A Middle Aged Man's Manifesto

I apologize in advance for what is going to appear to many to be a depressing post. However, I would ask for you to consider for at least a moment what I have to say here, if only by way of a basic explanation—understanding is something that I have long felt is out of the question.

When I was a young man, I found myself—for reasons partly of my own making but also in no insignificant part for reasons of the making of unthinking and heedless men whose leadership positions expected more of them—in a very bad situation. This came hard after a horrific teenage era, which saw me suffer deep rejection, coolly, calmly and wickedly delivered, at the hands of the girls I found so beautiful and magical and those of my male peers. A heavy blow under any circumstance but made all the worse by the total failure of my hapless father to provide anything by way of guidance, of governance, of expectation, of benevolent leadership.

The end result of this twin blow was me, broken and helpless, unable to so much as shave without supervision lest I try to hurt myself with the blade.



It was during this time in hospital that I met, purely by chance, a scared and wild-eyed young women, who I spoke to again and again, trying to help. She killed herself a few weeks later when our masters weren’t looking.

A short while later, as I began to recover back home in Los Angeles, I took a long walk in the evening. It was one of those evenings only Southern Californians know: a cool, luminescent orange-blue sky, a soft and refreshing ocean breeze, bright green grass, the city lights twinkling on around me. And I found myself thinking of that poor woman, and of myself, and I made a vow then to myself.

Not just some random vow, not some low-rent version of a New Year’s resolution, but a real vow, an oath, a sworn undertaking. I vowed: that should I ever reach the point in my life where that woman found herself, that instead of taking that dark path I would, as an alternative, as a means of escaping a situation which has become unbearable, simply walk away from my life to date and attempt to build a new life elsewhere, far away. No matter how bad things got, I could not willingly walk away from the beauty of this world, of such skies.

Have I reached that point? This is where the explanation gets tough, because, yes, but, no, I didn’t fulfill that vow.

On the one side I have a wife who loves me, three almost divinely beautiful children and a job that many wish for and only a few get.

All of this is true. But what makes this all the more sad and difficult is that due to what happened to me as a young man I was broke and beyond repair before I even met my wife, before those children were conceived, before that job offer came my way. Because I did not heretofore realize this in any real way (hints, always, hints, but never the cold hand of reality intruded upon my daily thoughts), I did what any apparently healthy man in my position would do: I assumed that my situation would better as I matured and began to succeed through hard work and effort. And, so, I married, went to law school to better myself, succeeded beyond my hopes, even owned my own home and, of course, had those three souls that convinced me beyond all other available evidence that God, indeed, must exist.

Despite such apparent success, the underlying reality of my condition never really changed. I was a broken man by 24 and I remained a broken man even as I became a whirlwind of productive, socially-sanctioned activities. I remained a broken man even despite my wife’s smile, despite my oldest son’s sweetness, despite my younger son’s hugs, despite my daughter’s twirling in the sun.

It is not in spite of such things but because of them that I have come to realize the terrible and full scope of the problem. Any normal man, any healthy individual should be able to derive a sense of purpose, of human satisfaction from such work and such a wonderful and beloved family.

And yet, I remain a fundamentally broken man, whose heart aches with a poisonous mixture of regret and a deep longing for the past, whose mind seethes with ever-present anger about what happened to me when at some point in Junior High we were placed in the “winner” and “loser” baskets, and, above all, about my own people’s judgment that everything that I love and find dear and worthy of honor and veneration is hated and despised. From then to now, women continue to hold me in deep contempt, a clear sign that I have failed in some deep and fundamental way that is beyond any ability of mine to correct.

The result—despite a mighty effort on my part that has taken me from penniless on the streets of Berkeley to success by any conventional measure—is that I as a man have been effectively dead since around the age of 25. A gate closed in me, a road was barred, the sense of growth and possibility ended for me at that point.

So, the vow was broken as soon as it was made, for the maker had already passed from this world to a shadowy simulacrum.

I say, dead, but am I not 45? What has this dead man been doing for the past two decades?

Until recently, the answer would be: pulling myself up by my boot-straps, overcoming a poor start to life, learning the hard way what I should have been taught, finding success despite a starting handicap in the race, being the best husband and father I can be.

Today—of all days, today—circumstances, hard, cold and uncaring circumstances, objectively compel me to answer quite differently: I have been only acting out of an overwhelming sense of duty, like a man on a military mission who knows he has but a short time to live and yet feels compelled to do his duty lest he let his comrades down. I have never (or, to be more precise, have only momentarily) allowed myself to give up that sense of duty.

This duty allows this dead soul to keep moving.

I write this not to scare or to depress, nor, God forbid, to seek pity or, worse, help. Instead, I write this in the hope that my example will or can serve as a warning to young men out there in this modern world. We are taught—above all in America—that what happens to us or what we do as young people doesn’t matter.

It does matter. It matters deeply.

Young man! Seek the guidance of an older man, a man brave enough, experienced enough and manly enough to ignore the fog and noise of our poisonous culture, to ignore the dead hand of political correctness. (Note that this rules out, completely, college professors.) Find out the truth of your situation: about what it is and means to be a man; about how to ignore the romantic songs and movies and know the true essence and unforgiving judgment of women; about the full and real value of true education; about duty; about honor; about what competition really means; about what work and career actually are in the real world of real men.

Young man! Arm yourself not with degrees and credentials, but with wisdom!

Young man! Be ever watchful, be ever careful, assume you have been misled and misguided and proceed cautiously from there.

Lest one day you find yourself deep in middle age and decades dead.