A response to suffering

Last night, I sat across from a close friend who's buried both parents in the past year. As someone who lost a parent young, we found ourselves in that rare space where two men actually talked about pain. Real pain. Not the surface level stuff we usually deflect with humor or work talk.

Here's what hit me: neither of us would undo the suffering for what it's forged in us. While we wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but we’re thankful for who it made us and what we learned from it.

Death. Divorce. Rejection. The kind of pain that makes you question everything you thought you knew about being a man in this world. The kind that pushes you to your limit. The kind that brings forth the potential of what’s inside you.

Many men reading this has asked the same question I have: Why must we suffer?

Our culture has an answer: avoid it. Numb it. Buy your way out of it. We're sold this idea that real men shouldn't have to suffer, that success means insulating yourself from pain. It's B.S., and deep down, we all know it.

Though we act like we don’t care or don’t want to talk about it, we all crave to share our wounds with others, to have them held and in turn, healed. We were made to not just connect over what goes right, what we can proof and what feels good. We were made for more. To meet ourselves in the suffering and invite others to do the same.

This comfort-first mentality creates weak men. Men who can't handle adversity. Men who crumble when life doesn't go according to plan. Men who become bitter when the world doesn't cater to their expectations. Men who act entitled to think they’re above going through hardship or supporting others as they suffer.

One of the hardest lessons I've learned as a man is this: suffering isn't the enemy. Avoiding it is.

In my work with other men, the breakthrough always comes when they stop running from what hurts and start walking toward it. It's choosing the discomfort of change over the misery of staying stuck. It's accepting that the pain of growth is temporary, but the pain of staying the same is permanent.

Then there's the suffering we can't control. The kind that blindsides you and leaves you questioning everything. This is where boys become men. Not in the comfort zones or the victories, but in how we respond when life strips away everything we thought defined us, leaving us with the raw, unedited reality of who we are.

Our capacity to show up raw and real, to take what James Finley calls a "fearless inventory of our souls," determines whether we become the kind of men others can count on when everything falls apart. It requires taking a long, hard look in the mirror, relying on others in times of need and finding the capacity within yourself to go through it.

Every day, we choose. Throughout history, the men we remember chose the hard path. Marcus Aurelius writing philosophy while leading an empire under siege. MLK facing death threats while fighting for justice. Men who understood that strength isn't the absence of pain but the willingness to endure it for something greater.

We have that same choice. To embrace what breaks us, knowing it's also what makes us. To trust that on the other side of our darkest moments lies the man we're meant to become.

What will you choose?

"All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom." — Zora Neale Hurston