While following Jesus does bring meaning and purpose that nothing else can bring, life can still feel mundane. So, what’s the answer? Stewart takes us to a surprising passage of the Bible, where the apostle Paul writes about God’s power working in the lives of believers, so that they might have…great endurance and patience (Col 1:11). At first blush that sounds so…ordinary. God’s mighty work in someone to give them something so ordinary as endurance and patience? What about miracles? Healings? Converting thousands? But there is enormous power in just turning up. In enduring. In being patient. 

I never thought I’d cry reading a book on masculinity.

But that’s what happened as I read The Manual – Getting Masculinity Right, by author Al Stewart. I don’t think he intended for men to cry as they read that book (at least he didn’t say so in the introduction). But I felt strong emotions as I read a chapter that, for me, touched on the challenges of being a man in today’s world.

In other words, it was my male ‘Barbie’ moment.

Many females will tell you they had such a moment in the recent movie Barbie, where they resonated with the frustrations expressed by the character Gloria (played by America Ferrera), who spills her heart to the main character Barbie (Margot Robbie) about the pressures of being a female in today’s world:

Like, we [women] have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin…You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining…You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!

So, what hit me so hard in Stewart’s book that I couldn’t help welling up with emotion?

For me, it was the chapter on ‘Endurance: The Power of Turning Up’. Here’s what he has to say – and if you’re a bloke, especially if you’re a bloke in the thick of mid-life, with responsibilities growing on you like barnacles – see if it resonates with you:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. So said American author Henry David Thoreau. He’s right. There are many different reasons for this desperation. For some of us, our dreams may be dying. I don’t mean the dreams we had as kids, where we realise we won’t represent our country at the Olympics, but those deeply private things we’d hoped for. Those dreams that we didn’t share with anyone else. Eventually we realise these things are not going to happen…and that sense of quiet desperation lives with us.

He continues:

Or maybe the quiet desperation comes from heartache – just the wear and tear of life. I don’t know anyone who’s reached middle age without major heartache of some kind, be that from a failed marriage, or wayward children, or lack of children, or wider family, or failure at work, or health issues for themselves or for someone they love. Heartache is inevitable.’

While I wouldn’t have thought of my life as one of quiet desperation – on so many levels I feel blessed – these words about the pain and frustration of life hit a nerve, as I’m sure they do for many other men.

For other men, they’re frustrated by the everyday ‘Groundhog Day’ nature of life: ‘It’s easy for us to feel like we’re living the same day again, and again and again. Boredom is just a fact of life…For many men, the repetitive, mind-numbing routine of life is what they dread.’

Read More