Free the man, free the world
You’re five weeks into your project.
Not just any project… THE project.
The one you know is going to break it all wide open.
This project means everything to you. And yet, aside from some “web research,” you’ve done NOTHING to move it forward.
You stare at the grizzled bloodshot face in the mirror and ask yourself “what the fuck is wrong with me? Why can’t I just EXECUTE?”
If you find yourself demoralized at your inability to “just do it,” first and foremost, stop berating yourself.
I played a lot of video games when I was a kid.
My favorite games were the ones that had “bosses” you had to kill at the end of each level.
Defeating these bosses was fairly straightforward: you simply observed their fight pattern, then maneuvered within them.
Once you cracked the code and figured out their fight pattern, taking these bosses out was a simple, routine process.
…
Some people want your soul. Some people will happily suck you dry.
But this is the minority.
Most people participate in the enslavement of men completely unaware, cogs in an emasculation machine they don’t even realize exits.
One day, a man decided to build a trail.
He had hiked the trails of others all his life.
Now, it was his turn.
He knew exactly the place: a yet-unmarked climb to a waterfall.
He had been there many times, finding his way by landmark and deer trail.
Now, he would share it with others by making a trail.
The first day, he cleared brush and stones in the hot sun until his body ached.
He went to bed exhausted but happy: he was building a trail.
The next day, he ate his eggs in a rush, eager to hike the first leg of his new trail.
After a recent email, a reader wrote back:
“We’ve been having a very challenging time recently with our daughters – to the point where we have both acknowledged that if we had the ability to go back in time and change decisions we wouldn’t want to be parents. It’s a biggy I know, and we still love them dearly, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts in a future email on how to approach this situation.”
In other words, what do you do when the challenges of fatherhood become so crushing and so sustained that you feel your heart going dark to your children?
Someday, you will arrive.
The thing you’ve fought for, slaved for, torn off limbs for… you’ll finally get it.
Then? Then the ecstasy will fucking wash all over you.
That’s how it works, right?
It’s the myth of fell-swoop happiness.
The lie that has you back-loading your life to the point of collapse… pinning it all on this desperate hope that as long you put your time horizons far enough out, somehow, someday, all the shit will finally come together.
THEN you’ll feel alive again.
THEN you’ll wake up without that fear in your belly.
Who has time for vacation?
No one but losers and slackers! You’ll rest once you’ve “made it,” right?
That’s still the unspoken creed.
You COULD take some time off… but what would your boss think? Your employees? Your business partner?
Besides… family vacations are usually the clusteriest of cluster fucks anyways, a constant juggling of everyone’s needs and wants and vacation fantasy fulfillments. All but your own, that is.
YES, taking vacation is like carving off a chunk of your own flesh: it’s painful and unnecessary and oozes for days.
Kids.
They plug the toilet.
They fart at the table.
They barf on the carpet.
They shit on the couch.
They run around shrieking ’till your ears bleed.
They roll their eyes, stamp their feet.
They beg, lobby, and petition endlessly.
So you do what any reasonable dad would do: you REIN THAT SHIT IN.
You clamp down. You lay down the law. You criticize, command, and control.
I get it.
And I’ve been there.
But the fact remains:
Your kids were not put in your care to make your life easier.
Your desire for peace and quiet is YOUR problem, not theirs.
They said fatherhood would be the pinnacle.
They said the JOYS of fatherhood would outweigh its AGONIES.
They said that fatherhood would give more than it took.
LIES.
Ship-wrecking, life-destroying lies.
Yes, fatherhood is the ultimate and highest masculine experience.
But fatherhood itself does NOT supply the resources required to SURVIVE–let alone thrive–within it.
That’s why the “good dads” are the most miserable:
You can see it in their eyes: beneath the dutiful smiles you see the caged eyes of an animal.
Photo by nalejandro
You try so damn hard to make everyone happy:
Wife, kids, boss, partners, parents, siblings, friends, clients, customers, investors…
You’ve got stakeholders out the wazoo. You are SURROUNDED by people who have a vested interest in your time, money, blood.
There are the hours they want from you, and the hours you have. They don’t add up.
You may loath flakes.
You may have sworn to yourself you’d never be *that guy*… the one who never calls back, who doesn’t check his email, who is not “dependable.”
Author Malcolm Gladwell famously argued that success is more or less a function of putting in your 10,000 hours.
In other words, “practice makes perfect.”
If you aspire to master the cello, ping pong, or brain surgery, by all means: chip away at those 10,000 hours.
But if you want to build a business, start a movement, or create the future, “hours logged” is the wrong unit of measure.
When you’re creating in the dark, your ultimate success depends not on hours logged, but DECISIONS MADE.
