I have had a long time notion about knowing whether and when we are making the right decisions about the course of direction in our lives as we negotiate the pathways we are on, including the twists and turns and forks in that road. It has been my contention that we cannot know the answer to that until we have the luxury of looking back on our lives. It is then, with perspective we can look back and make sense of our lives. How the decisions we made changed our course and direction leading us to choices we’ve made, and how other choices could have led us to other lives we could or would have lived.
We have all been
born into the circumstances of our lives, such as the time and place
of our birth, obstacles, inured benefits, parents, siblings, etc.
The phrase “an accident of birth”, something we may or may not be
able to control. I do however believe that we as individuals bring
something of ‘us/our self’ to the world in which we are born as
in predispositions, personality expressions, proclivities for one
thing or another. And, we somehow sit in judgment about that self in
experiencing our lives and how we negotiate them in the circumstances
we are born into.
And so for myself, I
come back to a childhood thought that reoccurred as a theme
throughout the course of my life, where I am judge and jury. That
thought is essentially: What kind of man did I want to become?
I grew up in the 1950’s in post WWII America, and am considered ‘a
baby boomer’. One of the things many of us had was called ‘a baby
book’, which was filled with pictures and comments about our
development, relatives and ourselves, starting with our height and
weight, then baby’s first steps, first words, etc. These books
were fuller in documentation with the first born, and typically began
to decline with the second and subsequent births of siblings. I was
second born, with two coming after me. I saw that although I was the
first son, I was in a line of succession of others to follow, and
this informed me as a child that I would have a brief spotlight on my
early infancy before becoming swept aside for the next in line. And,
seeing how this flowed, it did not affect me as it did my older
sibling who confessed to me once that as a result of therapy in her
40’s that she never forgave me for being born, which explained her
behavior to me both in childhood and adulthood. The fact is that some
kids never grow up. They take their resentments along with them as
they go through life no matter the indignities they suffer in
childhood. One thing I decided was what kind of sibling I wanted to
become and this decision affected my relationship with my siblings of
a much closer and loving bond going forward and continuing throughout
adulthood; whereas the older sibling did not make this connection
with the younger sibling. This is an example early on of deciding
what kind of ‘man’ I wanted to become.
Getting back to the
baby book, there were drawings of parents and their outfits and
images projected in a child’s mind, giving me an idea of what that
might look like. I can still recall the image of the father dressed
in a suit with a pipe in his mouth reading the newspaper while
sitting in a large chair. There were other images growing up in
movies, like Cary Grant; impeccably dressed, handsome, witty, funny,
both a ladies man and a man’s man, so to speak, and magazine images
I culled from. I also observed my father and his mannerisms as well
as his character as I perceived it, morphing over time as I grew up.
I tried on some of these appearances, personalities, and behaviors. I
decided how I might look and dress when I became an adult.
Ah, but the times
changed with the 1960’s and 1970’s and so did the county with the
emerging young adults throwing off the previous ‘shackles of
convention’ of those 1950’s sensibilities and male and female
roles, including long imbedded sexism in our culture regarding
behaviors and expectations with one of those, being the reemergence
of Feminism, equal rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment, with this
social development shaping my thinking and behavior going forward as
a man. And, let me take this moment to reaffirm that sex and gender
(roles and role playing) are two different things.
In embracing
feminism for me meant among other inward manifestations, becoming a
whole person by embracing the characterizations and attribution’s
of maleness and femaleness within myself, and learning to integrate
the yin and yang within. Some of these behaviors or shall I say
latitudes or spectrums including allowing myself to be vulnerable
emotionally, showing tenderness and affection to myself, my partner,
and the significant other males in my life; processing feelings and
qualities of what it is to be human, including empathy and compassion
not only for others but for myself, allowing me to become authentic
and ‘real’, and eventually becoming a whole person through this
process of integration, and taking that to subsequent relationships
and introducing that into my own family.
These lessons
translated to an enhanced self-awareness observing my behaviors and
actions along the way and making decisions about how I commit to a
long term partnership in marriage, and how I would parent and
endeavor to bring the best of these behaviors and lessons to my
marriage and my children, and what behaviors I would model in that
context, playing it forward generationally, consciously rather than
unconsciously by keeping my word to myself and my family and by
rising to the occasion. And looking back I can say that I did in fact
keep those promises and commitments, testing my character along the
way especially when coming to various forks in the road on the path
to becoming true to myself and my ideals. Regardless, the proof is in
the pudding of the outcomes we make through our actions, deliberate
or undeliberate.
Planning for the
future, living up to our own ideals and promises to ourselves, and
experiencing the challenges of the present tense all along the way,
reaffirming and defining just who we are and what we have become.
This included for me as a marker or touch stone, emulating the best
of my father and his father, and role modeling that for my son and
daughter as a parent and as a person in managing my own life and how
they assess my success as a parent and an adult role model for better
or for worse.
I am pleased to say that I have grown up to become the kind of man I aspired to be, and I know that you can too, should you consciously choose to.
Editors Note: This
article is part of a series on what makes a man, a “good man” and is a
matter of perspective from the writer. Its all their perspective on
how they got to their thought process on what a good man is, or what a
good man looks like. To read the rest of the series, please click here.