I recently went to the bar for the first time in a long time. It is in bars where men feel complete, they shed their worries, have some lone time, process their feelings, and strategize. Sometimes the end game doesn’t always look like such but it’s a go-to place for men with burdens or seeking to be wild.
So, on a Monday morning bar meeting, I am sitting next to this huge guy, you could easily tell he is military from his bold mien, cold posture, and arrogance. You don’t find a man on a Monday morning taking beer and assume he is celebrating the birth of his second born, so I order him a beer and give him a thumbs up, he comes over and before long I learn that he was planning to kill his girlfriend/wife, what followed was a long conversation about his sacrifices for home and country that no one including those he cares for gave a hoot about.
In my short stint in this life, and as a therapist, I have listened to hundreds of men tell their sob stories of failures, men who left everything behind, men who lost everything and had to start from scratch, betrayed, rejected, falsely accused men who have nothing more to lose. What is always impressive is their capacity to bounce back and readjust their lives. Of course, those who don’t, go down the rabbit hole of depression, addictions and sometimes suicide.
Men grow through failure. In fact, the basis of a man is growing endurance through pain, making painful sacrifices for the purpose of honour, stoicism, courage in the most fearful of circumstances, ruthless fighting for awards and heroic deaths. All these this define manhood, as Jack Donovan says; ‘the way of men is the way of pain.’
Innocence and weakness have never been a trait that defines men, experience, failure, and mastering failure is what refines men.
Nothing pushes men better than failure because men are naturally solution finders. With the right mindset and tools, we pick well from failures as men because we are visionary and hierarchical, but we can sometimes set the bar too high for ourselves. It’s alright to fail, to be divorced, to be rejected, to be alone and lonely. Nothing pushed me to learn about female nature than being rejected by women or being left.
It is said you follow a wounded general because he has fought many fights and knows not just victory but failures as well. Being a good guy is okay but good guys don’t always get things done, a man must have the capacity to be ‘bad’ when situation calls for that, he has to be able to shoot and punch when duty calls.
Jordan Peterson says that if you think bad men are bad then you haven’t met harmless good men, they are worse. The point is, failure and learning from failure is ingrained at the very core of masculinity. Nature doesn’t reward nice, good, and soft men, neither do women, at least biologically.
In the book The Art of War as well as in chess, we learn strategy and the consequences of careless moves for your kingdom. Jack Donovan will teach you rugged Masculinity through tough love, Robert Greene will teach you that nice guys finish last, similarly redpill will open your eyes to the harsh realities that you have been avoiding. A man must be ready for pain. Choose pain as early as possible so that he can earn the privilege of laughter later. A man must not die when he encounters failure, but must find within himself and outside himself ways and resources to overcome failure and learn to live with it.