Menletter #18 for September 2003

ARTICLE 1

Hearing Voices

I'm having a "discussion" with my teenage son about some infraction against responsible behavior - homework, clutter, staying out late; it doesn't matter. Things are getting hotter and hotter, and voices are getting louder and louder. Doors get slammed. Nothing is resolved. We both feel like shit. And it takes several hours for things to calm down enough to get a real dialog going.

My boss calls a meeting of her staff and spends an hour berating us for not complying with some company directive. Our loyalty, intelligence, and commitment are called into question. It's a huge scold. Nothing is resolved. We all end up feeling like shit. And a real dialog never does get going.

What's going on here?

Next time you're criticizing or belittling someone, stop and listen to yourself. Whose voice do you hear? Is it only your voice, or is it tinged with the accents and rhythms and vocabulary of someone else?

Who else might that be?

In the case of my boss, it was her boss who had descended on her in a rage, and ordered her to "do something" about her staff. Rather than analyze the situation and figure out how to get the staff working as a team toward a solution, she just passed on the bad news, venom and all.

In the case of my son, I discovered that, once again, I had been speaking with his mother's voice, with a little added spice from my dad, plus some of my own stuff.

I would guess that something like these episodes has happened to you. You can fill in your own mental details, as either the sender or recipient of criticism that escalated into a nasty confrontation.

Let's stay with the example of dealing with children, because it touches on some issues that can arise for us as men and fathers. But the issues can be generalized to other areas of our lives.

Raising children is tough work - tougher, more rewarding, and with greater consequences for society than any paid job. However, our society has largely exiled most fathers from their own homes for great chunks of the week, and child rearing has been given over mostly to mothers. Even when mothers are employed outside the home, their contact time with their children is greater than that of men. Mom is the one who gets to take time off after giving birth, and who often returns to work part-time (while Dad, perhaps, works overtime). And our society - through government policy, media, advertising, availability of products - promotes active motherhood much more than it does active fatherhood. We men may even contribute to the problem, unwittingly, by letting these gender roles slide into a regular pattern.

So Mom gets to the end of her rope one day and has a nasty encounter with the kid(s). She may be SuperMom most of the time, but one of the kids has just put one too many pebbles in her psychic shoe, for the twelfth time this week.

Don't get me wrong here. Mom has a job to do, and she often feels that she's the only one who is concerned, perpetually and without letup, about the children's safety, comfort, nutrition, and learning "right" behavior - and that Dad often can't be relied upon. (Again, our society supports this. How many dads have been to a park with their kid on a weekday and been asked if they were "babysitting" - their own children?)

So you arrive and she unloads on you. She recites the litany of misdeeds, gives a detailed account of the nasty exchange with the kid, and wants you to "talk to" the kid. You arrive at the kid's room (where he or she has been sent), primed with Mom's anger and frustration and maybe your own frustration at having to fix things. And if you make the same mistake I've made, you've arrived to continue the confrontation using Mom's voice, mom's arguments, mom's anger. And you've added your own anger at the kid for making Mom unhappy. The fireworks begin.

Whoa. Let's back this up a bit.

Maybe we need to broaden our source of "voices" to use, or find our own.

Let's think of a time we've interacted with our kid or kids on our own terms. It may have been when we spent an entire day with a toddler, preteen, or teen and had a chance to settle in to being just ourselves. And maybe this time when this interaction went particularly well, when we ended the day in that comfortable golden haze of mutual love with our child.

Can we remember the situation, and remember our voices? I'd be willing to bet that it went something like this: We didn't talk much. We gave permission to do things or eat things that are normally forbidden - sometimes with a wink of let's-not-tell-Mom conspiracy.

What about when we were successful in a disciplinary or admonishing situation? What made it work? My guess: When we had differences, we resolved them by age-appropriate negotiation if possible, by fiat if necessary, by action if safety was an issue - all with an economy of words and minimal scolding, lecturing, or sometimes even explaining. We may have been a bit stern or grim, but we did a lot of listening.

Whose voices were we using on these occasions? Maybe it was Dad or an uncle. Maybe it was that crazy aunt who took us for ice cream even when we'd been "bad" - and then gave us some good advice about judging when and how to break the rules. Maybe it was even Mom's voice when she was in a better place.

And maybe it was just our own voice, finally, rising out of a deeply masculine, deeply nurturing, deeply fatherly place.

Does this mean that we dads shouldn't discipline, that we must be the good-time Charlies and appeasers to counter Mom's Wicked Witch role?

No. It means that we men can discover our own voices for both the pleasant and the unpleasant encounters with our kids.

A child psychologist told me once that kids remember being scolded or punished, and all the bad feelings, much more readily than they remember what they're being scolded or punished for. I think the same thing goes for praise and love. Kids may not remember the subject matter of these encounters, but they do remember, cumulatively, the feelings.

How do fathers - how do men - discover our own voices? Here are some suggestions.

· Talk with our own dads about this, if they're still alive. Both father and son may make some astonishing discoveries.

· Recapture the good memories of our dads at their best. Let their voices and manners resonate and echo with ours.

· Discover or rediscover our own values and principles. Then live them. Not only will we be a good example, we'll have confidence and conviction that will comfort our children.

· Just spend time with our kids. We can't get good at what we don't practice. We don't need an activity or agenda. Remember that some of our best times with other men have been random and unstructured. Build on that.

· Spend time with men. We need role models in older men, sure, but we also just need to keep rediscovering what it's like to be a man - and that takes the context of other men.

Bonus: Finding our own voices - becoming fathers on our own terms and not adjuncts or enforcers - can take a lot of pressure off a woman to be the perpetual mom and free her up to also be a wife and lover.

Note: Serious family problems may require professional help. You don't have to go it alone if things regularly get out of hand.

ARTICLE 2

BOOK REPORT: Rich Zubaty, "What Men Know That Women Don't"

Rich Zubaty in ten words: Men good. Women bad. Bad men just women with dicks.

Rich Zubaty is a black sheep. He is the wayward brother who speaks his mind - reliably, all the time, uncomfortably. He is the voice inside us that says Unacceptable Things. But because he loves his brothers unconditionally, and because he has a way with words, I found it hard to dismiss him, even when I disagreed with him.

I thought I would start out a review of Rich's book with the observation that, at times, I wanted to throw the book across the room in disgust - that some of his views were just too extreme and vicious for an old liberal leftie like me.

I couldn't do that. In fact, I've had a hard time putting the book down, let alone throw it across the room.

It's a massive (over 500 pages), rambling, ranting, illogical, inconsistent shambles of a book, a stream-of-consciousness outpouring of anti-feminist, anti-female, anti-corporate, anti-church, anti-establishment diatribe and invective. What makes Rich compelling, even when I disagree with him or at least think he's going over the top, is that his voice is genuine. His voice wells up from the trenches of despair and betrayal; from a messy, expensive, hurtful divorce that impoverished him and alienated his children from him, to an immensely self-indulgent, overweight mother who still has the power to shame him.

But as I made my way through the book - grumbling, laughing, getting depressed, getting mad - I began to see that Rich has turned many "truths" on their head, in surprising and revealing ways. Women are not the victims of male oppression. The so-called patriarchy came into being mostly to serve the interests of women.

Women, not men, according to Zubaty, are materialistic, hoarding, logical, hierarchical, scheming, lying, practical, left-brained creatures. Some women seem to act like men, but in twisted ways, often because they're acting out of the "animus" - the male, or weaker side, of their deep nature.

Men are, by their nature, nurturing, responsible, generous, spiritual, feeling, illogical, intuitive, creative, right-brained creatures. Many, however, have gone over to the feminist side, acquiring many of the female traits and becoming "manholes" - sellouts to the female-dominated establishment, acting out of the "anima" - the female, or weaker side, of their deep nature. Thus we have men in the corporate "patriarchy" who strive for status and material gain, put down both men and women, oppress both men and women.

Two strong themes are woven through all the tough language, emotional outbursts, leaps of logic (and illogic), and acerbic asides. The first is that men need to work on themselves, deeply, internally, if they want to improve things externally. The second is that the way to do this work is to destroy the ego. (In a way, this may make the book seem like a living oxymoron: it must have taken an immense amount of ego for Rich to put himself into a 500-page book and self-publish it.)

Destroying the ego is the opposite of the "self-esteem" movement that Rich ascribes to the feminists. Self-esteem means bringing love into the self, bringing God into the self. Destroying the ego means total surrender to something entirely outside the self - the Deer god, God, Allah, the teachings of the Buddha, a Higher Power, and other possible manifestations.

I was, ultimately, somewhat disappointed by the overall effect of the book. After mounting strong arguments about the nature of men and women, and the ironically upside-down state of our society, Rich doesn't lay out any sort of plan (maybe because planning is a female trait?). He's managed to escape to - or be self-exiled to - Mexico from the rat race that most of the rest of us are still running in. He may even have managed to destroy his ego. But I'd like to have seen something a bit more specific on how to go about this ego-destruction, or even how he went about it. I'm not looking for a new orthodoxy (we must behave this way or else), but just a couple of signposts.

Some of his suggestions seem impractical or even outlandish - like a massive strike of all men doing the dangerous work.

What I can glean from Rich's final pages is that we men, somehow, sometime, need to go deeply into our spiritual selves - to seek and surrender to and unite with a Greater Being - to know and celebrate the deep masculine. In this way we become more deeply human and humane. I've actually seen this practice work in improving relationships, but with one addition: men being with men. Men engaged in deep spiritual work have become more self-assured, kinder but firm in their convictions, and secure in their manhood. These men have done their work both alone and within the safe and nurturing container of a community of men.

It may take a Rich Zubaty or a Warren Farrell to goad us into beginning this work, in a state of anger and indignation. But ultimately, I think, the anger has to give way to compassion and reconciliation - for ourselves and for the world, including women. There are good women and good men who can enrich and complement each other's lives.

Men good. Women good. Let's go find each other. (I found one and married her. Things didn't work out, but the divorce was about as amicable as these things can be - we even used the same lawyer. Then I found another. We'll celebrate our 20th anniversary next year.)

ARTICLE 3

Instant Meditation

Instant coffee...instant tea...instant soup...instant lemonade...instant messenger...instant everything! Why not instant meditation? I've recently been experimenting with the benefits of taking just a few seconds at a time to practice various kinds of meditation - mostly the standard kinds, but I haven't stopped exploring.

Breathing. This is the simplest. I just take a long, deep breath and let it out. At the same time I notice the breath itself. I use it as a way of calming down or refocusing and sometimes for a quick scan of my external and internal environment.

Tonglen (a form of Tibetan Buddhist meditation). Cut off in traffic? See someone being inconsiderate? I imagine the situation - the assault against me plus my reaction - as a dark, dense cloud. I breathe in that cloud and let my heart purify it. I breathe out golden light. This can be very healing and put things into perspective.

Mantra. I will sometimes repeat a familiar phrase to myself as a reminder. My favorite is "There is only here. There is only now." It's sometimes effective in letting go of regret and worry or just aimless mental wandering. I use it mostly to bring my attention and consciousness to the present so I don't miss life while off on some reverie.

Checking in. I don't know if this one is "standard," but it seems more powerful than my little mantra. When I'm bored, uncomfortable, sad, impatient, annoyed, etc., I check in with myself: "Are you OK right now?" A lot of my discomforts are based on projections into the future (which doesn't exist until it arrives in the present) or mulling over some failure in the past (which has gone out of the present and no longer exists).

Say I'm stuck in traffic, and I'm impatient and annoyed. I may have a meeting or an appointment that I'll probably be late for. But I can almost always answer the check-in question positively. I'm sitting in a car I like to drive, there's some good music on the radio, I'm not hungry or thirsty, and I don't have to pee. Yeah, I'm OK. Right now. And when I park my car, late for the meeting, I'll still be OK. And when I walk into the meeting, I'll still be OK. And when I apologize and sit down, I'll still be OK. Each of these little slices of the future has arrived into the present, right on schedule, and I was OK for all of them.

Or say I've begun to think about someone I insulted or treated harshly (an hour ago, or even ten years ago!). I begin to think what an asshole I was, and worry about what the person thinks or thought of me. Then I check in. I'm OK right now. At this very moment, I'm not hurting anyone, and no one's hurting me. The "me" that perpetrated the insult no longer exists. If it's necessary and possible to make amends, the current "me" can take care of it in due time. Otherwise, right now, I can enjoy being OK, and the bad feelings can stay where they belong: in the past and extinct like the dodo.

Sometimes it's good to check in even when I'm not feeling challenged about the future or the past. A lot of my excursions into the future or past are totally unconscious, and the check-in is a way to get me back into the present from the realms of moments not-yet-born or already-dead.

Finally, I do understand that "instant" meditation is like instant anything: the real thing is almost always more satisfying. But when I can't sit my butt down for half an hour, these kinds of meditation can really hit the spot.

FINE PRINT

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Tim Baehr

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Back Issues

Note: Some information, such as scheduled events and broken links, have been deleted.

Issue #1 Essay: Men's Movement. Article: Mentoring at the Movies

Issue #2 Essay: Altered States of Consciousness. Follow-up: More on Mentoring at the Movies. Article: Web Resources for Men

Issue #3 Essay: Victimization. Article: Men's health issues.

Issue #4 Essay: Poem about responsibility. Article: How to write poetry.

Issue #5 Essay: Your game face. Article: Favorite Books

Issue #6 Essays: Happiness; Heart Threads. Article: Practice

Issue #7 Essay: Shepherd Bliss and the men's movement

Issue #8 Essay: Why Meet? Article: How to Start a Men's Group

Issue #9 Essay: Christmas Blues. Article: The Comics

Issue #10 Essay: Ruts, Routines, and Rituals. Meditation: Prose poem by Igor Volkov

Issue #11 Essays: Do You Feel a Draft?, Day Job. Article: Take Your Vitamins

Issue #12 Article: Inner Life

Issue #13 Article: Your Poems. Essay: What Happens at the Men's Wisdom Council

Issue #14 Article: Web Resources for Men

Issue #15 Article: Practicing what I preached (prostate testing). Poem: Weekend Winter Camp

Issue #16 Meditations: Tonglen; Guided Meditation

Issue #17 Articles: Stalking the Wild Gerbil; Meditations