Two Moments that Make a Man

Or break him

As a nerdy gen-Xer, I swerved through some Douglas Adams in my formative reading years, and anyone who did likewise will probably smile at the mention of the number 42. For those unaware of British absurdist sci-fi in the 1980s, in Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a civilization builds a supercomputer to determine the “answer to life, the universe, and everything.” After millions of years of computation, it finally pronounces the answer: 42. The dangers of overbroad questions are clear. 

When I turned 42, however, my memory of Adams’ joke led me to sit down and have a think on a variety of things. I went in search of questions and perspective, and realized a few things. Most sobering, I recognized that I was halfway. 84 years would be a good run for anybody, so at 42 it was probably all downhill from here. Reflecting on this second act of my life, I wondered at what had led me to the place I found myself. What answers (and what questions) had I discovered at the portentous age of 42? And I realized two sobering things, one leading to another. 

Sorry buddy. But this is something you need to hear.

Moment 1: This Guy is an Idiot

I realized something striking in my early forties. I would be having a conversation with a 20-something guy, and would distinctly think “this guy is an idiot” at some point in our interaction. I found that 20-something guys talked about things they didn’t understand. They got out on rhetorical limbs that threatened to break at any moment. And they were totally oblivious, absolutely certain they knew what they were talking about. Moreover, I realized I wasn’t the only one who thought this. When other 40-something guys were involved with me talking to one or more 20-somethings, at some point during the conversation we older men would share a knowing look. That look clearly communicated that we both thought the younger guy was an idiot, and we both knew we both thought that. But for some reason neither of us would say that, either to the younger guy or to each other. 

I wondered to myself why that might be. Why wouldn’t we, the older guys, take the younger guy aside and alert him to his idiocy? Why wouldn’t we try to steer him away from that silliness? Surely there was some kind of bro-code rule about it. After all, I would have wanted somebody to warn me if I was being an idiot in my 20s. Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?!

And then the hard truth coalesced. I was an idiot in my 20s. All men are. But none of them want to hear that. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it. Looking back honestly, I know I didn’t want to hear that, and wouldn’t have listened even if someone tried. Only in my 40s did I recognize that. More striking, I realized that many other guys in their 40s understood that, too. None of us would have listened in our 20s. Knowing that, we 40-somethings recognized that “they’ll learn” and that such learning is a slow and natural process that comes with age. 

But that 40-something understanding, I also came to realize, was somehow instinctual. Unconscious. Just an adaptation to life and age. It’s easy to believe you’ve finally “learned”, and fail to bring the specifics of this learning to your conscious consideration. And for good reason, as I discovered. Because as I examined this concept, I came to a chilling realization: If as a 40-something guy you find yourself being sadly amused by the idiocy of guys 20 years your junior, what are the odds that you’re being treated likewise by guys 20 years your senior? What are the chances that in the view of 60-something guys you’re still an idiot, but having learned the lessons of their 40s they are simply sharing knowing looks with those in their cohort rather than alert you? Do you still have things to learn? Is humility about your capacity, current and future, still wise? 

This is why it goes unsaid among older men. Most men recognize the “this guy is an idiot” phenomenon as they age, but only some can truly articulate it and what it means. Even fewer can bear to face the ramifications. That failure leaves them vulnerable in the dark night of the soul to come. 

Moment 2: You Aren’t Special

And that night is dark indeed. At some point between 30 and 45 (give or take), all men face a hard, unflinching truth: you don’t matter and nobody cares. No matter how special you may have been told you are, by anyone for any reason, and no matter for how long, the bottom line in the calculation of your life reads zero. In most cases this realization doesn’t happen slowly. It may build for a while, but the ultimate moment crashes into a man like he stepped in front of a bus. It’s shocking and terrifying. 

If you, like me, are a nerdy gen-Xer you are probably also passingly familiar with the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. You may sense in what I’m saying here echoes of his assorted protagonists’ sanity-blasting recognitions of their utter insignificance in the face of life, the universe, and everything. You’re not wrong. And how a man faces this moment, how he spiritually metabolizes this straight shot of 200 proof cosmic truth, will have a dramatic impact on the rest of his life’s arc.  

The productive take responsibility. The men who do this are the ones who go to work, determined to produce value that can be pointed to. They do not consider their baseline lack of societal value to be either good or bad. Rather, they view it as a hard but unavoidable reality, something they must accept so they can move foward. Having made that move, these men free themselves to build; they produce value that can be tangibly quantified. These are Theodore Roosevelt’s men-in-the-arena. Some have great success, and build structures (and fortunes) no one can deny. But these men may not get rich. Perhaps all they can manage is keeping a roof over their childrens’ heads and food in the pantry. Perhaps all they can do is get themselves up every day to go to a thankless job, and they never get ahead financially. But they do what they can to make themselves valuable to their families, their friends, their co-workers, and their communities. More than that, they understand that the work can never stop. If value is not being built it is being lost, so these men self-start every day to ensure net zero stays in the rearview mirror. These are men who agree with opinions like this, even if they may never read them because they’re out there demonstrating their value.   

Others deny responsibility, fleeing from the truth of their baseline useless existence. The denier holds that it’s someone else’s fault that he doesn’t matter and nobody cares. There is a shopping list of culprits to choose from. It could be his employer’s fault. Or “society.” Or women. Or racism/oppression. Or a political boogeyman (take your pick). Or autism. Or God (His presence or absence, either works here). Whichever excuse he concocts to explain it, this man ultimately embraces his uselessness as a way to pretend it doesn’t exist. He may call it “living my truth.” He may call it “just being me.” He may call it “keeping it real.” But regardless of the label he chooses to apply to it, it’s grounded in denial of his responsibility to make something of himself. These are the man-children, 50-somethings in backward ball caps and tank tops celebrating a new tattoo and trying to pretend life is one unending spring break. These are the sycophants, attaching themselves to the entourage of a value producer and pretending that makes them productive, too. These are the womanizers, fathering children they will never parent with women they will abandon. These are the internet trolls, talking a big game on the internet from the safety of their (or their longsuffering/weakling parents’) basement. These are the Bible’s slothful servants, burying their talent for “safety” rather than risk it in real labor. People who need to hear advice like this.   

The Real Spectrum

To be fair, this operates on a bell curve; most men are drifting somewhere between those comparatively extreme poles. Some days are good days, and productive value is built. Some days are bad days, and the tentacles of entropy slither out of the dark to erode the work. It is critical for a man to understand this push and pull, and this is why the second part of the lesson learned from moment one is so critical. Being able to honestly wonder if you’re still an idiot, and what to do about it if (and when) you are, is what separates humble, useful, trustworthy, productive men from useless blowhard infantile egomaniacs. Sadly, and perhaps ironically, productive men are often invisible. They have little time to lionize themselves–they’re building. By contrast, the loudest voices are often the least productive. Criticizing the work of others is an easy road for unproductive men to walk.   

None of this is new. The people who estimate such things estimate that as many as 100 billion people have lived on the planet in its history. Our progenitors torture-tested every imaginable way to live life, and a handful of fundamental truths have survived all that experimentation. One of those is the importance of men needing to actively demonstrate value to the people around them on an ongoing basis. You try to dodge this truth to your detriment. 

Why am I writing this? I’d like to believe I’m helping, trying to flag problems on the road of life for the bros who come after. I have to recognize, though, the quixotic nature of that. My fellows, the point of this is that you probably won’t understand any of this until you look back at your life through this frame. So hopefully this will help you make sense of your past foolishness, and chart a constructive course forward. Every day a new choice can get made. Choose value.