I look at children and I see innocence and potential.
We are born pure, but into a world of impurity. A newborn boy, at his core, is born with the same potential and capacity for compassion, love, grace, and greatness that each and every one of us – male or female – is born with. At his core, a newborn boy is love and intuition, but that boy will quickly – without compassion or consideration – be stripped of those Divine traits and broken down and reduced and shaped into the “man” we would have him be; reduced to the kind of “man” we ourselves have been reduced to…
A man seemingly void of intuition, lacking compassion, repressing any pure emotion that is deemed weak, but would serve a man’s heart and soul and life in a transformational way. A man who is taught to “man up,” to “shake it off,” to “quit actin like a little bitch,” and to “don’t ask/don’t tell.” A man who will be denied the kind of love he is worthy and deserving of… A man who will deny YOU the kind of love you are worthy and deserving of.
Yet, it is and is not his fault, for boy and man are born into a world where strength means shutting up, shutting down, and shutting out.
This is what we teach our men, and then we wonder and question why they interact with others and with life the way they do.
I would have you close your eyes. I would then have you imagine swallowing poison and allowing that poison to sit and destroy your insides for just one day. I would imagine that your insides would spoil and your outsides would reflect such destruction. This scenario, this poisonous image, is a metaphor for the kind of LIFE we would have our men live.
They go on to lead as tyrants, fight with fury, deny communication and compassion, love callously, engage with anger, compete with hubris; all in the name of being men while fighting to fit and to find a means to express the storm that brews within them – a release for the poison that festers. They gather in rooms and praise acts of aggression and violence. They speak and sing and rap lyrics that refer to women as objects – of sex and lust and mistrust – a reference void of love, compassion, or connection. This is not what man is, and man knows this at his core.
Man is strong and open, wise and wonder-full, courageous and compassionate.
Man leads and man loves.
Man is intuitive and mighty.
Man is artistic and expressive.
Man fights to protect.
Man earns and values respect, and man is respected.
Man is humble and deserving.
Man is light and love.
Man is love. Man is loved.
With Love, Light, & Liberation,
