What Is A Man?

What is a man? For a long time, I couldn’t answer this question with certainty. Outside of the biological obviousness of what a man is, I couldn’t tell you what the essence of being a man is and if someone would have asked me this question in my younger years, I would have likely stumbled through it.

Growing up without my father left me lacking in understanding about manhood and it’s strange to admit this but I was also uncomfortable around men because I felt inadequate. I was rarely around adult men, so the opportunity to mimic their traits wasn’t there.

With honesty, I don’t think I started my journey toward manhood until I had my son at the age of 21. I was a male still learning to become a man now attempting to raise the man that I wasn’t. Becoming a father motivated me to become something better as I didn’t want my son to be just as lost as I was.

Today, my son is 17 years old which also marks my 17-year journey into manhood for myself.

So, this brings us back to the original question, what is a man? By going down my journey into manhood in the first place, I exemplified one of man’s traits: acknowledging our flaws and what we don’t know.

We often talk about this caricature of an alpha male who’s filled with bravado as he smacks his chest ready to conquer the world but it’s just a caricature. Every successful, happy, and healthy man that I’ve met will tell you what he’s not good at. A man knows where his weakness lies because he understands that he can’t be good at everything.

A man will tell you what he doesn’t know so he can point you in the right direction to someone else who does know. A man has no problem with acknowledging his imperfections as confidently as he would express where his strengths lie.

For transparency, I know that my major weaknesses are that I’m not very organized and I tend to struggle to be disciplined but my strengths are my ability to effectively communicate with people and problem-solving.

A man takes a breath before responding or entering a tense situation. Men generally understand that how we approach a situation can have severe consequences. We are the stronger of the two sexes and our ability to destroy comes easier to us which means we have more responsibility to use it sparingly.

A male who is always willing to enter a fight on a whim is someone who likely didn’t learn to control their emotions when they were a child.

Outside of a violent encounter, that breath can save you from losing your job and your relationships with people you deeply care about. Remaining stoic in stressful matters is like being able to tame a beast, so mastering remaining rational in emotional moments will always give you the upper hand in life.

Without a doubt, this is the most important trait because it strengthens the others: confidence.

This is the one I struggled with the most throughout my life. Today, I’m 38 years old and I can say that I’ve been confident for about 5 of those years. Prior, I experienced panic attacks, depression, and anxiety which I believe, in my circumstance, were manifestations of my internal crisis for my lack of confidence.

Even in areas that I was strong in, I was uncertain of my strength and constantly second-guessed myself. I struggled with self-esteem and put more value in what other people thought about me than what I thought of myself.

I know what it’s like to be in a crisis with confidence and I’m glad to be on the other end of it today. I wouldn’t be able to speak publicly on television or in front of hundreds of people if I didn’t believe in myself or was worried about making a mistake.

Today, I am confident in what I know and what I don’t know. I don’t worry about what could possibly happen because it’s wasted energy about something that likely won’t happen either way. If it happens, then I’ll deal with it at the moment. I have faith that God put me in this position for a reason as well, so I’m no longer worried about the trivial; this was a faith that I lacked in earlier years.

The last important aspect of manhood I believe should be mentioned is the responsibility to protect people, especially people who can’t protect themselves.

This may come with maturity for some young men, but they’ll probably be put in a situation where they feel the need to protect someone they love dearly, whether it be physically or emotionally. Men don’t stand by and allow nefarious people to devour the weak, innocent, and defenseless; males do.

Men have a sense of duty to their loved ones even if it means sacrificing themselves. I learned this as a father as I was willing to risk everything for my son to have a better life than I did. As a husband, I have a duty to protect my wife from unnecessary turmoil and guide her away from potentially negative situations.

In a parental situation, it’s both parents’ responsibility to protect their children but I hold men the most responsible for this protection. It is why I rail against single-parenthood because how effective are you at protecting a child you’re not in constant contact with? As someone who is in this situation, I can tell you, it’s incredibly difficult to do so which is why I want men to family plan better than I did.

This responsibility to protect the weak, innocent, and defenseless is exactly why I’m “pro-life”, against mutilating children and teaching or exposing children to age-inappropriate sexual information. More men need to be at the forefront of these discussions because it’s their duty to do so.

Manhood is extremely important to me because I know what it’s like to grow up as a male who had no solid foundation of existence. I know what it’s like for people to tell you to stray away from what feels natural and everything about manhood, once I understand it for what it really is, feels natural to me. Nothing is forced because it feels purposeful.

We have a crisis with our young men who are going through life with the same confusion as I once had. My first job as a man was to protect my son from experiencing this by being his masculine foundation for life and instilling confidence in him about his life path.

My son at 17 is more of a man than I was when I had him; this makes me proud.

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