Don’t Avoid The Maintenance Your Body Needs

Death is scary as hell

We’re all going to die one day, but chances are that not many of us are excited about it. Sometimes it’s easier to just hope for the best; sometimes it’s easier to not think about it at all.

As men, what do we do when we’re faced with something that’s hard to understand? What about when it’s hard to see how we can do anything about it?

Often, we withdraw. And that has serious consequences when it comes to our health. 

As men, many of us get off by fixing stuff. We’re all different, but we can find it gratifying to get our hands dirty, take things apart, put them back together again and approach much of what life throws at us in that way: categorizing, organizing, taking apart, putting back together.

Where it gets tricky is when we’re faced with our own health and wellbeing.

If it was math, our answer is either right or wrong. If you’re driving to your destination, you know how many kilometres you have left to go, you can measure what’s left in your tank, and you know when you can put your feet up. Consider even the car itself: either it runs or it doesn’t. It’s either broken or it’s fixed.

Our bodies don’t work that way

Sometimes, when you take your body to the mechanic they tell you that it’s falling apart and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even if you’ve done everything right – get the oil changed regularly and keep your dashboard polished – you still might hear that your vehicle is going to be difficult (and costly) to repair.

Other times, you can drive long and work your vehicle hard, burn your body’s candle at both ends and feel like everything is fine day after day, year after year, until you’re surprised by an engine failure.

The thing is, a car is much easier to worry about than a human body.

A car is something we can control (which is appealing) and something we can fix when it gets broken. We can swap out new parts here and there when we need them. We can drive it even when the engine is making weird sounds because whatever that grinding or grumbling means, we can make repairs or maybe drive away in something new.

Think of your body as a tree

A tree, though, doesn’t let you pick and choose which branches matter to you.

Whether it’s the thick main trunk or a singular leaf, every piece of the tree is equally a piece of the tree. Every part helps it grow, get nourishment, and prosper.

A tree doesn’t forget. When its life is done and its rings are exposed, you can retrace its existence, all of the hard years and the good ones. If there was a year of harsh weather or poor health, it will show up there, years later. The tree carries that with it all its life.

If you think this is all just silly symbolism, ask yourself, “How do I view my own body? What framework makes sense to me to make sense of my health?”

For many men, the answer is too often, “I don’t think of my health and body much at all.” And that comes back to bite us.

Whether we know it or not, if we’re living with the “car” mentality, it means we’re not likely to take our vehicle to the mechanic unless, or until, there is something obviously wrong.

Too often, that is too late

With a holistic, whole-life view of the “tree”, we know that we need to see an arborist every season. Like a garden, you wouldn’t leave it unattended; you know it needs regular attention from a gardener to weed and water and see if, and where, there may trouble brewing.

That’s the kind of relationship men need to make sure we have with our doctors and everyone who plays a role in our health: the buddies that we jog with, the life partners who keep us accountable and the chiropractors and trainers who keep us in good shape.

Life isn’t a highway

Life is a forest, where everything is interconnected, and where growing strong and staying healthy isn’t something you fit in-between pit stops – it’s the whole name of the game.

You can keep a car in your garage through the winter, you can strip it down to its skeleton and add new parts as you need them. If it comes down to it, you can get a new one entirely. 

In life, we can’t do that. Life is short and our bodies are fragile in so many ways – and that’s okay. It also makes it much harder to talk about than a car.

When we have an issue we can’t talk about, it goes unchecked. When we have a fear that’s too big for us to fit in our garage, so to speak, we simply stall. We stand like a deer in highlights: frozen and blinded to all the time we do have, and all the things we can do, to get out of the way.

Resources from Men &

• Fathering Tool Kit

• Managing Conflict Interactive Toolkit

• Goal Setting Tool Kit

• Anxiety Tool Kit

• Depression Tool Kit

• Managing Transitions Tool Kit

• How to Start a Men’s Group Tool Kit

Emotional Development and the Conditions We Place on Men’s Tears

Linda Lee wrote an article for the New York Times (2002), in which she describes a brief moment on CNN where well-known TV anchor Wolf Blitzer was reporting on news of a Senator dying in a plane crash. What is off-putting, yet all too familiar, about Lee’s description of Blitzer is not the death of the Senator’s friend in a plane crash but the widely viewed newscaster’s viewer warning that the male senator “gets very emotional” and that some “may not want to watch this” (Lee, 2002). As Lee describes it, “It was as if the sight of men’s tears threatened viewers’ own composure, implying that the social order itself was in danger” (Lee, 2002).

Be a Man. Don’t Cry.

How many times have you heard comments like “boys don’t cry”, “suck it up”, “be a man”, “don’t let them see you cry” or “man up”? Western society is riddled with these comments and statements for boys and men of all ages. Not only is the emotional expression of boys discouraged, but there are also limits or restrictive conditions under which it is okay for a boy or man to cry. It might be okay if a loved one has died or something serious has happened, but generally, the message “boys don’t cry” is pervasive and powerful.

Impact of a stifled emotional range of boys

This stifling of emotional expression can create real problems for boys as they grow up to become men. Low self-esteem, difficulty identifying and expressing feelings, and reluctance to reach out for help for emotional issues are just a few of the problems that emerge. All of these issues have the potential to develop into more serious issues that impact not only men but their families and communities.

Emotional expression as a male is complex and challenging at a personal, social and community level. There are unspoken and spoken rules about how much emotional expression is considered okay. At what point will your social group start to victimize you for expressing the “softer” emotions? Will you still have friends if you express what you are really feeling? It may seem grim and hopeless as you work so hard to raise emotionally healthy boys amidst a society with such powerful messages to continue to stifle the tears. Perhaps you may have grown up with those messages and have been passing them on to your own children. How can you as a parent support your sons to develop robust, balanced and healthy internal emotional lives? There are some very concrete things you can do as a parent, mentor, teacher, uncle, brother or grandfather.

Three Steps to Encouraging Healthy Emotional Development For Boys

1. Modelling

2. Encouragement

3. Support of Others

Modelling

Expressing your own feelings appropriately in front of your children can be a very simple way of modelling that feelings are human and it’s okay to show them. This doesn’t mean you need to turn on the firehose of expression but find ways to safely share intense feelings (in an age-appropriate way) so that your children start to understand that it’s healthy. This does not include violence as an expression of feelings. What it does mean is crying if there is something to cry about and to talk about how you are feeling so they understand what might be happening inside for you. This requires some vulnerability and risk-taking on your part.

Encouragement

Another strategy is to give your children encouraging messages when they do express their feelings. Rather than saying “don’t cry” or “suck it up”, take the time to help them find the words to express themselves. Reassure them that it is okay to cry, that everyone needs to cry sometimes and that you are right there with them.

Support of Others

Although society won’t change overnight, we can encourage our children to be great informal supporters for their friends, family and community. This means helping them learn not to insult or hurt others who are expressing their feelings openly. This is a powerful message and can have a significant ripple effect within groups of children and communities. As a community, we have made strides in the past few years toward accepting the emotional expression of boys and men. However, there still are some conditions on when it’s okay as we keep moving towards healthier emotional expression. We may be a fair distance away from a more real and true emotional expression in the media but it has to start with us.

If you need support you can call the Men’s Helplline at 1-833-327-MENS (6367)

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy next week’s edition as well!

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