Please see The Return of the Long Lost Son in connection to the content of this article.

I go to the markets on weekend mornings. There is usually music playing, often a live musician. It’s legitimately awesome, shopping in such an environment. Supermarkets are awful by comparison, a sensory nightmare. But that is an aside to the point of this.

The musician performed a song that got stuck in my head, as sometimes songs do, like an itch that needs to be scratched. I had to go home and listen to it on repeat a few times. While I was listening to it, I had a thought cascade around men and masculinity and bravery.

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I believe a deficit of bravery in men is a very real problem, a primary problem if not the primary problem. This deficit represents a capacity that has been lost rather than something that’s no longer there at all.

Think about the things men are taught are important, under the general ideas of ‘masculinity’ in the modern western world at least. Reputation, image, money, appearing powerful and in charge, appearing stoic, appearing fearsome, dominating.

No room for humanness. All fixated on how one appears rather than how one actually is.

Appearing to whom, one might ask? It’s not a real person, but it is a figure. It sits inside the mind of every man, and it judges and weighs the man against these measures. And that right there is the patriarchal version of masculinity in action. The ‘manosphere’ is the most corrupted version of this, perverted and wholly destructive.

It gets seeded and nurtured within your own mind, and unless you see it, and confront it, you become and remain its servant.

I hope you notice the trick there. Like any addiction, there is the illusion of control, while being utterly controlled.

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Then there is bravery. Courage. Fearlessness; a word in itself has no meaning unless there is something to fear. Bravery does not exist without the presence of fear which is overcome.

Reflect on an image of a man and a woman, husband and wife. The husband is acting out according to the figure in his head. He has lashed out at and is threatening his child. The woman, mother, places herself bodily between the man and the child. The man has hurt the woman before too, yet she stands in defiance.

Up until this moment she may have been shackled by a figure in her own head, with stories of what it means to be a wife, the roles of men and women in society and in the household. A figure that dictated what she should and should not do. Even what was possible.

In this moment the love she has for the child overrides all fear of the man, and the repercussions threatened by her mind figure. She places herself bodily between her child and harm, risking herself, allowing the child to flee to safety. He rages and flails but does not strike her, and she calls the police.

Never again will she or her child be harmed by this man. The authority of the mind figure has crumbled.

That is bravery. Loving so fiercely, in preservation of life itself, that all fear and doubt is overcome. What greater, more ferocious love can there be, except between someone and that which they would give their life to keep safe?

Return again to what men are taught to love and value. Image. Reputation. Money, or the appearance of it. Power, or the appearance of it. They are taught that the things worth fighting and dying for are ‘king and country’, or some such. Cold, lifeless concepts. Promised rewards of belonging and material recompense perhaps.

Compared to the warmth of the genuine affection of a woman, awe at the miracle of creating new life, and the sacred responsibility, and honour, of loving and protecting both.

The man in the image above no doubt thought he appeared strong. He harmed those more physically vulnerable than himself to bolster this sense of himself.

He sacrificed the real for an image, to appease a mind figure, consuming and destroying what true strength would treasure and protect. That is cowardice, not bravery, and it showed as such in the face of her true heroism.

Those things worth being brave for, receiving genuine love, the preservation of life, have been firmly shut out of the mind figure’s version of masculinity. What, then, is there to be brave for, when one has been taught to revile the very things that would inspire true bravery?

As with any addiction, the further you walk down a corrupted path, the harder it is to turn back. The guards of the way back that you leave in your wake are shame, self-loathing, and even horror. These become the figure’s henchmen.

Any man in servitude to their own mind figure also becomes the henchman of every mind figure terrorising every man.

The fear that this figure inspires is understandably atrocious, and its effects are atrocious. Yet any man himself is the only one who can ever overcome it. Bravery in this case means finding something stronger than that fear to overcome the tyrant.

Therein lies the key to the loss of bravery, and the bind that keeps them there. Men have been taught to prize the meaningless and hate the meaningful. Which of itself will bring suffering, and then also turning back will bring suffering. The first is a passive path of endless suffering and torment, the other is an active path of suffering to achieve freedom from torment. Passive is always easier, but the cost never ends.

The question is, what level of suffering is going to be enough before a man realises and accepts that they have been deceived?

The man must face that figure in spite of fear, really look at it, and judge it right back.

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The song in question, by the way, was Annie’s Song by John Denver. It was written for his wife at the time, and did reflect an overwhelming feeling of love. That love sadly did not last.

The lyrics of that song are a pretty big cheque to write but it is undoubtable a true sentiment. The thing is, singing a song is easy. Saying some pretty words is easy. Living that truth is something else. Embodiment of real love is a courageous, committed practice. It requires devotion.

Any lingering presence of a corruptive mind figure will destroy it.

A job, or a paycheque, or an image, or an empty relationship, will not fill a man up, no matter what our society has said. Never has there been a time when the lies of the status quo are laid so bare.

Even if a man is numbed through substance or addictive behaviour to all true feeling, the emptiness deep within will still be there, unconsciously sensed if not consciously felt. Living with that emptiness corrodes the mind. Humans are not built for meaningless existence.

This destruction has held sway for many generations. Now the energy of that woman from the image depicted above is standing her ground as the risen feminine. Showing up in myriad ways, through many individuals, all over the earth.

Women have started remembering and doing what they were always created to do. Defy those who dress up weakness as strength, who claim leadership but do not bear the integrity of a leader. Discern. Dismiss those mired in unworthiness. Feminine leadership that shapes humanity.

Women are shaking off the shackles of imaginary figures; remembering how to embody the fierce feminine spirit, remembering what has actual value, and remembering their own worth in the grand tapestry of this reality.

Now men need to remember theirs. Performance no longer holds weight, only truth and embodiment. Only bravery in being.

The old masculinity cannot stand before her. He can rage and bluster, but she stands aligned with the energy of life itself. If he maintains his alignment with the energy of consumption and destruction, he will fall.

Real life is not empty. If life feels empty it is because it is not life but mere existence. An empty life is all that is available in the modern traditional way of existing. Under the corrupted concept of masculinity, it is what men are taught to aspire to, and taught that they are allowed or worthy of. How appallingly cruel. And cruelty begets cruelty, unless one resolutely stands defiant and says ‘no, never again’.

Challenge the concept, change the assessment. That is where the real power lies for men.

It is time to choose. Whether to align with the energy of life and love, or align with the energy of consumption, destruction, and annihilation. No more playing both sides.

Remain in enslavement, or face the Devourer within and claim sovereignty over your psyche and your life.

Choose your suffering.

Photo by school driver on Unsplash

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