Vulnerability

Manliness, what is that exactly? As corny as it sounds, one of the things I had set out to do this summer was to refine my understanding of it. Surely responsibility factors heavily into it, that's honestly easy for me, I'm pretty mindful of my obligations and do make an effort to attend to them. But what of stoicism? Certainly there is some place for it? I find that I am less keen at adopting that one. I was never one to shy away from expressing my emotions and it just happens that the frequency of negative ones tend to outweigh that of the positive. Is that a problem?

Our society does not look kindly to whiners. And, I guess I see why that may be the case. Whining may be an expression of an inflated sense of entitlement: "I deserve more than this, why aren't you providing this for me?". In that sense, whining is an act of indulgence and serves only to further the self-centred desires of the whining party. "Stop whining" and "Don't be a pussy" are two immediate quotes that come to mind (Schwarzenegger from Kindergarten Cop and Downey Jr.fresh from Iron Man 3).

Something that holds me back from adopting a purely stoic approach to life, however, is honesty. Of course I'm not equating those who don't bitch about their problems to snake-oil salesmen. But I mean, to omit negativity from our daily discourse, to act as if the problems were less troubling than they really were, it seems a bit disingenuous. And my optimistic outlook deems that we embrace those aspects as much as we do everything else. Surely our lives are littered with trials and tribulation (some much more than others) and it seems only right to recognize hardships as a communal human characteristic.

And yet the only we can really bond over this sort of thing is if people are both cognizant and open to share about these aspects of each other. Not in an indulgently, but in a way that is mindful and respects the degree of one's particular trouble, in a way that keeps these instances in our discourse in order remind each other that our lives are not perfect specimens but, contrarily, speckled with blemishes.

Maybe that's why, right now, I'm just not that sold on the ideal that stoicism is a core attribute of manliness. Keeping it all locked inside definitely seems to be an unsustainable approach, especially with the increasing awareness and understanding of mental illness.

This post originally was going to be me bitching about having no friends I can truly be vulnerable with (hence the title) but I opted not to continue with that because it seemed a bit too indulgent and somehow this semi-intelligible monstrosity was conceived.

It's late, I should sleep, there's a second part but I'll finish that up tomorrow.