Fellas!
Have you ever burnt out from pushing, striving and over doing it for too long?
I pretty much made a career out of it, ended up in hospital from it and needed to overhaul my life because of it.
Here’s a bit about why we do it…
For so long I suffered from the common male obsession of overdoing. Trying to fix instead of listen. Achieve instead of receive. Compete instead of celebrate. Do instead of be. The list goes on… from my personal life to my professional pursuits, I was plagued by a dark drive of needing to do more, be more and have more. And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve worked with countless men who share a similar version of the same story.
It so common that I started asking why. I started wondering why is it that men often can’t satiate their thirst for more. I looked back and found that throughout history often a boy would be sent off to attempt a seemingly impossible task, a rite of passage if you will, where he would return triumphant and a new man.
Akin to this, the modern man is constantly setting out to achieve, create and conquer the day. He does it day in and day out. Take the corporate man for example, he is often so obsessed with the hunt of the next big contract, overcome by the adrenaline of closing the deal that he loses sight of humanity and leaves environmental peril in his wake. We do this time and time again.
But why?
Why are we unable to stop? Why do we need to continue pursuing the next kill? When the young boy came back from killing a lion, a wolf or overcoming some other dangerous experience, his job was done. But why? Why didn’t he go and kill 10 lions? 20 wolves? Why didn’t he make a life living on the edge of death?
As I’ve studied initiation and rites of passage, both for myself, my clients and throughout history, there are two critical pieces missing from the social pie of the modern mans experience. Community and acknowledgment.
When the boy returned, he was celebrated, acknowledged and congratulated. The social tapestry added a new colour to his thread to signify and note his journey. He had changed, and the community changed with him. The challenge had been set by the community, meaning the challenge wouldn’t do harm to the community.
We don’t have that for the modern man. Our sense of community is nill. We often live in isolation from the effects of our actions on the wider community.
On top of this, we have a trend of tall poppy syndrome where we shoot a man’s successes down for no good reason. We have one-up-manship where we embellish the truth to stay relevant and again bring a brother down. We don’t have the community and network that acknowledges, congratulates, respects and adapts to men as they grow… especially not in a healthy way.
The modern challenges are so disconnected from community that most men never receive the acknowledgement they’re striving for in the first place. The initiation never ends because it was never attuned to the man, nor the community, to begin with.
The constant thirst and search is a reflection of a lack of masculine direction and our need for initiation and connection to something bigger than ourselves.
Thank you for reading and hit me with you thoughts on it all 🤪🤙🏼🙏🏼
