Fellow travelers in the fast lane, wishing all the other drivers would stop being such sucky drivers,
My son got his learner’s permit and we are planning a road trip halfway across the country. It’s a little rushed and born of necessity, but I am intrigued by how shut-down my sense of wild, reckless adventure has become in the last thirty years of marriage. As I cultivated wisdom (oh so much therapy) and then had children and learned (on the job, as we all do) that their needs would always come first, I stopped doing the risky, insane things that had made my young adulthood so full of fiery fun (literal fires: running off to live with some jugglers and also leaping some midsummer Lithuanian bonfires on a beach)…
Thing is, I don’t regret eventually curbing my desire to, say, walk out on one lover because another one happens to be in the room, even though I fully enjoyed being that chaotic person as a young adult. What makes me happy in mature (blech, what a word — how about “advanced”) adulthood is the knowledge that I *could,* but choose not to.
Boss level adulthood: you keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity to be your wildest, most fun self. When it hurts no one or helps everyone, you take that opportunity. You see in advance the possible consequences of your actions on others and you choose to make the world a better place - sometimes by being a little crazy (driving halfway across the country) and sometimes by being safe (making sure you and your son have some driving instruction before climbing behind that wheel).
(I think this is one of the AA tenets—you’re not giving up drinking, you’re giving it up today. Celebrating wise and strong choices on a daily basis rather than looking back on a lifetime of “missed opportunities” with regret seems to me the hallmark of a stable, successful human. But unlike AA that doesn’t mean you never do crazy things - it just means you really try hard to be a team player. Every team has a fun, weirdo whose role is to keep the morale high!)
A lot of these musings are coming from a very long but incredibly thoughtful article on masculinity in the Washington Post - it is worth reading and I’ve given the “gift” link so you should be able to read it without a subscription - if you have no time, at least read the very last section where solutions are set forth—especially if you have (or are) teen or young adult cisgender boys/men!
Opinions | Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.
No one's offering men a model except the right. It's time for a new plan.
Opinion by Christine Emba
I would be miserable if I felt that I had no choices—that sort of is life in a prison. I spent my childhood in Texas where my moral choices were not made in my head but by circumstance. I lived too far away from people my age to even be presented the option of risky behavior.
It worries me that the only vision of a great man is being offered by the far-right. Where are the role models? I can’t understand why our society only knows how to judge, point fingers, and tear down—no one offers solutions to build up, work together, play to people’s strengths—and there is no roadmap to redemption.
You can’t point out what is right and good in the world without being accused of blindness to the threats. You can’t learn something if people only criticize you and never show you the goal. People seek a one-size-fits-all rulebook for masculinity, which I find just as ridiculous as the one-size-fit-no one rulebooks for women from the fifties. One size never fits all.
Never.
Thirty years ago I was a passionate and carefree driver—now I see it as an endless and impossible list of rules, and the other drivers are out there all seem to be focused on trying to arrive first and not following traffic rules at all. In order to succeed (and, you know, not die), I have been reminding myself that children easily learn to drive. Even brainless idiots are capable of learning this task. (The fact that a lot of these people will be sharing the road with me is indicative of me overthinking the problem.)
To drive successfully, you need to be constantly aware and alert and pay a lot of attention to others while still focusing almost entirely on yourself and what you are doing. You follow the rules unless it won’t hurt anyone to bend then a little. You choose a direction and commit to that path. Sometimes you have to be extraordinarily patient, and if you have passengers it is your job to keep them safe, and the best way to do that is to be self-confident and generally know where you are going. Your passengers can help you take care of things that you are too overwhelmed to do yourself—knowing when to let them help is part of being a great driver. At a certain point you stop obsessing about the act of driving and just drive.
Maybe this is a good metaphor for healthy masculinity. You are not alone on the road; the other drivers and you form a collective. It is a crazy, wild, dangerous system of transportation but people survive it by knowing when to stop being too aggressive. The good men are the ones that make sure that they and their loved ones get safely to their destinations. The great men can do all this and also sing along to the radio.
WRITING NEWS:
Sorry guys, I have no new publication news to report—all my free time has been spent getting in and out of cars with strangers. HOWEVER: my story collection is getting truly lovely reviews on Amazon (thank you SO MUCH for everyone who has now finished the book and took some time to post a response either there or on Goodreads)
ALSO I do have a really cool event coming up - do you live in/near Cleveland? I’m doing a reading on August 7th - here:
Random Final Thought:
Friends are like a safety net that let you reach incredible heights. Thank you to my amazing supportive awesome friends both new and old for being there for me.