Paige is reading Boyhood and Beyond with the kids as part of their morning basket for homeschool and was relaying to me how she is enjoying it. She mentioned this idea that I wanted to take note of and expand a bit upon...
"Many men live one step behind life's events"
Many men assume they will be who they need to be when they need to be it without doing anything now to bring about the likelihood of that outcome. Many men get serious about how to work only after they already have a job. Others look for books on being a husband only after they are married and discover things aren't just going as well as they assumed they would. Then others buy parenting books only after they have children who are rebelling. Most men live a day late and a dollar short.
This is because most grown up males are boys in their thinking, reasoning and communicating.
1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
Boys do not become men simply because enough time happens to them and forces them into it. A boy can stay a boy as long as he likes, although he will have to navigate shaving and other side effects biology imposes upon him.
The way of a boy is reactive. Boys do what needs to be done only when and if it becomes so difficult to continue doing something the old, familiar way that something must be done: like counselling, parenting books, marriage seminars, etc... Boys aren't interested in something unless it's on fire.
The way of a man is proactive. Men do what needs to be done by preparing for what they foresee before it happens. At this point, I like to employ Sun Tzu's quote, "the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war." A man does the hard work of imposing upon himself the difficulties that attend living his priorities before they catch on fire.
The way of a boy is possessed in passivity. At the end of the day, he would prefer it if he could do nothing and have everyone else off of his back. But life happens and forces him to do more than he original intended and he feels the need to acquiesce to the pressures of other people's priorities... eventually in order to get them off of his back. He prefers the peace of passivity to the war of actually asserting himself. He only works in order to get out from under the weight of responsibility imposed upon him.
The way of a man is inhabited in initiative. At the end of the day, he would prefer to do something wrong than not do anything. He prefers his way of doing something to others way of not doing anything. This initiative is attended by push back from others and forces that resist being acted upon, but the man knows what he believes and why he believes it and gives his strength to impose his will upon that for which he is held responsible. He doesn't work in order to get out from under the weight of responsibility, he works in order to support the weight he has gladly assumed and seeks to use its gravity to impose his will upon it by enveloping it into his atmosphere and signing his name to the deed.
In short, life happens to boys; men happen to life.
Life as usual is worldliness. It is thoughtless, godless movement downstream. Life without intention is simply drift. It still moves, but it carries dead sticks and fish along wherever it goes. Life in this scenario is the normal course of events uninterrupted by any other imposition. What constitutes daily life is largely an unending chain of intermittent urgencies.
Urgency drives the boy where it likes and his boyish wisdom and warfare are powerless to resist its pressure. Importance drives the man to impose his will upon his time, his talents, his treasures and points them where he has decided he wants to go.
Things happens because they want to and one must respond or be entirely acted upon by them. This is quintessential boyishness. Life happens to you and decides for you. A man refuses to be acted upon by any and every thing. He has ideas about where he'd like to be and what end he'd like to see, so he reacts to what he is forced to react to, but he also makes decisions and lives in light of his priorities in such a way as to force life to react to him. He is a force to reckoned with, not a dead stick to be acted upon.
Boys fear life.
Life fears men.
Has to be a favorite of mine of your insights. By taking the initiative we dictate the terms of the conflict, we as men "happen to life" by rejecting passivity violently and not merely responding to life's circumstances.
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