When Strong Men Give Up — and the Courage it Takes To Do So
They’re strong, stable, and noble to the naked eye — so why are men so afraid to risk it all for happiness?
When I was a kid, we listened to records.
It was a thing we did. For me, it was a stand-alone activity and I intently memorized the lyrics to literally thousands of songs. The other day one of these lines popped into my head unbidden from that long-ago far-away era, from an album I have not listened to in decades:
The strong give up and move on, while the weak give up and stay.
As a teen, I imagine this sounded like gibberish, but as an adult deeply entrenched in middle age it struck me like a bolt from the blue: “giving up” and moving on takes so much courage, it is somewhat remarkable anyone ever does it.
Especially given that our culture regularly vilifies us for doing so.
I often think the Great American Pastime is not so much baseball as “banging-our-heads-against-a-wall.” Middle-age is our classic template for a crisis, but as I look around at my peers, I see a lot fewer of us buying red convertibles than chasing our own tails in circles.
