Generational Man

DAY 2:

Much of what I have learned or haven’t learned about being a man has been passed down generationally, as is what we’ve come to expect. How else would we learn about what it means to become a man?

Interestingly this opens up further questions about how we learn in general. Are we always being set up to become a product of our upbringing and environment? Or is there scope to change direction and create a brand new version of ourselves and subsequently and for the purpose of this post, of man? These are loaded questions and not easily explored in short but if I can reflect on my own experiences of what I felt man was at the age of 30 (just as I was about to become a dad for the first time) and again now in my 50’s….It has changed quite a bit.

I always thought of myself as an okay guy, I’m an artist so I do a lot of reflecting and because of this I felt I had a healthy understanding of myself and a willingness to learn from others. Although this wasn’t a false perception of myself I soon realised that it was still a masked version and one that was protecting me from some hidden truths. Some of these obscured me from my inner anger, frustrations and emotional limitations and this wasn’t easy to learn about but I was willing and once I’d made the decision to find out about myself there was no going back. So, for the past 20 years or so I have been actively uncovering borrowed interpretations of what I thought it was to be a man and then find ways to create a new version for myself that actually represented a picture of the man I wanted to become.

We still live in a world that actively rolls out Victorian versions of man. These are disguised and hidden within the mechanics of our social and working infrastructures. There is a constant barrage of subliminal context referring to old and borrowed thinking of what it means to be a man. As a parent and father, I know that my everyday version of man can waiver and present inconsistencies to my children based on how I’m feeling or what kind of day I’ve had. Which is why it is so important to ask questions. Like why am I feeling frustrated, vulnerable or less than the person standing next to me? Reflection is essential to learning about ourselves and others.

There are many reasons I continue to work on myself as a man and the biggest one for me is so that I can reduce the baggage that I pass onto my own kids and show them a version of man that I’m proud of with points of reference that are clear and progressive.

The work continues and so should our conversations around mens mental health.