I have spent a lot of time staring across that gap.

The space between the man I am and the man I want to be.

I think we all have.

That version of ourselves - the one we dream of becoming - feels close enough to see but too far to reach. He is stronger, sharper, more disciplined. He moves through life with certainty. He is the kind of man we would admire, the kind of man we know we could be, if only we could close the distance.

And yet, here we are.

We tell ourselves we are on our way. That we just need more time. More motivation. The right circumstances. That one day, we will wake up and finally be ready to become him.

But that day never comes, does it?

Most men live behind a mask.

It’s not always obvious.
He might laugh at the right moments. Shake the right hands. Show up to work on time. Provide. Achieve. Post. Perform.

But beneath the surface, he’s exhausted.

Because holding up a version of yourself that isn’t real - day after day - is the heaviest weight a man can carry.

And here’s the truth most won’t say out loud:

The man we pretend to be is slowly killing the man we could become.

Let’s not waste time.

You know exactly what you’ve been avoiding.

Not the inbox.
Not the gym.
Not the finances.
Those are surface-level.

You’re avoiding the one thing that would change everything - if you had the balls to face it!

For years, society has ignored young men.

Dismissed their struggles. Mocked their frustrations. Labelled them dangerous, toxic, or irrelevant. Instead of guiding them, we’ve abandoned them.

Now, we are seeing the consequences.

The rise of Andrew Tate and men like him isn’t an accident. It isn’t a fluke. It is a symptom of a broken system. A system where young men - lost, angry, and desperate for direction - are turning to whoever will speak to them, even if that voice leads them down the wrong path.

We are seeing the failure of modern masculinity in real-time. And at the heart of it is one undeniable truth: we have no elders.

Most of us were raised by ghosts.

Fathers who weren’t there.
Or were there in body but not in soul.
Mothers who were stretched thin, trying to do both roles in a world that honoured neither.

We got fragments. Glimpses.
A moment of presence between outbursts.
A smile behind exhaustion.
Or worse - nothing. Just silence, and a child learning to survive it.

So we became men the way wild dogs become hunters - by necessity, not guidance.

You’ve said it before

“I don’t know why I’m not doing the thing.”
“I just need to be more focused.”
“I’m procrastinating again - I’ll get it together tomorrow.”

You beat yourself up. You write better to-do lists. You download apps. You double your caffeine. Still, nothing moves.

So you conclude: “I must be lazy.”

But laziness isn’t the problem.

Grief is.

Masculinity is not in crisis.

It’s not dying. It’s not broken. It doesn’t need to be rescued, rebranded, or reclaimed by influencers screaming into webcams.

What’s happening is deeper.

More painful. More beautiful. More dangerous.

Masculinity is in transition.

And like all transitions, it’s messy. It’s full of contradiction. It’s haunted by the past and unsure of the future.

But this is not collapse.
This is rebirth.

There’s a quiet lie beneath most modern men's lives:

That we finish. That one day, we arrive.

At manhood.
At wholeness.
At peace.

As if some invisible medal ceremony is waiting at the end of the grind.
As if once we’ve made the money, fathered the kids, read the Stoics, and maybe done a bit of ayahuasca—we can finally stop.
Take a breath.
Put our weapons down.
Say, “I’ve made it.”

But the truth is sharper.
Harder.
More liberating.

Initiation is never over.

You think you’re strong because you carry it all yourself

Because you handle it. Push through. Don’t complain. Don’t ask for help.
You think needing others is weak.
You think solitude makes you a man.

But here’s the truth most of us were never told:

Men don’t heal in isolation. They harden.

And what hardens eventually breaks.

We’ve all been there.

That relationship that electrified you.
That one person who made your blood roar, your heart race, your mind spiral.
Every text hit like a drug. Every fight burned like gasoline. The sex felt cosmic. The silence felt like death.

You told yourself: “This must be real love.”

We all know the drill by now.

Name your fear.

Slap a label on it. Call it abandonment, call it failure, call it not being enough. Say it out loud. Own it. Maybe journal it, maybe share it in a men's circle, maybe post it on Instagram with a soulful caption.

Then what?

There’s a boy in every man.

And most of us have spent decades pretending he doesn’t exist.

We grew up. We hardened. We built. We learned how to operate in a world that doesn’t give a damn about softness. We learned control. We learned silence. We learned how to be “a man” - or at least what passed for one.

But the boy didn’t disappear.

He just got buried under strategy, muscle, sarcasm, achievement, addiction, self-help.

Let’s be honest.

You’ve built a life on control.
You’ve learned how to compartmentalise pain, how to delay gratification, how to silence your fear and keep going.

But there’s a difference between mastery and muzzling.

Real discipline is rooted in choice.
Suppression is rooted in fear.

• Discipline says: “I choose not to act on this impulse.”

• Suppression says: “If I let this out, I’ll lose everything.”

The Fortress Is Born from Fear.

We don’t set out to build walls. We start by building structure.

We just want control.
We want to know where everything is, what’s expected, and who we can count on. We want stability in a world that once tore us apart.

But the thing about trauma is – it doesn’t knock.
It echoes.

It shows up when you’re building systems and spreadsheets, calling it “structure,” when what you’re really doing is making sure no one can touch the places that still feel raw.

Restraint threatens the part of you that equates silence with surrender.

When you're hurt, restraint feels like weakness.
When you're disrespected, it feels like being walked on.
When you're angry, it feels like betrayal.

Because your nervous system is primed for survival, not reflection.

You don’t pause naturally. You react.
You strike fast, talk sharp, shut down or shut others out—not because you’re cruel, but because somewhere in your story, not acting once cost you something.

So now, the body believes this:

“If I don’t do something right now, I’ll lose.”

But what if that’s not true any-more?

At some point, every man must decide: “Am I going to keep living out my pain – or am I going to start living beyond it?”

We all carry wounds. Some are obvious – grief, heartbreak, abuse, betrayal. Others are quiet—neglect, unspoken shame, the constant sense that we were never quite enough.

But the wound is not the problem. The real danger is when the wound becomes our identity.

When we start seeing ourselves through the lens of what hurt us. When we begin to believe that the pain is who we are. When we mistake a scar for a story we must keep repeating.

Personal development has become an industry, and like any industry, it caters to those who can afford it. For all the talk about self-improvement being for everyone, the reality is far less inclusive. Working-class men - men who build, fix, and keep the world running - are being ignored, patronised, or outright dismissed by a movement that claims to help all men become their best selves.

We all carry an identity in our heads – a story about who we are, what we’re capable of, and where we belong in the world.

For some men, that identity is a weapon – a source of strength, confidence, and power.

For others, it is a cage.

The problem isn’t just our actions. The problem is how we see ourselves.

The mythopoetic men’s movement of the past was powerful. It reignited something ancient in modern men—an understanding that masculinity is more than a paycheck, more than brute strength, more than just a role assigned by society. Men like Robert Bly, Michael Meade, and Robert Moore sought to reconnect men to the old myths, the primal energies, the archetypes that have guided us since the dawn of time.

The fire that forged boys into men for generations has been reduced to an afterthought, replaced with the cold, sterile rituals of modernity: school, job, bills, distractions. The village is gone. The tribal elder has been replaced by the corporate manager. The warrior’s initiation has been swapped for meaningless self-indulgence – porn, video games, weekend drinking sessions that serve as nothing but an escape from the dull, slow death of routine.

We have left initiation behind. And because of that, we have left men behind.

It is time to bring men’s work back into the cities. Not as a nostalgic throwback to the past, but as a non-negotiable part of the future.