Anger’s desire is to make someone guilty. Love can’t ‘see’ anger, as light cannot ‘see’ darkness, but anger does see love and flat-out hates it. Virgil, if I’m on the road to apologies and promises, whisper this: Anger never healed, held or loved anybody.
Fatherhood is a role. Employee, Lover and Victim are roles. Actors demonstrate right relationship to roles. Sir Laurence Olivier never confused himself with King Lear. Off the boards, he was immediately Larry. This was another role, a starring turn in a little drama called “The Story of Me.” Roles don’t matter, only the degree to which we identify with them. What we identify with, we suffer from.
The man who is primarily private, who keeps most of himself for himself, wakes up one day to find that his outer relationships are husks.
Private derives from the Latin privare, for bereavement.
Historically, we’ve made decisions based on who we think we are. The statues neo-men are tearing down represent men who believe they are absolutely right. About everything. All of the time. This would be absurdly comic but for the intensity of suffering it engenders. First and last lesson for men who earnestly desire to think straight: I am not who I think I am.
“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Steve Jobs’ last words
“Every heart, every heart to love will come / But like a refugee.” Leonard Cohen’s Anthem
“He ran to his son, and kissed him.”
