I walk across high castles, possessed by bad dreams trapping in my eyes. While in the small stretches, begins to rain from an invisible sky, subtle sign of the real path, and with claws and fury I start to climb the smooth walls of the high castles until I reach the unknown sky, and finally understanding the illusion of the land of the many castles. As fast as I can, I run over towers following the brilliant light at the end of the horizon, and I know that when the sky turns dark, I will learn to fly.
The Role of Manliness in your Identity
What makes your path are the ways you take, and your identity is define by your path. Think in your real desires, goals and needs, what you do to make them happen is the way you behave- with yourself and everybody else; the way you move across the world and how much effort you put in them according in how important are those goals.
Imagine the most successful person you ever know. How does he behave? Probably is one of the bravest persons, maybe he takes every trouble and issue with a smile. Exactly, he has a positive behavior, he has great courage, and he wants to live.
Many identity issues are caused for a nonsense life, and of course, leads them to an incomplete and unsatisfied life, where all the time they are yelling and crying for how life is bad with them, and for the worst, how the rest of people should have mercy of them. You are alive! Look into your passions and desires and find the right path and have the balls to walk on it.
As a man, one of the most important paths is manliness. Think on paths like roles in your life, one of the role probably is being a good musician for example, while another is being a great father or have enough courage to talk with that girl in the office. The roles is about your job- the job you want or the job you have; about your hobbies- those who you want and those who you have, or about your lifestyle. Is the place where you are on one of those paths the exactly place where you want to be? Can you be in a better place? With these questions you can start to make a plan for achieving your goals on that path, on that role, and manliness is also a role.
Jack Donovan wrote an awesome book called The Way of Men, on that book Jack talks about the manly virtues; strength, courage, mastery and honor. He says, that if you want to follow the way of men, you should put in practice every manly virtue in your life, no matter what, because you are a man. Being a man is about what you desire as a man, what you need, and to get everything that you want you need to be strong, you need to be brave, you need to practice, and you need to take care of your people, but do not forget the most important thing: your values.
Manliness is about values
Your moral code is going to lead you to the right choices, those choices make you keep walking in your path, your manly path. For example; that pretty girl in the office has a boyfriend, but you really like her, what should you do? Now you know that you need to be strong, no matter what, you are going to fight for that girl, you also know that you must have courage, so, do not hesitate, as you see her as you should ask her for a date. Maybe, she says yes, you two have and awesome date that even ends with a sweet kiss, maybe you go to her flat, maybe you spend the night with her and have the most passionate sex. But the next day, she is confused, she doesn’t know what to do with his boyfriend, all this was a mistake. You should fight, yes, but fight for what? That is not your fight, it’s hers. You do what you should do. You tell her your real feelings, needs and desires, and that is reach your goal. But remember as the fourth virtue says, you are a man of honor, and whatever her move is, you will support her.
That means, your values and principles are about you, not everyone else, you can’t control the way they behave with your principles, but the way they behave with you. That is to say if someone is behaving in a way that you dislike, you are just not going to allow it.
One of my values is live and let to live. It means that if I know that eat pizza is going to get fat to my friend, the decision about leave eating pizza only concerns to him, but depends on me, if I want to be friend of an eating pizza person or not- who doesn’t love pizza?
To know your values you need to know your great goal, your personal mission, because are those values who are going to lead you until your personal mission. So I have to you two tasks.
- Write your personal mission, write exactly what you want- being the most eloquent, creative and clever writer as to write the best book about space cowboys sounds better that being the best writer.
- Break down your personal mission until you find your first value, and then the next one, until you know, you are a man of values and principles.
Until next post.