Why You Feel So Lost as a Man

[lip smacks] One was that I knew I was a man.

That part was never in question.

Uh, I enjoy inhabiting this body as a man.

I love being a man.

I knew I was one.

[laughs] That part was clear.

I knew I biologically was a male.

Number two, I was for a very long time very unsure as to whether or not I was a good man.

In fact, for a long time, I believed that I certainly was not a good man, or whether I was good at being a man.

Instructions largely unclear, too long, didn't read.

You know? Classic man shit.

I didn't read the manual.

And number three, I knew that I was getting older, but I didn't feel like any type of real depth or wisdom was coming to fruition in my life in any way, shape, or form.

And it wasn't until two major events happened in my life that I both started to understand what it means to be a man, and I started to feel like I was gaining some proficiency, some capability of actually being a good one, actually being good at being a man.

And I wanted to share those with you today because every day I interact with men who are lost.

They're lonely.

They're unsure of whether or not they're a good husband, a good father, a good boyfriend, whether or not they're effective at contributing back to the world, whether or not their life has any meaning.

And maybe you're one of those men.

You're watching this, and you're like, "I have no idea if I'm a good man.

I have no idea if I'm on the right path." The first thing that happened in my life that began to inform whether or not w- I was a good man or good at being a man, uh, and helped me start to feel like I was really one, was that I hit rock bottom in my life, and I had to scrape and claw my way out of a, a psychological hole that almost convinced me to Control-Alt-Delete myself.

And it wasn't until a really truly intense and brutal period of my life, this brutal period of my life that lasted for way longer than I wanted it to, that I began to understand the part of crossing the psychospiritual threshold from boyhood into adolescence, into the maturity and the maturation of being a man, is going through some kind of incredible hardship and allowing that to both shape you and test you in a way where you begin to let the old, false, naive, immature beliefs and behaviors about yourself and about life die away.