I get a lot of thinking done when I’m mowing the yard.
It’s rather bizarre, but I can’t complain. There is a certain humility that descends on a man when he realizes that he’s at his most introspective when covered in dirt and grass trimmings.
Today marks the beginning a of a new project. Where will it go? I’m quite unsure. To be honest, this journey begins without the end in mind.
It is the definition of an exploratory mission. Let’s go, shall we?
I see an incipient movement of manhood today. A movement where “man” as he is is groping for a definition for himself, amidst shifting definitive criteria. In a nutshell, we’re trying to find ourselves after almost four decades in the wilderness.
Who is “man?” What does he look like? How does he smell? What does he wear? How does he talk? Do real men all have huge Phil Robertson beards? Is it more than that?
If you ask many sections of modernity, their response will be a quick smirk, perhaps a joke about man’s ineptitudes, emasculating man once again from his essence and nature back to the 1980’s Al Bundy model with whom we’ve all grown accustomed. The slobbish dolt more interested in watching the game than winning it.
Men, we’ve allowed ourselves to be non-essential. We have abdicated our seats. We have allowed the very identity of a man to become disposable.
Disposable: [dih-spoh-zuh-buh l]adjective: designed for or capable of being thrown away after being used or used up:
How easy it is to go disposable. Use it, abuse it, throw it away. Buy it cheap, over and over again. Rinse, repeat, trash. I believe this mentality speaks to our souls, and permeates the way we view ourselves and those around us. Our neighbors have become non-essential. Our legacies, disposable.
It’s our own faults too, collectively. It takes training and education to become a man, and from the absence of many modern fathers to the downright evil displayed by the worst of our gender we find ourselves lost.
The true man in America is a diaspora, scattered to the four corners.
I will very clearly and upfront say, that I am not an expert. I’m raising two young men as I type this, and I guess I’m doing this only because I wish for them to have the foundation that I only absorbed through osmosis during my formative years. I am making the choice to be intentional and purposeful about the cultivation of the manhood of the generation following this one. I have, and will continue to, make mistakes.
It is however my fundamental belief that man is out there, and we must find ourselves together for that next generation’s sake. It is my fundamental belief that we learn through how we live, and how we do things day to day. That is, our spirits are changed by the activities of our minds. It is my fundamental belief that man is there, in the non-disposable.
It is my goal that this site become part journal, and part manifesto. A manifesto for the more permanent… the non-disposable lifestyle that I’m aspiring to live. This is not a site just for men, rather, it is a movement that I hope will help woman to understand how they are an integral, irreplaceable part of man’s identity and purpose.
It was my original idea to start all of this as a book. I decided to blog it because I’m wanting your feedback. As we go through this journey together, I want to know where I’m off-base. This is a process through which I’m trying to better myself and maybe serve a few along the way.
I hope you’ll join me.
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