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Gut Check, “Chapter 1: Dead Man Walking” pp. 15-16 “College is a gentlemen’s purgatory, and every boy confronts the anxieties of manhood with varying degrees of preparation. Some internalize their issues, wallowing in depression and self-loathing, while others lash out in self-destructive behavior. It is said that men are hard-wired for conflict, but when there is no healthy outlet for masculine energy, the aggression is unleashed in less than admirable ways. We wanted to be seen as warriors and free spirits, like William Wallace or James Dean, but we grew up on Toys ‘R Us, piano lessons, and birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese. We didn’t know how to properly mature, and a piece of us yearned for a more troubled past to justify our pugnacity. There’s a reason why the movie Fight Club resonates so strongly with college males. There is the other group too, of course. Young men with a castrated masculinity who, like domesticated house cats, have been socially bred as passive softies; men without a backbone, whose feel-good lifestyle lacks strength of character and purpose. Both extremes can be characterized by a considerable deficiency in virtue. In the middle lay the ideal - men with conviction, men with values, men with a humility that surrenders itself to a higher power - men from 1950’s movies. Discovering this inner nobility required a courage that lay hidden beneath layers of false, modernist logic. My malaise never reached a boiling point like some of the others, never overstepped the boundaries of devil-may-care to misdemeanor. Instead, it festered somewhere between the extremes of knight and barbarian - not all bad, but not nearly good enough. Whatever the personal affliction, the boys in my crew were joined through the common bond of college partying. We enjoyed the escapism of it, confronting our struggles by getting away from it all.” |
