Manhood

Rejection is not pleasant. When you have a certain attachment to your ego and you have painted a picture, an image of your identity in your head and then suddenly you see it shatter right in front of you, it threatens the image you have of yourself.

This is partly why people say rejection stings, but it will always be more useful than failure to act or avoidance of confrontation with what you find intimidating or terrorizing. More often than not, people have a tendency to mistake false evidence for reality and then get spooked by it for a while, because such sensations are quite short-lived, they have a fleeting half-life that could not be permanently prolonged.

Nonetheless, it could be deliberately extended through entrapping yourself in a vicious circle and preserving its power over you for much longer than is necessary. Furthermore, rejection has a particular way of making you grow uncertain, insecure and dubious about your worth and what you’re made of. The people who take rejection seriously and actually feel overwhelmed by it are those who are insecure and dubious, to begin with, rejection merely aroused what was already there. A person who knows his worth will not lose it at the first instance it is threatened by what lies outside it, such a character is not firm but fragile and swayed by what is fundamentally beyond its total control. 

Your outlook on rejection must be revised before you get rejected again, because a rejection that is poorly dealt with and treated could prove to be detrimental to your progress and improvement. The rejection itself is not the problem here and this is crucial to discern unless you understand that you do not have total control over what happens in external situations and that you can’t go on avoiding rejections as a means of defending yourself.

Attempting to avoid inner conflict as a way of coping with a potential rejection is not useful, it merely enforces the problem at hand and makes you more avoidant than you were before, which in turn will drive you further away from the essence of the problem, that is, to alter your outlook on rejections so that when it is received, your internal attitude is not enfeebled by what is basically an uncontrollable occurrence.

You have absolute control over your actions and attitudes but you don’t have the same control over the actions and attitudes of others. Thus, there is an uncontrollable element in life which is simultaneously divine and inscrutable. The unpredictable and unexpected nature of life is what makes it thrilling but also mysterious and boundless. If life were to lose this uncontrollable aspect and we had total control over everything, including the exact course of future events, life would not be as meaningful as it is and existence itself would lack a striking sense of astonishment, which makes life itself an incredible and breathtaking ride which will never be uncovered. 

Going back to rejection, if you understand its basic nature, then, you can see how trivial it actually is to get rejected. Think about it, a rejection shattered the image you have of yourself and as a result, you are upset about it because you have an evident attachment to this image which exists only in your head and nowhere else. Do you see how preposterous this is? It puts things into perspective, it shows you that it is the image that is causing you upset and not the rejection itself. Therefore, you must transform your self-image by strengthening it and aligning it with reason and virtue. A weak self-image shatters easily as it is not grounded in firm virtue but weak shortcoming. This is why the weak have a hard time dealing with rejection whereas the strong are able to reject the rejection itself, as it were, and preserve their integrity without being shattered by non-acceptance.

A large part of dealing with rejection the right way is having mastery over your emotions and then arming yourself with adequate rationality to overcome the irrational feelings which compel you to act in opposition to reason. For one to overcome this inclination towards irrationality requires the cultivation of sensible, pragmatic and good reason as well as a mindful detachment from emotional thought. Remember, emotional thoughts are very fleeting but you willingly keep them around for longer than intended because you lack the reasonability and objectivity to push aside their influence and delay acting on them as a means of preserving reason. Thus, negative emotion is dragged out when you deliberately obsess over it and attempt to break it down into small minute parts and then trying to make sense of the disarray you have generated. 

When you have mastered your emotions, rejection is an invitation and not an injury. It is an invitation for advancement and refinement – if you can discern a rejection well and examine it without immobilizing yourself in the process, you can extract its inherent insight, which will fortify your character and galvanize your future actions. Most often, when rejection is misinterpreted and taken to heart, as most people tend to receive it, they don’t get to understand the insight instilled in it and all they derive from it is offence and suffering, which too are essential in some cases. But, when you can observe a rejection with rationality unclouded by emotion, not only will you derive its inherent wisdom but you will also rouse a sense of acceptance and thanks for having received such a sore rejection.

Ultimately, it is your discrimination of a rejection that determines how it will affect your sense of worth and honour. The honourable man is not swayed by rejection, a woman may attempt to poke a hole in his armour but his dignity is too sturdy to be injured and his perception too clear to be obscured by it. The nature of strong honour, then, is directed from within and its force is spirited enough so as not to be provoked by anything inferior, unreasonable or trivial. 

Publius Syrus remarks “No one ever lost honour but him who never had any.” You see, people who have honour are not disposed to lose it. But people who don’t have honour are always disposed of losing it since they never had it. Therefore, a strong sense of honour is never easily repudiated amidst threatening or otherwise acute situations, its solid foundation is the signification of good character and virtue itself and such stable basis are improbable to give in to weakness; anger, impulsive cravings, indulgence and avarice. What is left when honour is lost? Honour forms the groundwork of man, it cultivates his virtue, elevates his morals, commands both respect and admiration, and wins him favour and good name.

The abandonment of it, then, could be found to be the renouncement of virtue itself, because all that is of man’s responsibility requires a strong sense of honour, whether it is a continual discipline or the deliberate restraining from hedonism or indulgence. Honour teaches the man the nature of his own essential qualities through strengthening their might and alleviating the lesser evils while will prove to be impotent to his progress. Nonetheless, one must remember that expansive integrity demands unity and coherence. To preserve honour is simultaneously to preserve the unity and coherence of your inner workings. When there are division and conflict within, honour is found in opposition with vice. In other words, honour comes to be frail and infirm, transforming into dishonour. The degradation of dishonour stems from this divisive conflict which tarnishes one’s good points and amplifies one’s weak points through the overt demonstration of corruption and moral decay.

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone, especially if you’re ungrateful. It is in their absence that you finally acknowledge the weight of their presence. Yet, in their presence, you fail to concede and honour those who have done you well and good, not necessarily out of spite or scorn but out of a lack of attentiveness and mindful consideration. Gratitude is acknowledgement and if you are not capable of acknowledging what is worthy of your appreciation, you fail to notice what is favourable to you and of benefit. Acknowledgement is fair-minded and respectable, it is the mark of a decent person and is an act of altruism that is both charitable and noble. A person who is not capable of gratitude tends to be conceited and vain, he believes he is not entitled to pay recognition to those who have done him good and instead engages in pompous and snobbish behaviour that is contemptible and obnoxious. Such people are pessimists by nature, they get a kick out of undermining other people, it satisfies their diffidence and insecurity while making them feel on top of things. In reality, it is a game of self-deception which they are playing with themselves and any act of acknowledgement or appreciation on their part is depicted as weak or dangerous. Their pessimism has instilled in it a kind of disdain for everything around them, they swiftly identify all that is flawed and pay little notice to what is right and good. 

You see, their criticality and aversion to the good in others correspond to their inner fault-finding, judgemental and disparaging nature; they engage in the same behaviour with themselves. One could say that their self-importance is grounded in weakness, not strength. For, if it was found upon strength, they would possess a capacity for recognition and acknowledgement. A sense of self-importance that is grounded in strength is not overly self-critical or condemning of other people in a pedantic fashion – such attitudes are the result of unstable characters that are unhinged by false impressions, bitterness and resentment. Self-importance that is grounded in strength is well balanced and adjusted, it is not dismissive of its weakness nor arrogant of its goodness. The wise man is the one who is not blinded by ignorance, his awareness is clear and his prejudice does not warp his vision or deceive his judgement. Wisdom, then, is conscious of itself and reflective, it is evaluative but enlightened. 

On the other hand, when weakness and unawareness intersect, there is a cataclysm that may never be unwrapped. For, the very consequence of catastrophe, in this frame, is also the antagonist that obscures one’s acknowledgement of it. This is the intricate conundrum that often dooms people for life – one which the sensible person always guards himself against. A well-balanced person who is capable of an adequate degree of mindfulness can come to disentangle himself from such a problem, but it too requires a renunciation of hubris and wilful blindness. By and large, the average man lacks proper mindfulness because he goes through life moving in circles in a careless and unreasonable manner, his indiscriminate judgement does not compel him to give consideration or muse on those things which are making him miserable and enslaved.

So, instead of taking a step back and arranging what ought to be mapped out and repaired, he falls further into the terrible matrix and pretends to himself that everything is as should be and that there is nothing more that he can do that will be beneficial and of value to his cause; even worse is when a man has not identified his divine cause and he simply drifts from one domain to another with striking indecisiveness and uncertainty, waiting for death to take him. Drifting aimlessly from one realm to another is never going to lead you to the right place, it will only mislead you and leave you craving more of what you have already discovered. You know where the right place is and it isn’t the place you want to admit it is because doing so makes you feel insufficient of your current position. 

However, being honest with yourself and then opposing that part of you that deliberately runs away from what needs to be mended is crucial for your dissociation from an interminable trick you are deceiving yourself with. And think about it, accepting this truth, in the long haul, will be far less ruinous and painful than persisting in folly indefinitely. The wise are not devoid of errors, they simply have a clear outlook on how best to capitalize on them after they have been made and then use them to their advantage. Everyone will make a fool of himself every now and then, mistakes will be made and these are inevitable because they are indispensable to growth and heroism. What is important here, though, is the attitude with which you face them. If you are able to discern them for what they truly are; carriers of wisdom, you will derive from them the utmost benefit, and they will build up your experience so that you will not replicate them once more in the future. If you repeat an error, that means you have not thoroughly understood its basic lesson and further inquiry and attention should be directed towards this inaccuracy, to properly avert its manifestation. 

If you keep repeating the same mistakes, you are not moving forward, you are merely reproducing the same misjudgements. Those omissions, until they are identified and reversed, will hinder your progress. It is your job to single out inaccuracies and straighten them out with good reason and care. Don’t be ignorant and presume that omissions will resolve themselves, they will not. Omissions are there to signal and compel refinement and correction, they give you the opportunity to appraise your conduct and then do evaluate closely how they could be turned upside down and be of value and complementary with your good points. Rid yourself of an unduly self-sabotaging attitude towards failure and omission, such an attitude is neither productive nor illuminating. It is not a definite failing to stumble upon failure, the real failure happens when you fail to notice its underlying motive and you beat yourself up over your actions. Guilt and sabotage are unnecessary, they stimulate ample negative emotion and conceal from you the opportunity to observe an omission in its face. Self-reproach builds up anger and resentment and amidst such intense emotions, rational reasoning is not practicable. Good reason is only practicable when it is not impeded with passions of weakness and annoyance, such sensations leave no unobstructed space for a person to think things through properly and without emotional bigotry. 

When you engage in emotional reasoning, you become a neurotic woman, tripping on delusions and attempting to heedlessly justify or condemn yourself on your mistakes and fallacies without careful consideration. The way you subvert such irrational reasoning is through scrutiny without condemnation towards yourself, you must closely observe without diving into impulsive conclusions. The sensible man does not rely on spontaneous impressions, he observes carefully but doesn’t identify with it nor undermine his behaviour, he gazes and contemplates his errors without imposing labels or making swift deductions in the heat of the moment. Instead, he stands back and lets the temporary cloud of emotion pass, so as to preserve his rationality and not squander it through submitting and entertaining an irrational thought or a negative emotion, allowing it to grow uncontrollable to the point of coercing him into rash behaviour. 

So, in closing, a sensible nature stems from heightened awareness, attentive care, discretion and a lucid and wholly rational intellect. Furthermore, a sensible nature is not impulsively reactive to negative emotion, it is adequately detached and unwavering, it acknowledges but doesn’t submit. It stumbles but doesn’t despair, it accepts but doesn’t reproach. Thus, one’s sensible nature is preserved through mindful objectivity and a firm purpose grounded in wisdom and mastery.

As culture has grown increasingly effeminate, men have simultaneously grown bemused with what their role entails in society and whether this role they are occupying in society is one that benefits their progress and is in line with what their inherent nature demands of them. In general, men have become weaker and as unfortunate as it is to say, it is not hard to discern its evidence in the ordinary world. The superior man in present-day society has come to be likened to a faint-hearted, compliant, submissive and gentle dimwit that is exclusively beneficial to the feminine imperative as a consequence of his exploitative nature. The feminine overtly calls for such a man because of his lack of masculinity, or shall I say ‘toxic masculinity’ [excuse that abysmal word] and also since his spineless design will allow her to use him to her advantage. 

Thus, superiority in men has transformed into the very abandonment of masculine virtue and became the embodiment of repulsive feminine qualities which could, in reality, be perceived as vices that obscure man’s goodness and function. Man, by nature, are not easily swayed, they are not designed to be pushed around by a subservient member of the opposite sex, irrespective of what societal norms are employing to manipulate the reversal of gender roles. The gender role reversal is a calamity, not just for men but for women too – in doing so, you are diverting both polarities away from their intrinsic merit; spineless men and arrogant women. The intrinsic merit of man is of supreme importance and its digression is a failure to cultivate what is by nature good and significant and optimally beneficial to his province. And women? They have dirtied themselves with a corrupt agenda that supposedly empowers their better qualities, whatever those qualities are, because they lack the proper reason to consider the likely ramifications of a failing blueprint which leaves them smeared with the disfigurement of immoderate promiscuity and obscene behaviour. 

Anyways, I shall digress from this topic and expand on the depiction of a superior man. If you consider for a moment the qualities that make men prosper, such as orderliness, structure, restraint, persistence, honour, assurance and fortitude, it is reasonable to discern that said elements are scarcely conceivable in men today, with the everlasting falsifications and illusions that permeate mediocrity. Most men are deficient in most of the elements and they will not do anything about it because the initial awareness of it never arises, they live in ignorance of virtue to accommodate the lesser members of society. Not to mention, men have become exceedingly irrational and emotional to the point of stirring abhorrence and contempt, which only makes them hate themselves all the more and enforce their confusion. This chronic frustration never gets the proper treatment for its deliverance because most men seek guidance from other people who are just as mindless as they are and so it goes. 

For a man to come to himself, he must know that something is way out of line and then come to accept this verity without the slightest denial or justification, for both will hinder his progress and slip him back into the trap. Acceptance is harsh and painful, it is not effortless and easy to suddenly admit to your ignorance and weakness. It implies that you have wasted substantial time ignorantly waiting for things to happen or for your issues to resolve themselves and tomorrow never comes. This sudden realization is intolerable to most people, the fragile ego is shattered by a considerable dose of truth which exposes its weakness and incomprehension. 

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on, it is going on when you don’t have strength.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

Courage is not about being ready or about having the utmost strength to persist, it is more about your readiness and strength of will to endure hardship and pain despite your lack of power. Thus, courage uncovers itself in its authentic colours when one is impoverished and undergoing adversity. It is easier to put on a fearless facade when things are going your way but it takes genuine grit to readily persist with bravery when things are taking a downward turn. The superior man knows courage but also fear. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the conquering of fear because courageous action wipes out the possibility for terror to repel you into its misleading and depressive ruse. 

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

Socrates

A wise man has overcome his sense of arrogant pride and discovered for himself that wisdom begins the moment you acknowledge your shortage of it – putting aside your ego and arming yourself with good reason, so you can shatter limiting or perverted notions and beliefs and begin to perceive reality with clarity rather than obscurity. Furthermore, a life that lacks introspection and careful evaluation is not an honourable life because to contemplate is to gaze at that aspect of your character that necessitates transformation, which is simultaneously the aspect that you run away from. 

The superior man, then, has endeavoured to cultivate and amplify his key strong points; orderliness, restraint, persistence, honour, assurance and fortitude. Orderliness signifies his efficiency, care and diligent effort to preserve equilibrium within his limitless confines and to execute and carry out his deeds with lawfulness and discipline. Furthermore, it is his capacity to remain composed and alleviate the unforeseen chaos of daily life and wrestle with it to his benefit. Restraint signifies his capacity to stray away from impulsiveness, indulgence and heedless pleasure which dampens his character, muddles his senses and spoils his progress. Persistence signifies his capacity to undergo the battles that face him with a firm determination that conflict will propel him forward and in the direction of his impetus. To persist is to pursue excellence and all its prosperous ramifications of virtue. Honour signifies his capacity to know all that is virtuous and beneficial to him, uncompromising integrity and upright moral principles. The former demonstrates his strength of character, the latter his vigorous commitment to his rectitude. With assurance comes great conviction and fortitude, the essential qualities that spring from a tough spirit and a resilient character. This is the very fabric of the superior man, for the man of purpose knows himself to be in harmony with his own essential goodness, ensuring his virtue and dignity is not diminished or suppressed through vice, debasement or dishonesty. 

“It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easier to undermine your integrity and live to please other people because you are less liable and more leisurely. Living for yourself requires resilience and a strong backbone to keep you upright. Furthermore, it entails a certain responsibility and accountability to endure the conflict that is thrown at you with conviction and bravery and to understand that discomfort is necessary for growth and expansion. Life is not about making the right decision, it is about throwing yourself in disorder and learning to resourcefully and diligently cope with it, irrespective of ‘negative’ outcomes. What you deem a negative failing will turn out to be an essential building block on your journey towards mastery and nobility. Too many people are hung up on the notion of ensuring they don’t take a bad step, avoiding or lessening the likelihood of failure at all costs. This is an unnecessary precaution, if your outlook is one of timidity and aversion, you will never be readily disposed to take risks. Risks are inevitable, exciting and rewarding so long as you are willing to pursue them with a sense of boldness and faith. Conversely, if you perceive them in a bad light, you will fail to acknowledge their importance and recompense and be entrapped in ignorant blindness. 

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

William Faulkner