To be a real man

The amount of time that I spend in Greece each year seems to be increasing and just this year it will sum up to six weeks. This also means dramatically increased amount of time spent over a Greek frappe someplace in the shade, letting my thoughts carry me away. And, curiously, weird and diverse thoughts tend to originate or at least pass through my brain over numerous frappes here in Greece, from taking radical steps into the unknown, to intercultural theories or revelations of the secret of Greek men. I am starting to believe good old Greek philosophers drank a lot of frappe as well.

And, at 44, it appears I need to learn loads of things about manhood. While observing men in all these tavernas and ouzeries, I am learning how the real men behave, in general and towards women. Here are my scientific conclusions so far.

Behaviour of real men – in general

• Real men are serious. They don’t smile and laugh and talk laud. This is what boys do. Real men enter with a serious face, sit with a serious face and leave with a serious face. Think of Clint Eastwood.
• Real men have their gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. When you talk to them, they seem to perceive what you are saying and they give you eye contact now and then, but most of the time they gaze over there into the void, into the dark clouds, into the society… They see what other people cannot. They are aware of what a regular guy is not. And the burden of knowing, seeing, being aware of it all, is heavy. Perhaps this is the reason for serious faces.
• Real men are supportive and they allow everybody to feel good about themselves. They don’t ridicule, they don’t show off, they don’t try to win over you… This is what losers do. Real men don’t need this crap. Their self-confidence is absolute so there’s no need of doing this petty social masturbation. No way! On the contrary, they will graciously help you save your face, maintain your dignity, they will mentor and support you in becoming a real man too.
• Real men don’t play. Play is for children. They don’t swim, they don’t ride bicycles, they don’t run, they don’t do sports. They sit and master life. Sometimes they drive and occasionally they walk. Very slowly.

Behaviour of real men – towards women

• Real men listen to women. A lot! They know women need understanding, acceptance, respect, appreciation and they are happy to provide. So they listen, nod, acknowledge, agree, support. Sometimes they will even smile. Sometimes they will even take their sunglasses off while listening, to make a more obvious eye contact with their deep blue eyes.
• Real men look directly and clearly at women, with appreciation in their eyes. They don’t turn their gaze away, they don’t look secretly. This is what pussies do. Real man show their interest openly yet with dignity and respect. In their presence every woman feels like a goddess herself.
• Real men are fully aware of their own worth when approaching women. They don’t beg, they don’t try to impress. They come, they make an offer and they ride off into the sunset. This is what I learned in another country of real men, Montenegro. While most of us the confused Central Europeans will approach women with the attitude: “I like you, but the question is whether you like me,” the real man’s approach will be:“You like me, but the question is whether I like you”.

The inner life of an insect

I was minding my own business, reading a book on a chair in front of our van, someplace high in the wilderness of the mountains of mainland Greece, no humans kilometres around (except my wife), yet I felt like being downtown NYC. There were tones of insects flying everywhere around the place. It actually sounded like JFK or Narita airport.

Fast flies, slow bugs, big bumblebees and tiny little speedy wasps, deep sounds and high pitches, flying experts and very clumsy ones, those passing in a hurry and a straight line and those sort of strolling around, not sure where to go next…

I mean, what goes on in their minds? Hang on, minds of insects? Well, whatever. There must be a decision making process someplace there. Say a bug flies slowly in a straight line towards the bright future and suddenly drops two metres, then it continues another ten metres in the straight line, then turns sharply right, continues a bit further only to make a u-turn, does some more soaring in this new direction and suddenly lands on a rock. Why all these changes? How does it come to these resolutions? There must be some sort of algorithm going on there?

Or, just yesterday in the evening, as I was sitting inside our van, a huge fly with a lightning speed entered through the side door, made one circle and exited through the same door, to disappear into the sunset. It was less that a one second event, I swear. So, what was going on inside this fly? Seeing a big red van with an open side door somewhere ahead, deciding that it could be worth checking out if there’s any shit worth eating up lying on the floor, entering with full throttle and then in less than a second deciding: “Nah, boring stuff, nothing really, just this stupid human sitting and staring at me, I guess I’ll just leave” and zooming out.

C’mmon, in one second? I would love to be able to make such quick decisions. To scan all the data, process it, decide and make a step.

Hey, has anybody ever try to study the  inner world of insects? Like follow one throughout the day, try to find a pattern there? You know, like following a fly from early in the morning. Like follow her with a camera, when she (let’s just say she is female, OK?) wakes up, does some stretching, licks up her legs a bit (ever noticed flies do that all the time?), flies for three minutes in circles, then sits on the armchair, does some more leg-licking, then flies to the bookshelf…

Do you think I should go and find something useful to do?

Believers and non-believers of planet Earth

Please correct me if I got any observations wrong, but this is what I understand has been going on for thousands of years on our planet:

PHASE ONE: We wish to know what life is, whether there is any deeper meaning to it and what happens after we die. Because there seems to be no way of knowing it (let’s face it, we can only come up with some interpretations, models, but not with the ultimate truth itself), we choose to believe in a story, a model, an interpretation. Sometimes it is a story about a Supreme Being – called God – which we read about or were told. So, we still don’t know, but we choose to believe in a story. In His-story.

TWO: We find it extremely important to state over and over again, to show it to the whole world, that we chose to believe in this very specific story about this specific Supreme Being, and not in any other stories. So we keep repeating it and seek communion with people that chose to believe in that same story about the same Supreme Being. In that community we feel safe, accepted, loved, connected. It is really nice and cosy.

PHASE THREE: We notice there are people around the world, in fact millions of them, who opted to believe in a different story, a story about another Supreme Being. At least they call him/her with a different name. And we notice also that there are many people around who don’t believe in any story. They just simply don’t believe. Their story is to not believe in stories. We don’t like it because we like to believe that our story is the correct representation of the Truth itself, and so other stories fill us with uneasy feelings. So we resent other stories and we call all these people the non-believers. Because they chose to not believe in “our” story but rather in another story. We believe our story is the only correct one and we believe other stories are wrong and so the non-believers are wrong. We feel they need to be corrected, because it is just wrong to be wrong.

PHASE FOUR: We find it hard to step into other people’s shoes and adopt their point of view, and so we fail to see that from their point of view we are the non-believers and they are the right-believers. We fail to see that from their perspective we are wrong and need to be corrected. We also fail to understand that none of us knows: we only chose to believe in different stories. We also fail to see that our holy books were written by people and so our holy books are just as holy as other holy books are. They were all written by people and are just part of different stories. In other words, this very blog is just as holy as any other holy or un-holy book. A person – inspired in his/her own way – writing his/her story.

PHASE FIVE: Believing that our story is the only right one and our Supreme Being is the only real one, and at the same time believing other stories are wrong and all the non-believers are wrong and thus less worthy, we start correcting them. They – of course – don’t like it. They would prefer correcting us, the non-believers. We don’t like it. We feel threatened. It is our story or theirs! There can only be one story! And it will be our story! Or no story! So it is time to take out the gun and protect our story. And protect our Supreme Being!

Humans are the most intelligent beings on this planet?

Driving our lives through the curves of time

I am sitting on the one-day-two-nights ferryboat ride across the Adriatic Sea towards the bellowed Greece, to then slowly, very slowly, start roaming with our van around the Peloponnese and afterwards through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia… There’s not much to do on the boat, so there’s plenty of time to rest and start unwinding now after all the workshops, trainings and facilitations I have lead in the last months.

Just this morning I remembered the question that GirrafeDancer asked in one of his comments about how I manage all my work, travels, personal life, family life… Well, I am very content to notice that I have made quite a considerable progress in this regards in the last few years. So, this is what works well for me. Having been wrapped up in the question of meaning for the most of my life, this is where I start when thinking about managing my life:

What is most important in my life? What are my core passions, what brings meaning and life to my existence?

In my case and in this period of my life, this would be the answer (random order):

• exploring and understanding life within me and life around me
• providing meaningful contribution to the life of other people, especially in helping them connect and establish true and empathic relationships
• deep, open, inspiring and supporting relationships with my wife and friends
• supporting our kids in them becoming independent, fulfilled, open, empathic, responsible, curious, creative adults
• taking care of my physical and psychological needs and wellbeing

Once I clarify that (and I do it at least once a year), I want to establish

What actions or ways of living would support my core passions?

Here are my own ways:

• In terms of exploring and understanding life within me and around me, Zen meditation, deepening NVC awareness and skills, spending time alone, exploring intercultural communication, exploring group Dialogue process and potentials… Basically it is really about being a happy learner and this is why I will have spent 6 weeks of this year on trainings myself. Besides that, I believe writing this blog also falls into this category.
• Meaningful contribution is linked mainly to my work and so I tend to quit doing things that I don’t find as contributing and I eternally work on focusing and refocusing. So, for instance, I have been introducing and bringing in the trainings I give in business environment more and more of the meaningful and deep stuff – though it may be a bit unusual. Who cares? Business people are people too, with their lives, feelings, fears, needs, hopes…, so let’s talk about that. And I try to devote more of my time to projects like Talk Together.” Not to mention the book about establishing a dialogue with kids, that is being edited just now. With possibly more to come.
• Relationships – with my beautiful wife it comes down to spending a lot of quality time together, but also to work on deepening our relationship. Similarly I keep asking myself: which friends do I really find mutually inspiring, enriching and enjoyable to be with and how do I want to spend time with them?
• Kids: Aged between 15 and 19, it is on the one hand very obvious that soon they will be away living their own lives and so that the time is sort of running out. And on the other hand I need to work harder on exploring, together with them, strategies about how they would also enjoy being with me.
• •My own physical and psychological wellbeing? Well, sleep, nutrition and physical exercise is the thing that supports it on the physical level, having time on my own and also having nurturing and easy time with my wife proves to be crucial as well.
• Before making these ideas more specific, I also want to

Identify and cross out the life-wasters

since they don’t support my passions whatsoever and leave me empty, tired and frustrated at the end. Some things that I have in large extend successfully crossed out already are:

• watching  TV, reading just about everything in the newspapers and yellow press, spending hours with people on talking about not-alive and not-inspiring stuff, shopping, browsing internet and filling my mind with all that’s there (still need to work on this one… )…

From the wish-list to a specific plan

Now it is all about bringing it down to specific actions and breaking it down to quarterly, monthy, weekly and daily scheduling . Otherwise I will just keep copypasting this wish list every January 1. So, what am I going to do, when, how, with what resources, what needs to be my first step…

Support, monitoring, measuring, celebrating

Since I have learned in my life that lofty plans tend to remain in the air because that mind is weak, I pay attention to how to put them in practice. I have paired up with my good friend and we write monthly reports to each other about how we are doing with our plans (thus supporting each other in keeping up with them), I have monthly plans and weekly schedules posted above my desk, I have reminders in my electronic calendar…

And yes, to celebrate even the little steps seems to be an important and inspiring thing, so just now I again celebrate how much I have learned and experienced in the last five years of my life. Not everything is perfect in the sense that it would be according to my wildest dreams, but, at the same time, there’s absolutely nothing to complain about.

I remember two old-style British ladies that I meet at the top of a high in the port of Barcelona. It was a very small observing platform at the top, the wind was strong and we were swinging back and forth considerably. The first lady said with a worried voice: “Jane, this thing is definitely not stable!”

And lady Jane’s brilliant answer was: “It is stable ENOUGH, Ruth!”

Yes, in the same way I believe my life is absolutely perfect enough