It may not be apparent from this blog but I have an insatiable drive to learn new skills and improve; do this thing well, that thing better, etc… I periodically turn the dial to eleven by striving for excellence at whatever damn goal I’ve a mind to pursue. (If generalities make my statements awkward, please forgive an artifact of OPSEC.)
I’m not saying this to brag. Frankly it gets awkward:
Normal person: “Have you seen that TV show XYZ?”
Me: “Nope, I don’t have time for TV. I was working on stuff and learning things.”
Normal person: “Unclean! Heathen!”
It’s how I’m wired. Sitting on my ass wears on me. I’m driven to do stuff.
Sometimes I do whimsical stuff. Other times I do stuff very seriously; with an aim of self-improvement. The latter is a big deal. I seek to improve because I am a man. I am a man because I seek to improve. Correlation is unavoidable. Causality is irrelevant.
I’m not alone. Many men reading this are nodding their heads in agreement. Creatures with a penis who read this with offense are not men; they’re “guys”. It’s different.
Self-improvement is coupled with accomplishment. Some accomplishments are small; “this cord of wood is stacked perfectly straight.” Some are large; “I defended my thesis!” Some are measurable; “I paid off every goddamn penny of my student loans.” Others are important but diffuse; “I was thoughtful and made my wife happy today.” Some are time dependent “I hiked to that particular patch of woods well before dawn on opening day.” Some are not “I’m going to rebuild that old truck when I get a chance.”
A man tries to “do well” in virtually any physical/mental/spiritual endeavor that appeals to him: fix a lawnmower, tie an elk hair caddis, learn French, run a marathon, do a crossword (without Wikipedia!), climb Everest, train a bird dog, coach a kid’s softball team, make a good omelet, etc…
At its purest form, his purpose is internal. Men aren’t trying to please a crowd; to do so would be pointless. The only audience that matters is himself; or perhaps God. This pursuit of inner quality its why men of a certain age dismiss youth’s addiction to selfies and social media. If a man meets a goal he set for himself it makes him happy; even if nobody knows. If he posts what he had for breakfast on Facebook and gets a thousand likes, it means nothing.
Men must move forward. Make a decision, set a goal, attempt to meet the goal. Reassess when necessary. When you reach a goal it’s time to pick another. Lather rinse repeat.
Men know the alternative is stagnation and eventually death. Bodies age and time passes, whether the totality is growth or decay is a choice. Ideally, strong muscles in a young man evolve toward experience and wisdom in an old one. If a man’s mind and spirit is the same at fifty as it was at twenty, he wasted three decades. If he let that happen he’d hate himself for it.
Success is, for the most part, irrelevant. It is the pursuit that matters. Failure (far more than success) will helpfully guide him in future improvement. “I was there but didn’t see any elk. So next year I’ll try across the ridge.” There is no shame in failure. There is shame in ambivalence.
In the next part I’ll start to tie all this together.