a man, is going through some kind of incredible hardship and allowing that to both shape you and test you in a way where you begin to let the old, false, naive, immature beliefs and behaviors about yourself and about life die away. Now, I have to admit here that that initiation, that rock bottom that I went through was largely self-induced. And I would say that it's largely self-induced because of the vacancy within the culture that I grew up in, within the family system. There were no men really walking me through the forward momentum that it takes to progress through from boyhood to adolescence into a mature adult life as a man. And that has always been the case. Mentorship has always been one of the demarcations that young boys and young adolescent men will have experienced. They will have had a guide to maturity. And in that vacuum, in the vacancy of having some type of mentorship, some type of guidance through the forward momentum of life so that you aren't just getting older, right? The years aren't just ticking by, but there's actually a depth that's accumulating. The roots of you as a man are deepening into the soil of your life and the world around you so that you are contributing back to the world. You know that you have some type of impact. When that is absent, what most men will do is exactly what I did. Which is you'll bottom out. You'll create a kind of what I've come to call pseudo-initiation. This pseudo-initiation of, can I psychologically, physically, financially, emotionally, relationally, spiritually make it through this dark night of the soul, this rock bottom moment, this cratering of my life? And that is what initiation really was about partly, always throughout every culture, throughout the course of human history for men, it was about you as an adolescent man going through something incredibly hard, incredibly challenging to reconcile with things like your own power, right? Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, has a great saying where, a great quote where he said, unless a man goes through a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power. Well, for me, my rock bottom was the experience of powerlessness. There was nothing left. I couldn't exert any more control. I couldn't manipulate. I couldn't lie my way out of it. My life had fallen apart. And I experienced real, real powerlessness. And in initiation, that's part of the confrontation, part of the experience that every man is meant to have. Every single human being, every single man specifically, is meant to go through an initiatory process where he is confronted with his own powerlessness, and he is meant to reconcile with that powerlessness. I cannot defeat this. This is bigger than me. And in that space, we understand sometimes the limits of our own power, the capacity of our own power, the responsibility. Yeah. Of our power, while simultaneously having our omnipotence, the naivete of adolescence that says, I can do anything. I am limitless. Nothing can stop me from doing absolutely anything, and I will never die. That gets checked. And that's part of the point of initiation. And so in the absence of a father, men in your life, life can bring you through an initiation, and that that initiation is actually a prerequisite, a requirement. And there are markers of that initiation. There are important pieces to that initiation. Another important piece of an initiation is that you are ushered through it by other men. And when I hit rock bottom, when I bottomed out in my life, a mentor emerged, a man in his early 70s, Emerged to support me, to take me under his wing. And I was fortunate enough to be guided on a real-life apprenticeship where he taught me, he educated me, he supported me in psychological and spiritual tools, principles, modalities. And in turn, I chopped wood, I carried water, I farmed asparagus, I helped him raise his Rottweilers. It sounds like a weird apprenticeship, but it was. It was amazing. And that I have experienced multiple times in my life. I've had 3 elders in my life that have been absolutely paramount to me becoming who I am today. And without that kind of guidance and nurturing and direction and challenge and confrontation from men who have gone before me, who actually have some level of wisdom that aren't just old in age, But are old in knowledge, that have a kind of wisdom that spans beyond just the numbers. We as men get lost. And the final thing about initiation that I learned was that my life is not just for me. It's not just about me. One of the main pieces of initiation, as I've studied it over the last decade, is really about your ability to return From the initiation, from that experience, and be more capable, more competent, more kind, more able-bodied for the community. So the initiation process that most of us as men are supposed to go to in order to really understand, I am a man now, is meant to bring us back into the village, back into our families, back into our friend circles. More able to be of service, to protect, to provide, to love, to care for others. It's really about the others. So, the second thing outside of that rock bottom that became an initiation that I didn't know was going to happen was that I had a son. And, it's hard to describe what that did To me and for me in my life, but I'm going to try. His arrival signaled a kind of sudden and rapid release of all the dormant fears, strengths, possibilities, insecurities, and pressures that lay dormant in my unconscious, all vomited up into my conscious mind for me to deal with, kind of like a drunk at the end of a long night of of pretending that he hasn't had too much to drink. The hidden rage and the grief from my childhood, from my boyhood, that I had longed for a more connected life, and the intense expectations of needing to be perfect for my son were all staring me down every single moment of every single day. And what I became present to was a kind of love. A love that was so intense that without exaggeration, it was largely unbearable. I didn't know how to contain that kind of love. It shook me. It still does right now in this moment. It was immense. It was wild. You know, the sheer weight of responsibility that I suddenly faced to care for something that I loved so deeply just couldn't be ignored any longer. And I was tasked, I knew I was tasked with the seemingly almost incomprehensible action of raising a boy and acting as a guide into manhood. I knew that my role was to act as that guide that the other elders had been for me. And I realized that my responsibility in life was to act as that guide, not only for my son, but for other men. And I thought to myself, fuck, who was I to take this job? Who was I to do this job? Me, a former lunatic, a former motorcycle racing through the streets of Alberta maniac. I knew what I had to go through as a boy and as a young man to discover who I was and make it through the brutal confusion. of adolescence and adulthood, into adulthood. The pain I had to experience, the confusion I went through, the depth of despair and lostness. And then when I looked out at the world and saw what you probably see, which is largely a shit show, I thought to myself, how am I supposed to do this? The chaos, the confusion, the violent and angry men, the lost men, the men who are checked out, the men who are completely disconnected, the men who are scared, Men who are pretending to have it all together while they're complete disaster behind the scenes. The men who are reeling from decline, reeling in and in decline from the decades of emotional repression, disconnection, loneliness, and sometimes the overconsumption of power. And I looked out and also saw the women. The women who were hurt, the women who despised men, the women who were angry with them, the women who Want more, but it's never enough. The women who want to control men, who want to tame them, and who want to neuter them. How could I possibly raise a boy into a man inside of a culture who seems to hate men and who seems to be riddled with men who are so fucking lost? How could I possibly raise a boy in that environment? And it was in that moment that the pressure felt like it was solely on me. And one of the things that I found that emerged out of this was that I remembered and realized that the task of initiation, the task of raising boys, is never the father's alone. It's never the father's alone. And in some ways, that liberated me in a way that I didn't know that I needed, because I was able— to really forgive, really let go, really resolve with my own father, with my own stepfather, and release them from the bonds of the final vestiges of anger, frustration, bitterness, discontent that I had carried with them. And I began to slowly remember that there were solid men in my life that I do trust, who are going to be and going to have an influence on my boy. On my son, men that I will send my boy camping with, that we will go camping together and they'll teach him how to light fires and build lean-tos. Men who will teach him things that I don't know how to do about electricity, not electricity, but becoming an electrician and wiring things up in the house and drywalling things around the— around the home, men who are able to help him figure out how to track animals, purpose, meaning, wisdom, real depth of experience in life. And it's in there that I really, having a son, remembered part of being a man and the part of being a man that I had lost and missed out on for so long. which is part of being a man is being willing to trust other men. It's the brotherhood, the, the kindred spirit that we have in some ways forsaken. We've let go of for many reasons, right? The rise of the Marlboro Man and being the lone wolf and having to do it all yourself, all this nonsense. But I remembered in that state that part of manhood Is supporting others in the passage through the hardship of their life, specifically other men, other boys, being able to act as a guide when we see the opportunity of somebody that's going through something that we went through to say, I've been there. I can help you navigate this course. And much like Odysseus, who had many gods and many mentors and many support systems along the way that shifted his compass and helped him sail home. All young boys and all men need guides. And I really fundamentally believe that part of the future of men is mentorship. It's a return to the guide-based system that we have always relied on as men to transfer The knowledge and the wisdom of masculinity, of manhood, of what it means to not just be a good man, but what it means to be good at being a man. And some of you are going to have different versions of that. Some of you are going to want to teach survival skills. Others are going to want to teach spiritual lessons and teachings. Other of you are going to be able to support men through Financial matters, relationship matters, matters of the heart, matters of the soul, matters of the spirit, matters of the body and the mind and the health, all of it. But regardless, part of manhood, as I've learned it, is to pass on the mentorship and the guidance to those who are parched in from not being able to drink from the fountain of masculinity. Right. Not being able to encounter other men who are willing to say, I've been there, I've done that, I know where you need to go. Let me walk beside you shoulder to shoulder as you go through this. You have to do it, but I will be there for you when you return, when you need support, when you have nowhere else to turn to. I'll be there. And that type of mentorship, I've realized, has become both a deep quality of meaning in my life, but also a purpose, a function of my existence and for my existence, much like it has been for literally every other man in the course of human history. Any other man who hasn't supported other men, whether it be their son, their friends' sons, family, cousins, nephews, their friends, their colleagues, their coworkers, those men are missing out, in my opinion, on part of what it actually means to be a man, to feel like a man, because part of masculinity is modeled. Part of masculinity is transmitted. And so if you are not an active part of that modeling, you feel as if you are missing a part of manhood and masculinity. It wasn't until I started to really get my shit together and feel like I was a functional, healthy, solid, secure role model for other men, or at least for my younger self. The man I've become today, my 20-year-old self, dramatically needed in his life. He can't even comprehend how disciplined, successful, loving, kind, and together I've become. And I'm not saying that to brag. I'm saying that because I want you to also know it's possible that becoming a man that you respect and being able to model certain principles, certain values, certain disciplines, For your younger self will have a ripple effect on the men around you and the boys that you encounter that you cannot quantify rationally and logically. And then being able to transmit that, being able to support and guide others that are lost, that are in need of some type of modeling, and then being able to do this one thing that I struggled with for years, to be the student of masculinity, to be the student of manhood, to sit at the feet of an elder, of someone that has gone before you, of somebody that has accrued and developed something that you can experientially feel. That's not about their bank account. It's not about how much money they have or how many Bugattis they've collected or whatever other materialistic marker our society and modernity has convinced us to look for in men in order to judge them as valuable, but something that you internally can experientially feel to sit with those men. And to be the student and to be humble enough as a man to say, this man has something, has become someone that I want to walk towards within myself. And that is part for me of what it has meant to become a man, that I was willing to be humble enough in my arrogance and my brashness and my intensity as a young man that life thankfully humbled me enough that I could say, actually, maybe I do need some guidance. Actually, maybe I do need some help. And to get pointed in a direction by a man who had gone through that tempest before, who had walked through that storm before, who had been in the space of complete collapse, whether it was a midlife crisis, whether it was a divorce, whether it was the ruins of a financial disaster, whatever it is, but to have to sit with a man who has allowed himself to be changed and altered by the challenges and the confrontations of his life and come out the other side just a little bit more wise, just a little bit more deeper inside of himself, right? I believe, to close us all off, that our mission as men is to grow deeper into who we are. It's to go deeper into who we are. The masculine nature is to go out and build and create in the world and leave our marks so readily available and apparent on the world that other people cannot deny that we existed. But for me, it is to grow so deeply into ourselves that we fundamentally know that we mattered, to fundamentally know— That we matter. That we had an effect on people, that we did influence them in a positive direction, and to be able to recognize that for ourselves. That is an inherent peace that so many men are craving, lacking, and in need of. So let me know what your thoughts are in the comments. I would love to hear what are some of the pieces that have helped you to really feel like a mature man. What are the pieces that have helped you and guided you? Who are the men that have supported you in this endeavor? What are the moments where you really started to feel like you were getting a hold on being a good man and being good at being a man? As always, don't forget to man it forward. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And until next time, Connor Beaton signing off.