Man.
Who taught you respect and loyalty toward other men?
Your mother?
A female friend?
Your girlfriend?
I doubt it.
Who taught you to work for a woman, to provide for a woman?
Your mother?
A female friend?
Your girlfriend?
Probably.
What did your father teach you?
To work, to earn, for a woman, for women?
Maybe.
Have you ever noticed when your father seems happiest?
When he is at home?
When he is listening to his wife's demands and expectations?
When he is giving himself away for his wife?
When his wife tells him what to do, because if he does not do it, he is not a man?
Do you recognize any of this?
Do you recognize the image of your father's biggest smile breaking through when he is away from his wife?
Often, even at work, he feels better than he does at home.
What do you think is to blame for that?
What made your father go to work regularly, systematically, even though that work was never his dream?
Maybe there, at work — even if it was boring, even if it was monotonous, even if it was hard — he still felt better than he did beside a woman, beside your mother.
Why do you think work, often overtime, became such a regular part of his life?
Because he liked it?
Or because he felt better at work than he did within your mother's reach?
Why do you think so many men drink alcohol?
Because it makes them feel free?
Or because beside the woman he chose to be with — the woman beside whom he is trying to live up to being a man, to being a father — it is hard to live, hard to breathe, hard to think?
Ask your father why he drinks.
Why he works.
Why he is not at home.
You may discover what has been weighing on his heart.
A woman.
The women he met.
The women he lived through.
You may discover that what weighs on his heart are also men — brothers — who, for a woman, in the name of a woman, sold their bonds, sold their brotherhood, sold their honor and their principles.
Man, just ask.
Wherever your father exists.
Wherever he may be.
If you do not have a father,
find a man
who has lived his share,
seen his share,
understood his share.
Do not look among your peers.
Look among the oldest generations.
Among men who live alone by choice.
Because they experienced enough, saw enough, understood enough
to know what is really going on.
What the reality of reality really is.
Without the narrative.
Without the illusion.
Without the bullshit.
Good luck, man.
Good luck, brother.