There are hundreds of ways in which men try to will things that cannot be controlled: we will to sleep; we will to have others like us, and we will to have sexual virility. In all these things, the force of our will does not always work, because what we want is uncontrollable. They come to us and an outcome of many factors-when the situation is right-when we have become ready for them.
When we could not let go, when we did not know the answers, we became more and more anxious. Then we turned into addicts of these perplexities, or became dependent on escapes from anxiety and wilfulness.
Life is difficult enough as it is. We never reach a point where our path is free of obstacles and hardships-and regardless of how much we grow, how faithful we are to ourselves and other things; nothing changes the fact that death is still there for us.
As painful and difficult as life is; life is also deeply meaningful and worthwhile when we submit to its realities, and live with a sense of understanding and peace.-After we stop living in denial of that simple truth, and accept the hard facts about life, we see that we need each other. We need relationships to stay sane, we need to pull together and support one another the way people do in difficult times. Rugged individualism isn’t always good for real people, in the real world.
We need relationships so we can celebrate and make music, and encourage one another. We need relationships so we can laugh and make jokes, and tell our personal stories-and we need to stand together in
order to help each other through the fog of confusion we fill our minds with.
We do not need to create difficulties and pain in our lives. Those are already present; they come with the
package of human existence. Some of us are actually bewildered when we aren’t pressed by trouble-as we
grow, and our lives become ordered; many of us thought; “life seems to be going so well, I wonder what’s wrong”. We have become more accustomed to remorse and crisis, than to joy and serenity.
What lies before us today is an unpainted picture. There are many possibilities for events to take a good
turn. In this we must believe and affirm the good things in order to accept them.
When our only expectations are pain and trouble; they probably will be our only experience. However; when we have faith in ourselves, and others that a better life is possible; we open ourselves to receive it, and we
learn to control our own selfishness.
Because when we are selfish, we close off all channels of exchange with others. Not only are we grabbing and holding all the goods or attention we can get, but we are denying others the possibility sharing with us the
benefits.
We may be selfish in material goods, but there are others ways too: Some of us expect our spouses to meet
our needs, while making little effort to meet theirs. By contrast, our generosity and welcoming responses
nourish the spirit within us to create a good environment for growth. Sometimes though; giving doesn’t come easily, until we have a more generous spirit, and are in touch with our own vulnerabilities.
All of life is fragile, and we need each other to have a good life. We can truly hold onto nothing but ourselves, giving what we can of our time, our energy, and our love, helps create the kind of life we want to live in.
We are told constantly that the way to happiness is through material possessions…But what does a Man
really want..?
He wants a feeling that his life makes sense. He wants the give and take of a loving relationship. He wants
to feel he has a place in the world and can make a contribution-and he wants the feeling that he is not standing still, but growing in those ways.
Being poor certainly limit our options, but material wealth is an empty seduction. Putting all our energy
into capturing wealth may make us rich, but it also can become an addiction that causes unhappiness. We
become much richer in our souls and in our lives when we take the risks that help us to improve our
relationships, and teach us how to live balanced lives.
Trying to control and change people around us creates problems in our relationships. When people we love are expressing themselves, we are thinking about what we wish they would say, and it blocks us from hearing
clearly. A need for safety and a guarantee that we won’t be abandoned urges us to manipulate the people
that we love.
We know that we have innocent motives. We say we want only the best, and that we are only trying to protect ourselves or be helpful. But we hide from the effects our actions have on our relationships.
We seem to be more trapped in these self-centered behaviors with the ones we are closest to. But we can
slowly change ourselves by releasing our security grip on others. That way we can focus more what others are saying to us, than on changing how they think and feel. Intimacy is clearly seeing each other and knowing the difference as well as the similarities. It requires that both people be able to walk separate paths.
We could probably feel more tranquil if the world were a simple place and always gave us simple answers. But we are faced with many ambiguous and uncertain situations-the changing role of men and women can
often leave us bewildered. We are engaged in the development of relationships that have lives of their
own, and it’s not always clear where they are headed.
Even within ourselves we have contradictory feelings, and it’s difficult to come up with clear answers.
Since we cannot force simplicity upon the world, we must turn to ourselves for a new response. We can
become more tolerant of our own unsettled predicaments. We can learn to have faith, that good comes from change-things have a way of settling-out and clarifying with time.
As we develop patience with these questions and unclear issues in our lives, we gain a much deeper serenity. The renewal of this serenity comes only after we accept it by value in itself, and happens only after we establish an honest relationship with ourselves.
No longer can we excuse our minimizing white lies that push aside the truth. No longer can we deny our private fears and self doubts.. In our growing sincerity with ourselves, we can admit our weakness.
The Start Reality Is Simply The Truth…! We build upon solid reality, rather than fiction. Denying the truth
to ourselves always made us weaker, than the facts themselves ever could. Viewing these facts from a different position of acceptance shows they aren’t nearly as bad as we first thought.
A Holier-Than-Thou attitude within us is often a sign of unconscious dishonesty. Who hasn’t had the feeling
of being superior to the angry outburst, or tears of another man-and then found themselves in the very same
spot the next day.-What we least want to admit to ourselves, we are most likely to feel self righteous about. Since our blind spots and self deceptions leave us vulnerable, we must attack them vigorously. The man
we feel most self righteous toward, may be the man we could learn the most from…
Yet so many devastating things can bring us to our knees. With experience we learn that pain and trouble are a part of life. Most of us have fought with everyday realties as if they were our own personal enemies. We accepted every challenge, thinking we had to be winners every time.
Sometimes we feel broken by the loss of a love, by a disappointing job, or our powerlessness over a loved
one; But in our brokenness we find our true humanity, it is the beginning of our spiritual awakening. As men
we were taught that: surrender” was a word for losers and weaklings. Life teaches us that opening ourselves
to our own brokenness open us to a new kind of wholeness.
After we acknowledge that we are not in control of every event in our lives, and after realizing our own
place in the world, we can live the richness of finding peace, serenity, and tranquility within ourselves…
