“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
- Leo Tolstoy
Many people would argue until they’re blue in the face that communication is the backbone of success in all human connections. While I wouldn’t necessarily disregard the notion entirely, I do believe there is more to our shared connections than just good communication. If we dive further into the history of ancestors and try to determine where the turning point was that started ancient civilizations we would quite likely think of a myriad of things. Perhaps civilization began when our ancestors decided to create irrigation channels in ancient Mesopotamia, or maybe it was when we began to view land as property. I am no scholar of ancient history, or history for that matter, so I will not continue to pontificate as if I am, however, the point I am drawing ever forward to concluding is the elementary fact that civilization started when our ancestral nomads decided to no longer be… well, nomads. Put simply, one of the many things that makes humankind great is our ability to adapt, to change our behavior. To that end, we may conclude that the only way to continue to progressively move forward is with a steadfast resolve to change our behavior, not simply through rhetoric, despite any possible benevolent intention.
You can keep your apologies, give me changed behavior.
So, we learned a wealth about me recently. I took my heart, bled it out a good bit, and concluded that I was going to be a better, more full version of myself. I spoke of the resolve to be vulnerable, yet strong, and to correct the transgressions I commit unwittingly against myself. This action is all well and good, but…what the fuck am I here writing about in the first place? What is the whole purpose of unmasking masculinity? To be frank, I am writing with hopes, albeit ambitious, that this rolling stream of conscious thought may slow down, or stop, the perpetuation of toxic masculinity, even if just for a single person. I will not have any real measurements for the success of this work. Furthermore, I don’t require that level of validation from this medium. Genuinely, this is me sharing my life experience in hopes that it helps to enrich another person’s life. Interestingly enough, sociologists tell us that even the most introverted individual will influence ten thousand people in their lifetime. When we begin to understand the power of influence we can see clearly that if just one person has the power to influence ten thousand then the properties of exponential growth carries that ten thousand into even higher numbers. So, in a bit of a contradiction of my last statement, I am writing to influence ten thousand men to be a better version of themselves. Here goes nothing.
Dudes, let’s be honest, we tend to be real fucking jerks. Even the self-described, “good guys”, are likely culprits of this reality. Speaking from the perspective of a previously self-described, “good guy”, we label our existence with this moniker of being “good” as if to absolve ourselves of the stark truth that we contribute, both wittingly and unwittingly, to the toxicity plastered upon modern existence. Please understand that I do not believe that all men are unequivocally meant to hold the blame for the plight that is our modern society. No, that is not my wholehearted belief, however, I believe that we are complicit, by default, to this toxic paradigm by not taking an active step to correct the matter at hand, even if only in our own lives. Now, while I would love nothing more than to write at length about this issue, there is no way one blog post by a single person could ever accomplish the task of killing this particular beast. The complex nature of toxic masculinity and its inherent generational conditioning from decades of development and cultural evolution makes the task far too large. Instead, I will resolve to take on one parameter of what I believe plagues us all as modern men.
The power of changed behavior:
Perhaps you’re asking yourself what you can do to correct your life-experience, to course-correct your action or inaction. Well, we as men of this modern age should own the fact that our apologies as we know them, now and forevermore, are complete shit without the application of changed behavior. So, what is changed behavior and why is it now required within the context of an apology? To provide a palatable means to convey what changed behavior is one can equate that promising to go on a diet is not changed behavior. Changed behavior is stating or promising to yourself that you will go on a diet and following through and committing to it until that diet becomes habit, until it becomes your dietary behavior. Simple, right? Right. Before we continue on this path, I don’t mean to implicate that you, dear reader, are dense in not being able to understand what changed behavior means, however, I was at one of many local bars that I frequent just recently and there was a gentleman who couldn’t quite grasp the idea of changed behavior. For all intents and purposes, this gentleman was quite open-minded and was receptive to the overall debate, despite his woeful misunderstanding of the point at hand.
To recall the height of the conversation and his misunderstanding, this gentleman was unable to fathom toxic masculinity outside of his own living space, his self-lived world-bubble here in Brooklyn. The debate was lively and not just between myself and this man, “G”. No, there was also a lovely married husband and wife, “P & KJ”. At one point KJ gave an extraordinary example of what many might have either lived within their own life or conversely what they may not know as toxic because they have never lived the experience. In this example, KJ had a high school friend, “B”, who was a classically trained pianist having received lessons since he was a little boy. One day while KJ was at B’s home she stated, “B, you have a piano in your house?” After the discovery was made B found it necessary to exemplify his talent much to the delight of KJ as he was indeed quite talented. Conversely, this same child grew to be a young man who had become the quarterback of his Arkansas high school football team and only a few, maybe even only a select few knew of his beautiful off-field talent. So, why would any man ever find it acceptable to hide their authenticity, especially their talents? Well, if you have grown up knowing the paradigm of masculinity in the southern region of the United States and how it pertains exclusively to young boys and their raising then you would also know that two rules predominately and subconsciously exist. Those being, boys don’t cry and boys aren’t to act like “sissys”. In short, boys aren’t to show any bit of sensitivity nor are they to dwell in things that girls would do – piano being something a girl would do, hell even the terminology pianist is borderline easy material for ridicule.
The most unfortunate bit of this whole debate with G, KJ, and P was that after hearing this tale of the pianist quarterback G thought it was appropriate to say, “that is his problem, he should be confident enough to tell his friends that he loves to play piano and that he does it extremely well and that if they didn’t like it then they could “fuck off”. I don’t think that is toxic masculinity at all.” G missed the point…by a lot. However, I am not here to crucify his school of thought. To be frank, G grew up in Brooklyn and was exposed to a far different upbringing than that of B and KJ, or even myself for that matter. Thus, in my opinion, G is far more rooted in another facet of toxicity, that being the toxicity behind the notion, “not my circus, not my monkeys.” I digress, the point of this bar tale was to exemplify how it is truly the small things that foster the growth and normalization of toxic masculinity within society. How when we limit the life experience of any being we limit their growth and thus give breath to the monster of toxic masculinity.
It is almost 2020, you can keep your apologies just give me changed behavior.
So what gives and why are our apologies and promises to do better no longer sufficient? Well, to be honest, apologies and subsequent promises haven’t ever actually been fully sufficient. If anything they are band-aids to whatever gaping wound we created with our actions in the first place. If we go back to previous statements, we find that saying you will do something and following through with consistent action until it becomes second nature is a true change in behavior. So by this understanding, changed behavior, when coupled with an apology, is the most powerful form of action against our transgressions in life. In this courageous attempt to better one’s daily life, we must realize that this resolve to commit, to change our toxic behaviors, is manifested in a two-fold manner. Those folds being, interpersonal manifestation, which is felt by those in our lives, and intrapersonal manifestation, which is most felt in our personal lives and most exemplified when people aren’t watching. In this post, I want to examine how intrapersonal changed behavior is more powerful to the betterment of our life overall. I will speak to how this commitment to ourselves can round out and better our friendships and relationships, and how it can quell the inner turmoil we might face on a day to day basis.
I recently scrolled through my Instagram feed and found a post that resonated throughout my entire being. As I am sadly unable to find it, I can only paraphrase what the post said, “it is almost 2020, the only apologies we accept are in the form of changed behavior.” Even though this post was directed to the practice of apologizing to others, changed behavior as the overall focus of the apology is still true for both interpersonal and intrapersonal occurrences. Think about it, saying, “sorry” or “I apologize”, is an all too easy cop-out within the full equation of an apology. Rather what we should seek out is to not only state these words but to also follow through with our apology and correct our wrongdoing. Doing the work and changing our behaviors, and changing the overall mindset behind the act of apologizing will give you the ability to further your growth into your best self.
How does this relate to our own lives?
Remember how I expressed earlier that I have now decided to live and act with intent and purpose? Recently, I found myself in an argument wherein I ultimately minimized myself and did so if only to provide comfort to those I was in disagreement with at the time. At this moment, I buried my true and authentic self and my needs to stop two forms of conflict: the first, an onslaught of negative thoughts coursing through my brain and the second, the obvious, the argument at hand wherein I felt helpless, both internally and externally, to the situation and reverted to the conditioning I knew from my youth to stop the feud. I worked to make myself invisible by turning back into a people-pleasing mindset and gave concession to those I was in an argument with, even though I still felt wronged in the matter at hand. In this instance, I betrayed myself. I didn’t follow through on the promise to always be my best and most authentic self. In this small amount of comfort, I only found respite for the briefest of times. Essentially, I kicked the proverbial can down the road. At most, I have offered another opportunity for pseudo-safety and complacency to take root by closing myself off from living my full existence. The most unfortunate part of this moment was that it was done to pacify and make comfortable the lives of others. Now as we’ve learned previously, living a life for others is a slippery slope and does not bode well for this new place of consciousness wherein we don’t excuse our life for the comfort of others. Remember, we have chosen to live for ourselves first, we have chosen to live compassionately and with purpose as we choose to not align with people who have no commonality with our life’s purpose.
It is of the utmost importance for all of us to realize that in these moments of self-betrayal against our personhood the person who has committed this wrongdoing is exclusively ourselves. However, in these moments of conflict, we are allowed to apply the commitment to act upon changed behavior. In this context, those I argued with provided me with an opportunity to face the transgressions of my past traumas, to rise above the people-pleasing conditioning that I have programmed myself into always performing. In essence, the third-party allowed an opportunity to practice breaking the toxic cycle.
The first thing we must understand is that the onus of managing the task of changing our behavior is on ourselves.
Again, the onus of correcting your course, of doing better, is on you, no one else. Secondly, you must come to your authentic-self with a wealth of compassion and an even greater amount of patience. This combination of self-loving action is what will make the seemingly impossible task of personal growth more manageable. The notion of being your own greatest critic and being your greatest ally is a balancing act much like walking a tight rope run between two New York City skyscrapers. With this in mind, please know that recalibrating our mindsets from that of past traumas and redirecting that energy into wholesome healing will require a great deal of effort. For example coming from my own experience in losing over one hundred pounds, the journey of personal growth and healing the inner child is exponentially harder, by upwards of the tenth-power. The third and not quite final act, but most powerful of all, is to understand that you are human, you will fall down or fail yourself. Own the failure, learn the lesson, and get back up. Keep moving forward, put one foot in front of the other.
When we change our behavior against the conditioning that we have become exposed to we begin to re-actualize our existence. No longer will we behave with the concerted effort to appease people in our lives. Certainly, this might be a scary paradigm to navigate life through. For if these people cannot accept us at this level, our purest self, then that is on them. We do not deserve to torment our being to provide ourselves with some false sense of belonging. If I may be so bold, I believe that at the end of the day if you broadcast your most authentic self then the people you inevitably belong to will gravitate toward you without any hardship or ill-effort otherwise. So, in turn, by changing our behavior to reflect the better intrapersonal choices we have made we will not only make things better for ourselves, but we will also tell the world, the universe even, that we accept that this new profound sense of self is our identity. Finally, we tell the universe that this identity and its energy, its power, is what we want to be given back in kind in the form of friendships and relationships.
While it’s not all we can do, and though it is not exclusively the best we can do, putting one foot in front of the other is always what we must do.”
In a recent conversation with an old acquaintance of mine, I found myself talking about how putting one foot in front of the other is the thing we must always do. To not think twice, keep on moving on and that everything would be alright. I can’t quite remember now what the conversation was in regards to, but I feel as if this idea is the perfect understanding of how we should behave when it comes to knocking out our inner demons. We must resolve to do the work, to step with one foot in front of the other so to speak, but to also realize that this work that we’re doing to eradicate our toxicity is a slow process. To once again recall upon the recent bar-debate about the very subject of toxic masculinity, P made a comment that stuck with me. To paraphrase, “big monumental, sustainable, change will never happen at once – it takes time.” Furthermore, another comment from KJ was, “we shouldn’t look to change, or solve, the entirety of the problem at hand. Instead, we should aim to change the little things that perpetuate the problem at its highest levels.” In this sense, both people were correct. Change doesn’t happen overnight and that change cannot occur with one fell stroke of a giant brush.
I used to always believe that my demons were protecting me, that they had my best interest at heart, however, that is quite likely the most naïve understanding of what a demon is out to do. As I try to wind down this stream of thought, I can’t help but come back to a habit that I have had from adolescence through even today that I once thought was something of a demon. That habit being that music is sometimes my best form of expression as my words alone cannot convey or fully express the totality of my being in whatever given moment – music truly is, in my life, THAT powerful. So, the song that I find myself resonating toward for this post, and genuinely in my life of late, is “Flicker Fade” by Taking Back Sunday; the song in its refrain states –
“You live your life like you’re not in control, like your playing a role… You wonder why it always ends the same. Flicker, flicker, fade. Destroy what you create and wonder why it always ends the same.”
I find joy in this work of rediscovery in my adulthood. I am now becoming friends with my inner child and our demons, which is enlightening. In this intrapersonal friendship and work of enriching our life, I find that the songs I have always gravitated toward are clues to understanding my existence. When I think of this song specifically I hear just how my desire to have things better, whether it be friendships or relationships, clashes with the behaviors that I have adopted up until this point in my life. Once we understand that we must take ownership of our life and realize the only roles we play are the ones we choose then, and only then, can life become what we desire it to be. If I can leave you with just one bit of advice at the end of this on how to work to change your ill-fated behaviors, as daunting it might seem, I would say the best way to start is to keep one small daily promise to yourself. That promise can be anything, so long as it works toward changing your behaviors. Perhaps it is one small thing that can help you experience a small respite filled with joy in your life – for me, I have resolved to spend a few hours each Sunday going to the same bar & grill to enjoy coffee, the Sunday New York Times, and a meal exclusively by myself. This is my time to learn about what’s going on in the world and to reflect upon my week prior and the week ahead. Conversely, your one small thing to start out with could simply be drinking one gallon of a water per day, or it could be even smaller like waking up to drink one full 16oz. glass of water each day. Simple right?
What is one small thing you can do today that may become routine so that you might find joy and a moment to reflect upon yourself and your choices? How can you use this small thing to help you change your behavior for your life’s betterment?
Until next time, take care and be well; know that you are loved and whole and so damn worthy of the life you seek and desire – so long that it is good for you and does not have malicious intent against others.
Sincerely,
Joshua M. Aldridge