Today I Am a Man

by Kevin B. Burk, author of The Relationship Handbook: How to Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life.

As part of my current “Identity Exploration” (I don’t consider it to be a crisis, so I’m playing with other ways to describe this process) I’ve been questioning what it means to be a man.

Now, those of you who have read The Relationship Handbook: How to Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life (and may I extend a personal thanks to each of you who have), know that this is a question that I explore in some detail in Chapter 10: “Men are From Mars And Venus…And Women Are, Too.” The thing is, in that chapter, I explore what it means to be a man in the eyes of society, looking at how the biological definitions of masculinity no longer serve us, and why this leaves so many men adrift.

I’m compelled to explore these issues in a deeper, more comprehensive fashion now, because right now, these questions are looming large in my own life.

In fact, I’m grappling with two different sets of questions. The question of what it means to be a man (at least to me) is, secondary to the question of what it means to be an adult.

A part of this exploration process for me has included some changes in my physical appearance. I’m letting my hair grow longer, and I’ve recently grown a Van Dyke (a moustache and goatee, in case you’re unfamiliar with the correct term for this type of facial hair). Now, I’m not really a fan of facial hair, even though I generally look good in it. After about a week, it starts to drive me up the wall and I rarely keep it much beyond that point. Of course, I’m also not a fan of having to shave, so there’s a certain appeal to having facial hair. This particular style of facial hair seems to combine the worst of both worlds: it bugs me and in order to keep it looking good, I have to shave more often than I would if I didn’t have it in the first place.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had any facial hair, even though I’ve wanted to grow a beard on several occasions—usually when I’ve been called to do some intense introspection and inner work (it’s part of my periodic hibernation process). My belief was that men with beards are unconsciously communicating that they have something to hide, and that’s not a message that I want to put out there as I market myself and my speaking career.

Almost everyone that I’ve encountered of late has complimented me on my new look. I expressed my ambivalence to two friends of mine, and they shared their perceptions with me. According to them, the Van Dyke does not convey that I have anything to hide; on the contrary, it lends me an air of gentle authority and maturity, softening my energy somewhat. I’ve been encouraged to keep it for a while, and I’m considering doing that.

The thing is that the Van Dyke does make me look more mature, and I’m realizing just how at odds that is with how I feel. The grey hair is very pronounced in my beard (it’s less evident in my hair, and I’ve been going grey, very slowly, since college—my mom started going grey at 16) which, I suppose, lends me a very distinguished air. To look at me, you’d take me to be a mature, responsible adult. And, intellectually, I would agree with you. But on some, indefinable level, I simply don’t feel like an adult.

Now, one reason for this may be that I’ve recently adopted a tribe of my younger, orphaned selves, and I’m very much in contact with my “inner child” (not to mention my “inner teenager”). I suspect that as I fully integrate these parts of myself into my identity that I’ll experience a sense of completion in my life, heal many of the wounds of childhood, and feel ready to claim my identity as an adult.

However, a part of me knows that this isn’t enough. What I lacked—and what the vast majority of men in our culture lack—is a rite of passage into adulthood.

The only rite of passage that I personally experienced occurred when I was 13 years old and had my Bar Mitzvah. As far as Jewish culture is concerned, on that day, I became a man. Personally, I feel that it takes more than a glass of Manichevitz, an Izod shirt and a Cross pen and pencil set to make one a man.

There are certainly other rites of passage for men in today’s society. Marriage and fatherhood are two that come to mind. They don’t serve me, personally, of course, since even if I were in a committed relationship, it’s not currently possible for me to get married in California, and I’m not willing to even entertain the idea of being a single parent.

So, the upshot is that I’m a 38-year-old male who, on many levels, still isn’t ready to claim adulthood. I don’t consider myself a boy by any means, but I’m also uncomfortable with considering myself a man. And I can’t get away with calling myself a “young man” anymore except in the most flattering and diffuse of lighting.

As I write this, I’m preparing to attend a Native American sweat lodge ceremony. I’ve participated in sweat lodges many times before; however, this lodge will be very different: it’s a men’s lodge.

I’ve been on an active spiritual path for fourteen years or so, and I’ve realized that in all that time, the overwhelming majority of the energy has been female. It’s rare that I’ve been in a group that had an equal balance of men and women, and I’ve never been in a primarily or exclusively male spiritual environment.

While I’m actively looking forward to this event, I’m also observing myself experiencing a great deal of fear, resistance and apprehension about it. I’ve come to realize that I’m rather threatened by male energy—or at least some aspects of male energy.

This, of course, comes from old childhood wounds. I never experienced “male bonding” in high-school, I loved theatre, had a mature and rather sophisticated sense of humor, and when a ball was thrown at me, my natural reaction was (and still is) to duck. I was overweight, self-conscious, sensitive, hated sports, and actively dreaded gym class. The hazing, teasing, and other male-bonding activities that young men engage in as they explore their identities terrified me.

It’s easy to chalk this up to being gay: always knowing on some level that I was different from the other boys, and that being different made me a natural target is an all too familiar theme. While being gay certainly contributed to this experience, I don’t believe that it was the cause of it. I was not alone in my experience of being an outcast, of being excluded from the rituals of manhood, and I know that many of my fellow exiles who shared my experience were heterosexual.

It’s ironic, too, that I approach this sweat lodge with apprehension—I will only know one other person there, and the old fears that I may be the only gay man there and that I may be threatened or ostracized for whom I am have come out of the closet and clamor for my attention. The irony is that Native American traditions actively embraced gay men; gay men were the spiritual leaders of the tribe. The term “shaman” means not-man, not-woman, and shamans had the unique gift of being able to bridge the gap between the male mysteries and the female mysteries.

What I’m realizing, however, is that I’ve avoided or not had the chance to experience the male mysteries. It didn’t surprise me that I was somewhat out of balance in terms of the masculine and feminine energy in my life; what surprised me was that I was lacking the masculine energy, not the feminine.

This too, is ironic, because I’m very much aware of my male ego; in fact, it’s is currently throwing a fit at the thought that I may be coming across in this article as anything less than manly, masculine, and above all, butch. Of course, I’m also very much aware that this voice, these beliefs, these judgments arise because I have not learned what it truly means to be a man, at least to me. What I’ve experienced and what scares me is the shadow aspect of masculinity. I’ve yet to experience the light.

I’ve spent many years getting in touch with the Divine Feminine, and this has been a worthy and necessary pursuit, especially since the Divine Feminine is so actively repressed in our culture. But now, it seems that I need to be willing to explore and encounter the Divine Masculine--a process that in the mythological hero’s journey, at least, is fraught with danger, and frequently requires a death of some sort. It is truly a journey to encounter the unknown and the unknowable, and it is not one to be taken lightly.

I’m not entirely sure of who I am now, and I have no way of knowing who I will be when I complete this next leg of my journey. I am by turns excited, apprehensive, and flat-out scared. But I am also prepared, willing, and committed to facing my fears and experiencing the unknown.

The one thing that I do know, however, is that today I am a man.

Kevin B. Burk is the author of The Relationship Handbook: How to Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life. Visit http://www.EveryRelationship.com for a FREE Report on creating Amazing Relationships.

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