The Man

There is a man.

The man comes home from work. He is tired.

The man takes off his shoes. He takes off his jacket. He greets his wife with a smile and a little kiss.

The man calls his children to dinner, and they eat together and ask each other about the events of the day. The man complains casually about his boss. His wife complains affectionately about messes. The children complain about their homework. The family tells itself that it's going to be okay, and this is how life is.

The man puts on slippers, and picks up a drink, and picks up a newspaper, and sits down on the most comfortable chair in the living room, and reads about events in the world beyond his house and his neighbourhood. He reads in order to be up to date on what to talk about with his co-workers during breaks, and what to avoid talking about because it may be awkward in light of something which has happened. He reads in order to know who to be annoyed at for what recent indiscretion. He frowns at indulgent politicians. He smiles at progress in public works. He pauses to wonder at the pace of technological advancement.

The man is comfortable.

The man is sometimes worried, especially when looking at construction projects, and newspaper headlines, and stressed people whose problems he does not know how to solve.

The man is sometimes happy, especially when he thinks about his wife, and his kids, and his friends, and his home.

The man doesn't know what to do about the politicians, or how to feel about fluctuations in immigration.

But the man knows he works hard and does well enough by his boss and co-workers.

He takes care of his wife and his kids.

He looks back on his day and he feels he is doing his best. He can relax into that thought, like a warm bath; or an old, well-worn pair of shoes. He does not feel compelled to question it. He could, but it would only leave him more worried than happy, so why would he?

He settles into his chair, and keeps reading.

 

I am not that man.

Nobody is, really. The man is a concept. He is a trope. A story of a pattern which offers only partial reflections of the families in our real lives; sometimes closer, sometimes further away.

I particularly, though, have bound up a great deal of my sense of identity in not being that man.

Today, though, I feel a little closer to him.

 

Yesterday, I felt the slipping away of thoughts I couldn't hold onto, and it bothered me that I did not want to spend as much energy as it would take holding onto and preserving them.

I realized that it scared me, that it has always scared me, to think of letting myself put down even for a moment the vigilance of my duty to Question.

Question everything. Question who is writing the newspaper and what their perspective is. Question the direction of the company I work for. Question the habits of my co-workers, the fitness of my boss; Question what factors are driving their behaviour.

Most of all, Question my best. Question whether I could be doing more. And how.

I have never been satisfied with the world around me. I have always been infuriated at complacency.

I hated the man and what he stood for, because he stood for acceptance of a world I do not want to accept.

I hated the man because people seemed to praise him wherever they found him, in a way they did not praise me.

I have always been someone who needs to challenge the roles around me, not take them up as written.

I need to fight; I desperately need to fight, for a world with better dreams. Because I know, in this world where that man is an emblem to aspire to, in this world of real families where the man is partly and not fully reflected...

Sometimes, a wife is weeping in the bathroom grieving for the sense of connection she used to have to her man, a sense she is losing.

Sometimes, a daughter is huddled in bed, hating her body and herself, because she was born shaped like a son, and the best the man knows how to do is to tell his boy firmly and harshly to be a good, strong boy and grow into an upstanding young man. He does not know how to allow a son to be a daughter.

Sometimes, the man comes home from a place of work where he is angry and can say nothing. Sometimes he drinks to try to forget his own helplessness. Sometimes he pushes and punches his wife, or his child, just to hear wailed aloud the pleading that he cannot speak himself, and inside him is a place without happiness, where he knows he is only making things worse. But the best the man knows how to do includes no answers for how to endure the abuse and the stress he faces at work without turning into a sobbing wretch who would be fired and be unable to pay rent for his family, or a monster with whom they are trapped.

Sometimes... it is worse still than that.

I am not that man.

I have never been contented to do well enough, look after my own, find comfort in complaining; and in the commiseration in co-workers, friends, and family.

Although I think it is not coincidental that
I have rarely
been contented at all.

I have been awfully afraid, that if I put down the urgency of questioning, that if I let my doubts flow out of my head and evaporate like sweat on a hot day... I will forget to start doubting again. I will relax into a thoughtlessness reinforced by praise for conformity; praise for complacency; praise for giving of myself in service to a system greater than myself, but lesser than my imagination; praise which would not be given to someone who agitates for a better standard, a better world.

And it has been exhausting me, almost constantly, for most of my life, keeping tight hold of that vigilance. Always picking it up again as soon as I see I have had unsteady hands and it has fallen out of them. Although it cuts into my skin sometimes with the shifting weight and the sheer constancy, I carry it.

But today, for today, I have told that side of my mind to sleep. To sleep and wake up again, rested. I hope.

I sang an old, old plea to be remembered first, a song I have known and occasionally repeated. Just in case that side of my mind, never, ever woke up again.

Just in case.

And today I let my thoughts run off of me, and come back if they will, or be lost if they will not. I write some things down as notes, when I feel like it.

I am not holding so tight. I am looking around me with less urgency, and more casual interest.

And I think, in this space outside that side of my mind...

I can see the man.

I think, in this space...

I can see that he is not my enemy.

He does the best he thinks he can and relaxes into that thought like a favourite chair.

And I don't want him to stop doing that. I don't want to stop him from doing that.

I want to find him a better best to be. One that he can reach. One that allows more people, of more different kinds, to be safe around more iterations of him.

While he keeps on doing his best, upholding his pride, looking after his own.

We don't have to fight.

We don't have to fight.