I avoid talking about politics, not because I am afraid of the fight, but because honestly, I would rather expend my energies taking care of myself and the people around me so that we can all be our best selves in the face of the chaos and dangers that are, sadly, a reality of this culture we live in.
But I do think about it, and I do worry about it.
Another day, another mass shooting in the Land of the Free.
We are all looking for easy, quick fixes. Gun control is a fix that ultimately will not work, because “controlling” something never works. Ask anyone who has survived a relationship with a control-freak; the more they try to control your behavior, the more you aren’t having it. The harder they come down on you for any perceived slight or transgression, the sneakier you get about doing what you have to do to survive.
I don’t want to take anybody’s guns away. But I do want no one to ever feel like they need to use them, ever.
I just watched Marie Forleo interview a former football player on MarieTV (the place to be . . .) about his new book, The Mask of Masculinity. Lewis Howes looked like somebody who had everything, but inside he was desperate to prove his worthiness. He had a drive to win, to be right, to succeed, that left him materially wealthy, but personally isolated and emotionally empty. Just a few years ago, he ended up in a fist fight where he injured somebody very seriously, projecting rage about his own inner conflicts onto someone else. He felt attacked, and he lashed out.
It shocked him, terrified him, and presented him with an opportunity: Look within and discover the root of this pain, or continue to self-destruct. Lewis Howes decided to look. And through that process, his life transformed. He was able to finally address the dark secret of the sexual abuse that was at the root of his desperate attempts to defend himself and to win no matter what. He was finally able to share it, and through sharing it, and connecting with other men who endured similar abuse, he began to heal.
Howes believes that male aggression is the result of conditioning. Many men and boys do not feel like they are free to express themselves, so they never learn how. They remain emotionally locked up behind the masks they are handed as part of their socialization. Men are not rewarded for crying, for sharing their secrets, for talking about their fears and frustrations. They are rewarded for winning, made fun of for crying, and most men Howes talked to did not feel like they had a single friend that they could talk to about all the things women talk to each other about every day.
Many men feel like they can’t share their true selves with anyone, even the people they are closest to.
Wives may go for decades and never really know the men they married. Children never know how much their father loves them, how proud he is of them. My own father was raised in a toxic situation; he was physically abused by his ultra-controlling and religious adoptive parents. He had a lot of trouble expressing his emotions to anyone except my mother. But a crisis of the heart, resulting in triple bypass surgery, guided him to a “screw this shit” moment, and he began to examine his inner self, work through some baggage, and find the peace he had so long desired. He became gentler, more loving, more tender. People in the Unitarian-Universalist church he and my mother attended adored him for his compassion, his sense of humor, his Druid-like calm and his devotion to environmental causes. My baby son recognized the Divine in him instantly, and loved no one more than he loved Umpa (except maybe the Milk Lady).
My dad became a magical being, and then he died.
And even now, decades later, I am pissed when I think about how I will never have a chance to know who he was becoming. I am pissed that it took a triple by-pass for him to allow himself to consider the idea that there might be some shit inside that he needed to attend to. I am grateful beyond reckoning that he actually did the work, and that I got to see him emerging from within like a damn phoenix. I am grateful for the seven amazing years I had with that beautiful awakened human, though they weren’t close to enough.
Our brothers are suffering, and struggling.
Male sexual abuse is far more prevalent than we may ever know, because boys are socialized to bottle that shit up and never, ever speak of it, and the pain and fear and self-loathing and guilt become a toxic stew that simmers for years, and sometimes it boils over. For my dad, it was heart disease. For others, it’s paying the abuse forward to the next generation. For still others, it’s taking an AR-15 into a group of people and opening fire.
Gun control isn’t going to fix this. Gun control isn’t going to erase anybody’s fear. Right now, we live in a patriarchal culture, and our men are broken. What the fuck does anybody think is going to happen? This culture, where men feel they have to prove something, where men feel desperate to hide their shame, where they can’t feel comfortable admitting that they are afraid of anything, has to come to an end. Women have endured unreasonable expectations, rape, beatings, mind control and endless baby-making–at the hands of men who have no idea how to deal with their emotions because they are socialized to believe that they are not even supposed to have them.
I’m not defending or excusing violent behavior, gods no. I’m not saying we have to forgive the mass shooters and the rapists and just let ’em grab us by the pussy and deal. Absolutely not. This is systemic rot. Look at the shit that has risen to the top. This country is ugly right now, stewing in the same toxic brew that has been simmering in the hearts and souls of the frightened white men who are in charge. Authoritarians and control freaks are flat-out terrified, and they want everybody else to feel equally terrified so they don’t feel so weak. That’s why they act the way they do.
We have to start rewarding our young men for feeling what they feel, for crying, for admitting they are afraid. We have to let them know that we love their gentleness, and that it’s more than okay to be soft and open and receptive. We have to encourage our young women to embrace gentleness and humility in a partner. It’s going to take generations, and it will probably be the hardest work we ever do. But we have to do it anyway if we are ever going to find our way back to real equality.
True equality means trusting each other to be who we are.
Not just allowing it, not just saying, “You do you.” It’s me trusting you to be who you are so you can engage your gifts and be fully present in your life–and not feel threatened, competitive or afraid. You trusting me to be who I am so I can engage my gifts and be fully present in my life. That is how we live without fear. That is how we grow and become more. That is what we must model to our sons and daughters and each other. It’s never too late to open your heart and learn how to be in love with your life.
Full disclosure: I do not own a gun, and I won’t. I don’t like ’em, because I don’t like things that are designed to kill. Period. I think people who perpetrate violent crimes of any nature need to be persecuted to the fullest and fairest extent of the law. I think the NRA needs to be held fiscally responsible for every incidence of gun violence and sued into non-existence. I do not have any solutions to the current problem of extreme violence in the United States, and don’t pretend to offer one. I am using my gifts to look to our future as a species and offer some ideas about how to heal going forward, because that is what I do.