I
played a textbook masculine role to the hilt the first half of life. I graduated a chemical engineer from what was then an all male college, followed by serving in the military during, but not in, the Viet Nam war. Afterward, I developed
a fiercely competitive attitude over a twenty-five year career, climbing a corporate
ladder toward more power and more money, in an organization then managed
only by men. During my company years in sales and marketing,
I transferred from one city to another ten times. I related to Paul Simon
singing in the '60s he was a rock, an island.
I met my Quebecoise wife
Mance in Hawaii, and she loves travel, so we've kept going since I retired. During my workaholic career, I inherently knew
she was more important than my job but I didn't act that way immediately after
we married. I was anxious to make that right after I left my job but my competitive
stance at work had not produced much in the way of take-home knowledge about relating to others.
I barely got my own research going when our son Tristan and daughter Katherine left home for college. Not feeling competent to answer my son's question just before his twenty-first birthday-- "So Dad, what makes a man?" -- fueled my desire to learn more about life, and coincided with my midlife transition.
The second half of my
life has focused on relating to others and finding a better balance for myself,
but it didn't come easily or quickly. The toughest lesson may have been
learning to talk about myself. Before, I said nothing, because anything might have
given a competitor an opening in a corporate employee force-ranking meeting. After
fifteen years into my second half of life, and thirty-seven years of marriage
with Mance, I'm still learning.
I decided to answer my son with a book; this book about myself. Authors are supposed to be experts on the subject about which they write, and I can say I know more about me than anyone else. But the more I explore myself, the more I find life is so multi-dimensional and so much more than just work, I don't expect I will ever reach expert status. One clear conclusion: the more I understand about how and why I have made my choices in my life, the more I know I cannot tell you how to live your life.
If you are like me in
one respect, it may be that we are not men of many words. I don't often hear that
said about women. But during my midlife, beginning when I wrote letters to my
father's mail list while companioning him through Alzheimer's disease, I found
that telling stories of my life to people close to me--my ups and downs, mistakes,
wrong choices, and disappointments--was not met with ridicule or teasing or
"why didn't you just..." that I had expected having been doing guy
things earlier. My most astonishing discovery, being a trained male engineer
and problem solver, was that women who talk about their lives are not expecting
me to solve their problem. If I just
listen, they tell me they feel heard, all the while I bite my tongue to hold
down what keeps popping into my head: "Well, the solution to that situation is..."
My intent, my desire
in putting my response to Tristan in print and Ebook, is to prompt conversations among other people about
subjects in men's lives that don't normally come up. I want my book to contribute to the conversation about the male identity that includes our work, relationships, sexuality, gender, emotions and spirituality. Conversations among men, women, families, as well as
with professionals who support men: trainers, spiritual
directors, therapists and men's small groups.
What does make a man?
Download the electonic version from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Apple's iBookstore
Order the paperback version by clicking the Buy the Book tab at the top of the page
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