Time for a Change?
How can it not be time for a change, right? Two weeks ago a man walked into a St. Louis company he worked for and started shooting his co-workers, killing 3people, and wounding over a dozen, I believe. The man who killed his co-workers was also killed. One of the people he killed was my friend’s neighbor’s son.
My heart tells me this all about how we’re raising little boys. We ‘train’ them just like they are trained to be soldiers in warring countries or trained to put mines in fields, and that is to live life like it’s one big fight and you better win. You better win in sports, business and/or sex and if you don’t, you’re not a man. What’s so absurd about the whole thing to me is when one does all these things so well, like Tiger Woods, then we scream and carry on about it. Didn’t he do as he was trained to do? I think so.
From my perspective, it’s not rocket science. If we want to stop creating unhappy, lonely and isolated men who carry out acts of violence because they feel there is no other recourse, we must teach them differently. If the man at Ft. Hood had not felt lonely and hopeless, the young Nigerian man had not felt so alone in the world with all his worldly possessions and the man here in St. Louis had been able to share his feelings, I don’t believe any of these horrible things would have occurred. We see the same M.O. for gang members. Their relationships at home and school are poor to non-existent and so they find something somewhere just to feel worthy and connected.
Can we begin a dialogue about male violence? Yes, women are violent also. However, we’re not getting anywhere talking about it collectively and I do believe more men seek violent ‘solutions’ than women. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the statistics would prove me wrong if I looked deeper. And I’m very open to that discovery. I also know that because we raise our little boys to be ‘killers’ in some way, kill ‘em on the playing field, be a lady-killer, etc, we get killers.
How can we expect different results when this is what we’re training 50% of our species to believe they are here to be?
A human identity is where this craziness will end. When we raise little boys to be skillful in building and honoring relationships, we will create peace makers, collaborators and connected happy people. Blowing up a plane or one’s co-workers would never even be on the radar screen as a solution for solving any problem. It would be unimaginable.
Won’t that be wonderful to live in a time when killing, beating and raping are unimaginable? The solution is imaginable. So what do you say we not only imagine it we do it? One identity for both boys and girls, women and men. To be human is to be loving, kind, compassionate and caring. That’s it. Pink is just a color, crying is another way to express one’s feelings like laughter, movies about relationships are as valuable as any other type of movie, etc. Being a man, like being a woman, is simply about being a loving person.
Yes, it’s time for a change and I believe we know what needs changing. It’s usually an inside job and this one is no different. Let’s do it!
