What Does a Gentle-Man Look Like in Today's World?

I've been trying to find a way into this one for a while, because it matters to me and I didn't want to get it wrong.

So I'll start where it starts for me.

Men in the highest offices in the world are talking about women in ways that would get a bloke thrown out of the pub. Young fellas are being sold a version of manhood by blokes on podcasts who are mostly selling something else. And the word "toxic" gets thrown around so much that half the people hearing it stop listening, which doesn't help anyone.

Somewhere in the middle of all that is a man trying to work out how to be decent. A father, a son, a bloke at work, a lad of seventeen who hasn't got a fucking clue what he's meant to be. I think he deserves a better answer than the ones he's getting.

So I keep coming back to a question.

What does a gentle-man actually look like in the world we're living in now?

Let me start with the ugly bit, because it should be said plainly.

The version of manhood that's being pushed hardest right now is about control. Control of your emotions, which really means hiding them.

Control of the people around you, which gets dressed up as leadership.

Win, dominate, never back down, never ask, never need. Call it the manosphere, call it toxic masculinity, call it whatever the fuck you like. The name matters less than what it does.

What it does, at its worst...

... is kill people.

This year alone, 58 women in Australia have been killed, according to Australian Femicide Watch.

And the year isn't even over.

Too many of them were killed by men who, at some point, had told them they loved them.

I know what that sort of violence does to a family. It doesn't stop when the man leaves the room. It follows people for years. That's all I'll say about it, because it's not only my story to tell.

Not every bloke who buys into that stuff is dangerous. Most aren't. But the idea underneath it, that being a man means being in charge of everyone around you, is the same idea at every volume. It's just louder at one end.

Hard and strong get mixed up, and I think that's where a lot of this goes wrong.

Hard is a surface.

It's armour. Hard things shatter when they cop the right hit.

Strong is structure.

It bends, it holds, it takes the weight and doesn't pass it on to whoever's standing closest.

Any man can be hard. It costs nothing. You stop feeling things and call it discipline. A bloke with the lid bolted down looks calm from the outside, right up until the kitchen wall has a fucking hole in it.

Being strong enough to stay gentle when you've got every excuse not to be...

... that takes work.

That's the harder version of a man.

We love the idea of a man as a protector, and I do too. But we've got used to picturing the protector as a wall. Hard, armed, unmoved, ready for a fight.

I reckon that's the wrong picture.

A man who protects is someone the people around him never have to be afraid of. Women, kids, other blokes.

You don't flinch when he walks in.

You don't read his mood from the next room.

His strength is the thing that makes the house safe, not the thing the house has to survive.

That takes something most of us were taught to be ashamed of...

... vulnerability.

I don't mean oversharing, or falling apart in public. I mean being able to say I'm struggling before the lid comes off. A man who can't admit he's hurting can't protect anyone for long. The pressure has to go somewhere, and it usually lands on whoever's closest.

The old Buddhist teachings have words for the other side of this.

Metta is loving-kindness, wishing people well.

Karuna is compassion, letting yourself be moved by someone else's pain and doing something about it.

People hear those words and picture someone soft. They're not soft.

They're a discipline.

It takes real strength to wish someone well when you've got reasons not to, and real balance to do it without letting them walk all over you.

I didn't have to look far to see what that looks like.

My old man spent over forty years working in prisons, on top of work that needed a security clearance most people never see. If anyone had a reason to believe the world was made of hard men and soft targets, it was him.

Yet he is the most balanced man I've ever known.

He could hold a boundary like nobody I've ever seen. Nobody walked over him, ever. And he was also the gentlest man in the room.

Both at once, and neither one cost him the other.

Everything in our house came back to respect. Not the kind you demand. He used to say respect is something you earn, and you can't demand it if you won't give it. As kids that just sounded like one of his lines. It took me years to see it was a whole way of living.

He gave it first. To everyone. Then he held the line.

You are not above anyone, and no one is above you.

That cuts both ways. It meant he'd never look down on another person, and it meant he'd never let anyone look down on him.

Looking back, what stands out most is what he did inside. Part of his job was getting men ready to go back out into the world. Rehabilitation, before release. For a lot of people that's a box ticked on a form. For my old man it was personal. He treated those men as people with a future, not just a sentence, and he put real effort into helping them be ready for it.

I didn't see what that did until years later, long after he'd left that role. We'd be out in public and a grown man would walk up to him and thank him for everything he'd done. I'd stand there and watch it happen. Some of those men hadn't forgotten a thing.

That was the proof, right there in front of him. And he never once made a speech about it.

I can't remember him raising a hand. I can barely remember him raising his voice. And yet the thought of disappointing him did more for our discipline than any smack across the head ever could have.

He had sayings. Not speeches. Just little reminders that drifted through a childhood without us noticing they were seeds being planted.

If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing properly.

Be grateful for what you have. So many people don't.

Do things for people because you want to, and don't expect anything back. It'll save you a shitload of disappointment.

Everybody deserves a second chance. Nobody deserves a third.

That last one is the whole argument. Mercy, with a spine. He'd give everyone a second chance, and then he'd stop. Not out of anger. Because holding a line is a kindness too, to everyone who's depending on it.

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that it hit me. The man could have written Meditations. I couldn't tell you if he ever read it, and he never quoted a word of it. That was the point.

Marcus Aurelius wrote it down.

My old man just did it.

Philosophy for him was never what he said. It was what he did on a Tuesday when nobody was watching.

There was no "his jobs and her jobs" in our house. Everyone did everything. By the time my sister and I left home at eighteen, we could look after ourselves completely, so we'd never have to rely on anyone. He wasn't raising us to be hard. He was raising us to be capable, and decent, and to know the difference.

I've done everything in my power to hand those same things down to my sons and daughters. It's the best thing anyone ever gave me.

I was blessed. I know that. Not everyone gets a father like that, and I'd be lying if I said I earned it. I was just fucking lucky.

These days I'm his full-time carer, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If anyone deserves to be surrounded by love as he walks toward his sunset, it's him.

Buddhism calls it the Middle Way.

Not the road of the hard man, and not the road of the man who's been shamed into disappearing.

Something steadier between the two.

That's where my dad lived.

He had the discipline of a man who'd never let anyone walk over him, and the compassion of someone who believed everybody deserved a chance. The old texts call that equanimity. I just call it balance. It's rare in a man, because nobody hands it to you. You build it, one choice at a time.

And most blokes don't get a model like mine. Most of us were handed a script. Be tough. Don't cry. Don't ask. Take it. A lot of men have never once seen a version of manhood that was strong and kind in the same body, so of course they go looking, and the loudest voices are happy to sell them something.

Maybe the least we can do is show them there's another way. Quietly, if that's our style. By being the bloke in the room who doesn't need to be feared to be respected.

At the end of the day, kindness is a choice.

It doesn't just happen to you. It isn't a personality type, or something you're born with or without. Every day there's a moment when you could be harder, louder, colder, and you could probably get away with it. The way you answer a woman in a shop who's had a bad day. The way you speak to a kid who's fucked up. The way you treat another bloke who's clearly not coping and too proud to say so.

And you choose something else.

That's not weakness. That's the strongest thing a man can do.

Kindness with a spine isn't a softer version of masculinity.

It's the harder one.

Peace, Love, and Profanities