What it means to be a man

At the end of my first year in college, I learned what it means to be a man.
I had attended school on an athletic scholarship for track and field. The coach and I didn’t get along very well. His personality clashed with mine, and I felt as though he was being too hard on me.
So toward the end of the season, I contacted the coach of another college in hopes of transferring away from the school—and the coach—that I was competing for.
Of course, the other coach was bound by law and the ethics of his profession to notify my coach that I had contacted him.
You can probably imagine how well my coach took the news that I was trying to transfer away from his program behind his back.
That was my first mistake. I didn’t want to face my coach, because I was afraid of him. I was afraid of how he would react. So I thought I could do this secretively and he would only find out at the beginning of the next school year when I didn’t show up.
Well, naturally, my coach was upset. That’s a nice way of putting it. Actually, he was livid.
And now, looking back on things, I don’t blame him at all for the way I treated him and made him feel.
Sure, he was a hard ass—even a jerk more times than I cared to count—but he deserved some measure of respect, which I failed to show him. I didn’t have the gumption to tell him how I really felt. I think that if I had, then his reaction would have been markedly different. He probably would have surprised me.
But the last thing I wanted to do was confront the man. I feared being yelled at and humiliated by him. I let my pride get in the way of doing what was right and what a man ought to do.
Consequently, I still got humiliated after I tried to transfer behind the coach’s back. I was forced to humble myself before him. I had to demonstrate humility and contrition when it was the last thing I wanted to do.
My dad and I had a long talk about my decision to transfer away from one college to another. Dad understood where I was coming from. He had his problems with coaches and instructors when he was in college, too.
But one thing he told me was that being a man oftentimes means doing things we don’t want to do, being somewhere we don’t want to be, and taking things we don’t want to take.
He was right.
I had made a mess of things all because I was uncomfortable and felt like I was being forced to be somewhere I didn’t want to be and do something I didn’t want to do.
I was acting like a little boy who didn’t get his way.
But I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I was legally a man, and my choice was to begin acting like it, or continue acting like a child.
Needless to say, my father talked some sense into me. I decided to humble myself before the coach and apologize for my behavior. He then surprised me by accepting me back and preserving my athletic scholarship. From then on, our relationship was significantly improved and I finished my second and final year of the scholarship on much better terms with the coach. We had come to an understanding about each other, because in my humility, I had opened up to him about how I felt.
Now, if I had just done that in the first place, then none of the ugliness that followed would have happened.
But learning is all part of growing. It is what must happen in order for a boy to transition into manhood. I’d like to think that I learned the easy way; but the truth is that I had learned the hard way. In fact, there is no easy way to learn how to become a man.
We learn by trial and error, by making mistakes and learning lessons from them. Learning and growing often hurt. They are painful and uncomfortable most of the time; but they are also necessary. This is how a boy becomes a man.
My first substantive lesson on manhood turned out to be the most important, because all other lessons I’ve learned since are related to doing the right thing.
That’s what manhood and being a man really boils down to: Do the right thing.
Doing the right thing is never easy, and it’s rarely ever painless, but we get rewarded when we do it. And we get punished when we don’t.
The reward is often subtle: The way someone else regards us when we’ve done right. We know it by the look in the other person’s eyes; by the tone of their voice; or by their gestures. We also know because our conscience is clear.
A man who has done the right thing is able to live with himself free from guilt, shame or regret. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful or difficult for him to do the right thing. But when the storm has passed, all is calm and right with the world again.
Conversely, the consequences of doing the wrong thing are never subtle. Rather, they are monumental.
When I had elected to transfer behind my coach’s back, the consequences hit me like a tsunami. My coach was preparing to revoke my scholarship, and the coach at the other school could not offer one to me; my relationship with my coach worsened; my integrity and character suffered; and so did my confidence and self-respect. I had proven to be a spineless wimp who couldn’t look another person in the eye and tell them how I felt or what was on my mind. I also was conniving, dishonest and self-serving. The way doing the wrong thing made me feel was punishment enough without all of the external consequences to my actions.
I was still an immature little boy at heart, and not yet a man. I wouldn’t have gotten there when I did, either, if I hadn’t decided to follow my father’s advice and done the right thing.
This leads me to the second lesson of manhood: Men are determined by their actions, not biology.
While I’ve been a physically mature male since I was a teenager, I didn’t become a man until I did the right thing and made a habit of trying to do the right thing.
Just because a guy develops physically doesn’t make him a man. He may be a matured male by virtue of biology; but he remains an immature youth until he learns what it means to be a man.
Doing the right thing and being a man are oftentimes hard; especially in a world full of pride, ego, temptations, violence and anger. The male gender, after all, is naturally more physically and sexually aggressive than its female counterpart.
As such, men tend to be more easily predisposed to violence, anger outbursts and sexual stimulation. This means that men tend to have greater weaknesses when it comes to acting out physically and succumbing to sexual urges.
Consequently, this makes doing the right thing a challenge, to say the least. Honestly, it is just downright difficult.
But do it we can, and do it we should.
If you want to be taken seriously in life, then you should make a habit of doing the right thing. And if you want to be respected as a man, then you ought to act like one.
I’ve heard lyrics and rhetoric from so-called gangsta rappers clamoring for respect from their “peeps” and others in the ‘hood. But then in the same lyrics they rap about violence towards others, and advocate for the same.
Do these guys really understand what it takes to be respected? Perhaps they ought to listen more closely to the words of Aretha Franklin to appreciate and understand what respect really is and how it’s gotten.
To get it, you must first give it. Nobody is entitled to unconditional respect. There is no such thing. Respect is earned by our choices, our actions, and our deeds. When we do the right thing, we earn some respect. When we choose to do the right thing consistently, then that respect becomes a part of our character.
A human male becomes a man not by doing the right thing occasionally, but rather by doing it consistently. When a guy’s character is defined by doing the right thing, then he has crossed the rite of passage into manhood. He has earned the right to call himself a man.
That is the third lesson of manhood: It isn’t enough to do the right thing once, every now and then, or occasionally. To be a man, you must develop a pattern of responsible behavior and accountable actions. Maturity is demonstrated not just by what we do, but also by how often we do it.
If you help your neighbor one day, then ignore him the next, how is that demonstrating manhood and a willingness to do the right thing? More importantly, how does such inconsistent maturity earn respect?
It doesn’t.
Respect is not quantifiable; it is qualitative. Just because you resolve to do the right thing once in a while doesn’t entitle you to any measure of respect. You can tell the truth one day and lie the next; but you won’t be respected any more for the one time you were truthful, because of the other time you were not.
To be respected, you must choose to do the right thing consistently, and more often than just whenever it suits you. As I’ve said before, doing the right thing isn’t easy. Neither is it convenient nor appealing most of the time.
But to be a man, to be taken seriously as a man, and to earn respect, nothing less than doing the right thing time and again will suffice.
It is what character and credibility are built upon, and it is at the very heart of what being a man is all about.