If Men could Talk

If men could talk

There is an old saying that goes like this, “At twenty we worry what others think about us; at forty we don't care what others think about us and at sixty we discover there wasn't anyone thinking about us in the first place.” Well this past week I turned 66 years young. I received a phone call from my mother (along with a birthday card), my one younger brother and from two of my four children. My wife wished me a happy birthday and that concluded my birthday celebration. I've never had a surprise birthday party given in my honor and probably never will. Now I don't want anyone to assume that I'm being sarcastic, I'm not. Most men I know really don't want the attention or being doted on just because he turned another year older. It ruins our macho image and besides we might just have to act at being humble.
But as we grow older, I'm finding out that circumstances will make us conform to situations we never faced before and we find ourselves becoming vulnerable. When I was much younger I was very “Macho.” A rebel at heart with an attitude of being self sufficient. If someone asked me to do something, I'd learn quickly how to do what was asked or needed to become proficient to do the task. The problem of being self sufficient is, you don't know how to ask for help when you're caught in a dilemma where self sufficiency isn't sufficient. Example, I recently had an physical examination because of some problems we start to face as we age and as a the result of being “Macho” the probability now is that I might have cancer. If I had done what all us men should have been doing sixteen years earlier, there would be no probability of having any cancer today.
So what am I saying? A lot of what I've been writing about is called the male psyche. I'm not a psychologist and I sure would have a hard time trying to explain the male psyche. But if you go to Hardies early in the morning you'll find a good representation of the male psyche in action.

If men could talk, what would they really say? Would you hear about what motivates them? Would you hear their ambitions, deep seated resentments, their intellect, the love of life? How about shame, emotional absence, masculine insecurity to name a few more. I suppose that we men find it hard to go up to his best friend and say, “Hey Bob, how's your masculine insecurity coming along?”
But in reality, we don't want to know because us men won't realize our own shortcomings let alone to recognize the real needs in the lives of our fellow man. And I suppose that is part of being a male.

According to my doctor the odds are, I probably will have cancer and I've now become vulnerable to learning how to live life as a victim or as a survivor. Should I be belligerent and say, “How can this be?” Or accept the obvious knowing that how I've lived in the past governs what is happening today. There was a song that Frank Sinatra sang so many years ago that rings true with so many of us men, “For what is man, what has he got? For not himself, then he is naught to say the things he truly feels, and not the words of one who kneels, the record shows I took the blows and did it my way.”