Support Systems
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Support Systems
Hi Friends,
My good friend sent me a link to this YouTube channel (also available as a podcast). It’s called the Order of Man and on Fridays, the host, Ryan Michler, just riffs on random topics. On this episode, he tells a story about running into some young boys who are dressed in fantasy warrior costumes and are pretend fighting. He finds out that it’s called LARPing, which stands for Live Action Role Playing. He goes on and says a lot of men are just role playing their way through life and not living up to who they really want to be. It’s a good discussion. He toes the line of being too masculine, but never really crosses it. I thought he had some really good points. One of them being, you need to surround yourself with other men. It sounds weird at first but it makes sense and it really hit home for me.
We are social creatures by nature and we need social interaction with other human beings. We all need a support system. We need friends. I can speak from experience that when I got married and especially after I became a father, those friendships fell to the wayside. My priorities were my wife and my family. And there is nothing wrong with that. We are husbands and fathers and we are wired to protect and provide. There is also a downside to that. We tend to forget that we also have needs and if we don’t have social interaction, bonds with other men who are just like us, we start to break down. I know it sounds dramatic but that’s what happened to me. I wasn’t myself and everything else around me suffered. I wasn’t the best husband, father, or employee that I could be.
I think a lot of us fall into this hole of doing our jobs as husbands and fathers and forgetting who we were before all of that. It’s important to remember we can’t do it all alone and we need that support system. To ground us. To motivate us. To vent to. To joke with. To drink with. To be the guy to listen to things and say “oh yeah that happens to me too” so the other person doesn’t feel like they’re in this alone. Because they’re not. We’re all just here trying to figure shit out. And it helps to know that you’re not the only one.
Before the links, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has sent kind words and support. It’s cool that anyone reads this at all. And if it helps anyone, that’s awesome. Please forward this to anyone who you might think would enjoy this.
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Tweet of the Week
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