Desire. Humility. Knowledge.
Perspective. Integrity. Truth.
The story of this moment.
Watching *Breaking Bad* and judging Walter White. Watching *Game of Thrones* and judging Jon Snow, Rob Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and all the others. Talking with my wife and judging myself. The question repeating in my head: “What makes a man?”
The connective tissue is my desire to connect them in this moment, the moment when I sit down to write, with the mantra repeating in my head — “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?” This is coupled with a sub-intellectual urge to find the right music for the mood: a pushed finger and scrolling eyes searching for the right song in a list of always-already right songs — “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?” — and then I find the words, lined up perfectly in a column of song titles: “Desire. Humility. Knowledge. Perspective. Integrity. Truth.” — the track list of Kamasi Washington’s 2017 EP, *Harmony of Difference.*
That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.
~~
What makes a man?
The answer is performative. Each person is and ought to be free to perform their understanding what makes a man, and each person is and ought to be free to judge the performance of others relative to their already-held ideal of what makes a man.
A man is, then, what a man does and what others think of him for it.
A man is shaped by internal and external pressures. Both are capable of bending or twisting or sometimes even breaking his integrity. This makes a man no different from any other person. Individuals of all stripes are capable of great miracles, great joys, and great horrors, inspired by strange combinations of internal and external pressures that shape their performance of the truth, a performance whose quality can be and ought to be judged in the light of all that is known.
Some stories define a man by the pressures he refuses to relent to and by the conflicts he generates in his refusal to stand down, but in that too, a man is no different from any other person, and no more likely to stand up in the first place. We — all of us — are and ought to be defined (at least in part) by the positions we’re willing to defend and by the passions we ultimately use to defend them.
And so I ask once again, “What makes a man?”
~~
I teach and mentor individuals who identify as trans, as well as to individuals who openly question their gender. I also teach and mentor cis individuals. Many of them are highly invested in the question, “How does one become a man?”
The best answer I can give them is to watch the performance of other men and live out the traits they admire.
The ones I admire make up a harmony of difference.
### Desire
A man desires. Not content with the way things are, he sets his sights on something beyond himself, something different from everything he’s known, something to attract his interest. When he finds it out beyond the horizon of himself, he feels compelled to pursue it.
### Humility
A man stops short. He knows his limits. A man understands that desire and pursuit do not always lead to success, and he accepts man’s natural inability to “have it all.” With humility, he recognizes the appropriate time to give up the hunt, and he understands how to be gracious while doing so.
### Knowledge
A man knows when he has come to the edge of his understanding, and he experiences learning opportunities as they occur. He responds to differences in opinion and differences in beliefs with a curious heart, and when engaging in a debate, he seeks insight, not victory. A man seeks knowledge for one thing and one thing only.
### Perspective
A man stands atop an ivory tower of discoveries and recollections. Each floor added to that tower increases his odds of finding something new on the horizon, something interesting. It also gives a man a broader view on all that is known — the realm of experiences and stories between his tower and the horizon. With both a wider and more detailed perspective, a man can judge the performances of others against a diverse range of possibilities, bringing him closer to the truth of what is and what ought to be.
### Integrity
A man tests the integrity of others, and he responds with integrity to any test put before him. He desires wholeness in others, but allows himself to be fascinated by the fractures. He understands that interesting places twist and bend, and he finds joy in those places, the way one finds joy in the twists and bends of a waterslide.
### Truth
A man enjoys the truth; hard or not, he enjoys it, and he treats it as a sacred thing. Having once experienced it by happy accident, he desires it again and again. But a man stops short, and with humility, he knows when and how to give up the hunt.
~~
What makes a man? His ability to harmonize in a world of difference.