“I need a thing” he said to me “I’m in a rut and I need a thing.” I offered a suggestion, but it was of no interest to him. “Yea… You need a thing.” Was all I could say after that. How many times have I been there? In that same seat, feeling the same way. “Everything is going well for me, but I don’t have a thing. I go to work, I come home, I eat, I sleep. That’s all I do and I’m bored.” You are lying to me/yourself if you try to tell me you’ve never been here, and it likely isn’t the first or the last time.
This world we are in is full of things to do. I would say at this moment we as a society have more things to do with our spare time and idle hands than ever before in history, but so many of us are wandering aimlessly outside of our duties to work and family. It’s a hard thing to realize that you don’t have something to occupy your time. Something that grips your mental, emotional, and spiritual faculties. In this world having a “thing” that can fulfil all three is vitally important not just to people in general, but men especially. We need a purpose men. A higher calling. A challenge. That is something that every great man has recognized and striven for.
So what’s keeping us from striving to be better? It took me 29 years to come to the conclusion that “if it doesn’t make me better than I was yesterday it’s not worth doing.” Why? There are so many things out there to do in my spare time, why doesn’t anything sound good or interesting. For starters, most of the time consuming things out there are not exactly beneficial for our minds, bodies, or souls. Social Media was the beginning of a new time wasting age. It can consume people. We have also seen the greatness that can be had when Social Media is used for something good like human rights revolutions. More often than not it’s used to see what celeb looks terrible in their bathing suit, and that is what most of us use it for.
I’m reading Hero Tales from American History written by Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. 5 chapters in and it’s easy to tell you that the relating theme between each story is that the person they are talking about stays busy and outside. They have an adventurous spirit and work tirelessly at what they are doing, which 200 years ago was basically farming, surveying the land, fighting in wars, and fighting Indians. All those things are very different time occupiers than what we have today. I don’t know what the men of the past would have done to waste time. I bet it involved gambling and drinking, or maybe sleeping, or rolling that wooden hoop down the street with a stick. I don’t know! One thing that is cross generational, that supersedes time, great men didn’t waste time or effort. Everything they did had purpose, even if it wasn’t clear at first, and especially if it wasn’t easy. This is a quote from the first chapter in an explanation of why they wrote this book.
Its purpose, as you know better than any one else, is to tell in simple fashion the story of some Americans who showed that they knew how to live and how to die; who proved their truth by their endeavor; and who joined to the stern and manly qualities which are essential to the well being of a masterful race the virtues of gentleness, of patriotism, and of lofty adherence to an ideal.
If you asked me “DH do you adhere to an ideal of stern and manly qualities?” My first thought would be “that sounds exhausting.” Wouldn’t that be great to say “yes” with confidence? We live in different times now, where all the land has been mapped, and there is no new frontier to conquer. The vast majority of us don’t have plots of land to till and farms to plant, and no Farmville doesn’t count. We don’t face death behind every tree from beast or man. Our lives are remarkably easier than compared to 200 years ago. We have been given the gift of enormous amounts of free time.
When I look back at the times where I was wishing for something to do, I realize i was really searching for something to define me, something that I could tell everyone about much like a Vegan or a Marathoner do. I can easily recognize now that I didn’t have an ideal. I didn’t have a lofty ideal as Teddy would say. Over the past few years I have learned that unless what I am doing has a point to it, then I am not going to be happy doing it. Now all I have to do is find the point or the ideal…. I know for a fact that’s why I wandered around doing and trying so many “things.” So if you are finding yourself wishing you had a thing to define you, an ideal to live by, you better start doing some introspection and figure out what you want to define you. Nothing is just going to magically happen to you, you have to find an ideal, set goals and start working towards it.
This is so easy to say and so difficult to do. I have lived by many ideals and at times by none. I have found things that have caused great personal growth, and other things that have wasted years of my life. I have declared “This is my ideal!” And done nothing to support that. Words without action are just that. Good intentions and nice feelings only go as far as the action that defines them. So if you are reading this thinking “I have an ideal, but I don’t have a thing!” You have reached the time where you need to start setting goals. Start small with the one easy question to answer. “What can I do today to live by my ideal?” Without that action, we are all just telling ourselves something that sounds nice to feel nice. It means nothing. It’s faith without works.
This goal or ideal that you choose can be anything you want it to be. My advice is to do everything, then narrow it down to what really interests you. I know plenty of people who have their “thing” be sports. Playing, watching, stats, following your favorite team etc etc. we all know what that looks like. I’m happy for them. Don’t get me wrong I love my Colts and fantasy football. Ask my wife, we rearrange our whole week during the season. But if my goal is to live by an ideal and have my “thing” be something that achieves that goal, fantasy football and sports ain’t cuttin’ it.
Those things are great to know about, and they are entertaining and distracting. They provide plenty for me to talk to other guys about around the water cooler or a beer. I really do enjoy lots of things that don’t line up with an ideal. Cigars, bourbon, football, fantasy football, March Madness the list of things I like goes on forever. These personal joys are extremely important for us to continue to enjoy life. I also know that my interests change, and what I think of as entertaining now will likely change when the wind blows.. That’s why I’m glad none of these things are my “thing.” I’m not saying anything that doesn’t directly relate to a lofty ideal is bad. Infact, those things are very good. I just don’t want people to think that the Fantasy Football and March Madness define who I am.
We all have a higher calling than what we think. We are all born for greatness. Each one of us is born for sainthood. It’s our job as men to open our ears to that call, to meditate on it in prayer, and to find the courage to follow it. We are called to something hard, because nothing easy was ever worth doing. The easy path is easy because many walk it. Don’t just be one of the many.
Be the guy that can rattle off stats of all the college teams. Be the guy that plays video games all day. Be the guy that reads or the guy that writes. Be the gardener or the golfer or the pool player. Shoot, do what I do and do all those things!. But at some level be the better guy, the guy with an ideal, the one that focuses on self improvement of mind, body, and soul. Do the things that will enrich you. You’ll find that a bit of self reflection and work will not only make you more fulfilled, but it will change your relationships. The idea of the American Hero is no different than it was 200 years ago, the only thing that has changed is how we achieve that. Our frontier to conquer now is in the home. Find your own path, just make sure that it’s a path that makes you a better man and a better husband. Answer the call for greatness. The world is full of the entitled sloths who just want things to be better and aren’t willing to work to make them better. Don’t be the average guy, we have enough of them.
Darling Husband 