Love is NOT…
“…a victory march.”
That’s from a verse from Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah.”
He wrote it in the face of “love” often fantasized as public triumph, for show.
It’s the “parade” down the wedding aisle.
“Look at me! Snagged me a partner devoted to me! I am worthy of love! Look upon my finery, ye single, and despair!”
Victory march. Small audience.
It’s the scroll down the Instagram or Facebook feed — you know it all too well — the gorgeous couple fawning over each other in word and image for the world to witness and admire.
Victory march. Global audience. …
A Life Lesson That A Huge Talking Mass of Cancer Taught Me
Imagine you are in your 30s.
You’re a supercool, super-happy, super-creative touring rock drummer and documentary maker…
And one day, you can’t catch your breath.
I just walked out of my friend Justin Sandler’s One Man Show…
Justin was that guy.
And a single X-Ray changed — and saved — his life.
It revealed this giant monstrous thing — a planet killer, a virtual asteroid — free floating in his chest, pressing into his heart and lungs and threatening to turn them cancerous too.
They told him he had weeks, if not days, to act before his life would be snuffed out. …
Dating is Sick
For a few reasons.
People are sick.
People are tired.
People are cynical.
People feel wrung out.
People feel disconnected from their hearts and their passions.
People feel disconnected from each other.
We are rushed.
Overwhelmed.
And, as we say with more truth than we realize, “crazed.”
We are bombarded by negativity and hatred and division across all media…
We are bombarded by resentment and rage and fury from below…
By scorn and greed and fear from above…
We are poured every day into a soup of lies that we didn’t ask for — and we find hard to separate out. …
One of the many brilliant linguistic meaning-grenades of the Hebrew Bible occurs after our two (no longer) innocent heroes get booted from Eden by a bouncer with flaming swords, no less.
When Adam and Eve make babies, it notably does not say that they “got it on” or “did the nasty.”
How different would the history of religion be if it did!
It doesn’t say they f*cked.
It doesn’t say they bonked.
It DEFINITELY doesn’t say they “hung out” (which is an astonishing expression of non-committal vagueness that Millennials so cherish).
It says, instead — “And Adam KNEW Eve.”
How many times have you raced past that word? …
Who Are You When You Are With Yourself?
Are you the same person alone as you are in public?
Or do you change?
Do you put on a happy face?
Or a mask of invulnerability? Of strength?
Or maybe of “don’t worry about me, I got it. I can handle it.”?
Do you allow cultural ideals of being a “real man” to shut down your ability to feel emotions without diminishing them as “girly”?
I’m talking to you, Texas.
Look…
It’s easy to “behave the right way, the acceptable social way — it’s easy to act out being a “should’” — when you have a thousand eyes on you. …
There’s a sublime moment in Annie Hall where Woody Allen is told that “you are what Grammie Hall would call a reeeeeeal Jew.”
And the camera cuts to Woody Allen now in black orthodox garb, a beard and dangly sideburns.
Anyone who has hung out with Israeli special forces guys, Tel-Aviv hipsters, hassidic mystics, California therapists, Jewish boxers, doctors, butchers, scholars — knows that there is no such thing as a “real Jew.” There are lots of ways of being Jewish and expressing the varieties of Jewish spirit.
So, too, goes for the label “real man.” I’ve been a dating and relationship writer and coach for over a decade and I have RAILED against the term “real man.” …
Several weeks ago, I created a FB group called #MenMeetMeToo so I could learn how men were processing the whirlwind of cultural change that #MeToo offers. To give guys a place to talk safely and openly, and to refine my own thoughts and feelings…
I have learned a lot. Here is part of it.
On separation…
I have learned that some men are ready to do the work of self-examination. Where have we exploited women? Where have we hurt them? Dishonored them? Where have we dishonored ourselves? How can we change old patterns? …
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