What’s a man now, what’s a man mean?
In 1982, the clean dulcit tones of Joe Jackson haunted with these questions…
What’s a man now? What’s a man mean?
Is he rough or is he rugged? Is he cultural and clean?
In 2025, to quote Joe again,
Now it’s all changed, it’s got to change more
‘Cause we think it’s getting better but nobody’s really sure
What we can be sure about is that things have changed, it’s not getting better and while we may know more, there’s a lot we don’t. What do we do?
Back to you Joe – “And so it goes, go ’round again. But now and then we wonder who the real men are.”
What is a real man? Maybe we need to be in the Unknowing?
I honestly don’t know what a real man is. I have a sense of it. It lives patiently alongside the urgent and confected noise and angst of the projected world that we live in. It’s carried in hearts all over and is seen in beauty of all forms. Now I think about it, the reason I don’t know is because I reckon it has something to do with actually not knowing what it is. This not knowing requires a capacity to live without answers and to be open to the mystery of life. The clincher though is to do this without closing down; without becoming bitter, angry, resentful, scorned, vengeful. To be open – open hearted, open to forgiveness, open to adventure, open to lose (gracefully), open to grace, to listen. To risk. To risk being ridiculed. To risk forgiving. To risk living. To risk silence. To risk asking. To risk something new. To know what you don’t want to be as a man and to not do that thing. To actually create it, to live into it, each day. To live with the essence of just who you are – no accomplishments, no toys. Just you – the essence of you.
Maybe a Real Man is about an Inner rebellion?
The list would go on. Because to live in this way is to live generatively, without needing to be in control. Indeed, an act of rebellion would be to find space to pause, to listen to your heart and dare to follow. In such a space, you are a chance at least of lowering the volume of the world. The more I think about it, living in this way, in a noisy and angst ridden world is hard. It requires a steady stamina and a constant return to courage. Maybe this hints at the qualities of what it is to be a real man?
Beyond the call for these inner capacities, we also need to wake up and be more intentional about the life we want to live and the communities we want to create. Our lives and our communities will only change when we decide to move away from what we are doing towards a more conscious life.Living with intention and non-violence
More specifically, we need to recognise the prominence of violence in all of its forms. To see it within ourselves, each other and the patterns we live by. And then, to take up the courage to live and create lives of non-violence. And this starts with me.
I hold space for men, groups of men, their loved ones and the communities they are a part of. I hold space for them to break down, to name and face what seems insurmountable and to come home to the essence of who they are so that they can discover a way of giving that back to the world.
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… this is good. It is getting a conversation going.
thanks Ian (aka Ophelia)