If you ask one million men that question, more likely than not you will get one million different answers. Nothing wrong with that.
When I was a young bod, which does seem like a million years ago, I had no clear idea at all about what it meant to be a man. I grew up without any positive male role models in my life – so when I woke up each morning I never thought that well, here am I as a man waking up to the promise of a new day, I always thought that here I am as a human being, who happens to be a male, waking up to the promise of a new day.
Back then, the societal projection of what a man was supposed to be smacked of total irrelevance to me. The ‘Marlbro’ man, man as stoic unemotional protector, man as provider, man as strong and resolute, man as natural leader, man as a ‘go for it’ being, man as head of family – all of that concocted dross struck me as an advertising or marketing exercise gone horribly wrong.
Horribly wrong in the sense that a campaign of that sort belonged more to the Victorian era rather than the late 1970s. When I looked around me, back then, there appeared to be quite a few independent men Kombi-ing about who did not buy into such shallow societal views of what it meant to be a man. Apart from noticing that fact I confess to not having given the issue much further thought.
But as the years churned by I suppose, in the back of the brain somewhere, such issues bounce around and seek some sort of resolution.
So here we are in 2020. What does it mean to be a man?
Not being an academic type who wishes to publish a treatise on the matter, and not being an argy-bargy I want you all to agree with me and I have to be right and your opinion is wrong type, I’ve arrived at an answer that simply suits me.
In my opinion to be a man in this era means being a loving, compassionate, and respectful human being. To my way of thinking everything else flows from that base.
Well and good, that’s my opinion.
But what do you think? What do you think being a man means?
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