Lessons In Manliness – The Art of Manliness

“Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The story of Nick Piantanida is not the straightforward, unambiguously heroic tale of Joseph Kittinger. It ends in tragedy, not triumph. Piantanida did not accomplish what he sought to do, and he paid the ultimate price in the attempt. But still it was, as Craig Ryan, author of a book on Nick’s life puts it, a “magnificent failure.”

After all, it’s one thing to leap from space as part of an official program, with the resources and authority of the Air Force behind you. In his autobiography, Kittinger admits that he was the “luckiest man in the sky,” someone who was “in the right place at the right time.” Chuck Yeager said the same thing of the chances he got to achieve his amazing feats. Both had guts and skill in spades, but they also happened to be in the right place at the right time to seize the opportunities that came their way.

Where does that leave the ordinary man? Most guys would look at men like Yeager and Kittinger and think, “I’ll never be able to do something like that.” And this is where Nick Piantanida’s story provides a different sort of inspiration. Nick had no special resources or lines into his adventures; he simply made them happen himself by hustling like a crazy man. Here was an average joe, a truck driver from Jersey, a devoted Catholic and family man, who completely bootstrapped his way to within a hairbreadth of remarkable success.

Marching to His Own Beat

“I’ve heard him called a rebel. But Nick was never rebelling against anything. Nick was too busy. He had his own stuff going. And that’s where he was most of the time.” -A childhood friend

Nick Piantanida’s desire to push his limits and do so outside official channels started young. Whatever he wanted to learn, he set out to teach himself. In high school he taught himself karate and scuba diving. And when his high school basketball coach told him to put out a cigarette after a game, he quit the team and practiced at a neighborhood court by himself, every day, in every season, rain or shine. He played ball in various leagues on the East Coast and became one of the best players in the NY/NJ area.

After high school, Piantanida joined the Army and took up boxing. One night, while reading a men’s adventure magazine in the barracks, he found the idea for his first daring exploit. An article trumpeted the abundance of diamonds to be found in the impenetrable jungles of Venezuela, and Nick decided to go and check out the claim himself. But the lure of treasure was not enough-he wanted to also do something no man had done before. While looking for diamonds, he would try to become the first man to climb Devil’s Mountain, a giant mesa from which tumbled the highest waterfall in the world: Angel Falls.

To the Top in Venezuela

“Nick ad-libbed his life. He didn’t believe in scripts. He believed in himself. He was the ultimate survivor. If a piranha bit Nick, the piranha would die.” -Fred Cranwell, childhood friend

As soon as Nick got out of the Army, he began to set his plan in motion. He had very little money to his name, so he started talking to companies about potentially sponsoring his trip. With only a vague outline of how he was going to accomplish his goal and a powerful dose of charm, he was able to obtain an outboard motor from Euinrude, firearms from Colt, cameras and film from Kodak, and two tickets to Caracas from Grace Line Shipping.

There were a few things Nick had neglected to tell his sponsors, such as the fact that he and his expedition partner, Walt Tomashoff, had very little mountaineering experience and no experience climbing with ropes and carabiners whatsoever. But Nick did what he always did: he taught himself. He bought some rope and a book about climbing and practiced on the Hudson River Palisades above Hoboken, New Jersey. He and Tomashoff honed their climbing skills during the day and worked in a can factory at night to support themselves.

When the daring pair arrived in Venezuela, they learned to their dismay that another man, Aleksandrs Laime, had already summited Devils’ Mountain a few months prior. But Nick still wanted to grab a “first” and so decided to scale a route on the north side of the mountain which had never before been climbed successfully and which many considered simply unclimbable. The north side was the wet side where Angel Falls plummeted downwards. The men would be tasked with climbing parallel to a gushing, roaring beast which rose to a height fifteen times greater than Niagara Falls. Even getting to the bottom of the falls was a treacherous task. This was accomplished by paddling a dugout canoe down the Rio Carrao and Rio Churun, struggling for 3 weeks through 48 sets of rapids and fighting off insects, foul weather, and numerous injuries along the way.

Once at the base of the falls, the men began their ascent, a nearly vertical climb that required hacking through jungle so dense and gnarly it sometimes required 10-12 hours of toil to penetrate. Constantly both wet and hot (the daily temperature rose to 100 degrees and it would rain for hours on end) the men scaled the wet, muddy mountain face, grabbing onto to roots and vines. Nick’s cheap boots quickly rotted away from the intense moisture, forcing him to continue the climb in deteriorating Chuck Taylors strapped to his feet with cords. Laime, who had decided to accompany the pair, grew discouraged at their prospects and turned back. But Nick and Walt pushed on.

After several weeks and 3,212 feet of arduous climbing, Piantanida and Tomashoff made it to top just as their food was running out. The pair found neither diamonds nor much fame, but the thrill of chasing a record had left Nick hungry for another challenge.

Learning the Ropes…and the Chutes

“You can’t tell what moves you to do such things. That is just how I am. Most people talk about such things and do nothing. I just have to go and see.” -Nick Piantanida

When Nick returned to the States, he took a job in an embroidery factory and bounced around to different colleges playing basketball. He had brought back some exotic pets from Venezuela-parrots, lizards, snakes, and a small alligator which lived in his bathtub. After ordering a cobra from India and teaching himself how to handle it, he tried to start a company which procured exotic animals from around the globe for clients. He also worked on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as an iron worker, took other odd jobs, got married, and started a family.

But it was while visiting the Lakewood Sport Parachute Center on the Jersey Shore that he found his life’s passion: parachuting.

These were the days when skydiving was in its infancy, a time before soccer moms and 80 year old ex-Presidents eagerly leapt from planes. These early parachutists used round army surplus chutes, which gave the jumper very little control or steering ability. Landing on one’s feet was a daunting task, and jumpers often broke bones and suffered other injuries as they tumbled back to earth. There were no rip-stop jumpsuits, no Velcro. When the parachute inflated, the harness pulled so hard it left big bruises on one’s groin and armpits. And equipment malfunctions-and fatalities-were all too common. The parachutists of this era were members of an elite, close-knit, wise-cracking fraternity, tough, daring SOB’s who lived for the thrill of falling from the sky.

All of which accounts for parachuting’s appeal to Nick. He was hooked after his very first jump and soon began hatching a plan to set the record for the highest, longest skydiving jump in history. The record then held by Joseph Kittinger.

Achieving this feat would be no easy task. Nick wasn’t a college graduate, and he had no connections to the Air Force or Navy, to research labs, or to the companies that made the balloon and pressure suit he would need for the jump. He would have to assemble each aspect of the project on his own.

Nick set out to learn and study everything he could about what the complicated and supremely dangerous endeavor would entail. He devoured every piece of information he could find. He had to understand the deadly conditions of the stratosphere, the physics and physiological effects of falling from 20 miles above the earth, and the nuances of the equipment he would need to reach space and return safely. As Craig Ryan put it, Nick “transformed himself into the director of a one-man aeronautical research program.”

Piantanida appealed to official channels for advice and information, writing to the Air Force and Navy for help, but the service branches wouldn’t give this crazy civilian the time of day. He appealed to Kittinger for advice, but the record-holder refused, feeling Nick’s approach to the project was too reckless.

Getting access to the right equipment was just as challenging as getting his hands on information. He needed a pressure suit and a huge balloon, but private companies only contracted with the military and wouldn’t deal with a private citizen.

And of course Nick needed money. It would cost $120,000 a jump for the equipment and support crew, and Nick didn’t have a deep-pocketed corporate sponsor like Red Bull footing the bill. So he sent out thousands of letters to ordinary citizens asking for donations. He found men willing to be part of his ground crew as volunteers, and he asked hotels and restaurants to lodge and feed the crew in exchange for potential publicity. He hit up any reporter he could find to help him get the word out. His local priest reached out to parishioners for donations. He had his Senator doggedly appeal to the military on his behalf. With unflagging determination and a magnetic, larger than life personality his only resources, Nick worked every angle and connection he could think of.

While he waited for the funding and equipment to come through, Piantanida trained like a mad man. In two years he made 435 skydiving jumps, criss-crossing the country to take advantage of rare opportunities for higher-altitude jumps. He worked to obtain his free-balloon pilot’s license. To make ends meet he drove trucks at night and jumped during the day. He worked 7 days a week on the project, only allowing himself 4 hours of sleep a night and imbibing coffee and cigarettes for breakfast.

Nick had no back-up plan for his life. He was determined to make it big with a record-setting jump and to parlay that success into a good life for his family. Even though he faced rejection after rejection and numerous setbacks, his enthusiasm and belief in his eventual success never diminished. The idea of failure never crossed his mind. He would find a way to make it happen.

Project Strato-Jump

“He was always a little bit over-eager, a little bit on the reckless side. Full head of steam, pedal to the metal. That was Nick. If you went with Nick to have a beer, you’d have six beers. Life to the fullest. That’s the way he did everything, that’s the kind of life he lived. I mean, if you’re going to go climb Angel Falls you can get down there and take a look at the thing and think of fifty reasons why you’re not really ready to do it. But you wouldn’t be Nick if that were the case. And I think today that’s really hard for people to understand, because we’re in such a safety-mad universe.” -Roger Vaughan

Eventually Nick’s dogged persistence paid off. He obtained some sponsorships. The Air Force allowed the David Clark Company to loan him a pressure suit and offered some of their training facilities to practice in. He found a solid team to back him up on the ground. After two years of pure hustle, Nick’s dream was finally coming together.

The goal was to set the new skydiving record (and make some scientific progress in the process) by jumping from a balloon floating from 115,000 feet above the earth. This was Project Strato-Jump.

Strato-Jump I, October 22, 1965: Nick’s first jump attempt was a bust. His balloon malfunctioned just 18 minutes into flight, forcing him to bail out at only 16,000 feet. With the press watching, Nick ingloriously touched down in a trash dump. Nick had envisioned Strato-Jump as a one shot deal-he would set the record on the first go around. He was deeply disappointed but immediately decided to regroup, raise more money, find a new balloon company, and do it again.

Project Strato-Jump II, February 2, 1966: On a frigid morning in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Nick’s balloon rose into the sky with hardly a hitch. Everything was going to plan as it climbed higher and higher, soaring all the way to 123,500 feet (21.21 miles) above the earth. Nick had obtained the new world altitude record. Success was at hand. Now it was time to jump. Nick removed his seat belt and prepared to make his record breaking leap.

There’s was just one more thing to do-disconnect the hose that fed oxygen from the gondola into his pressure suit. Simple. But it wouldn’t come out. Right at the edge of success and he was tethered to his gondola. “I just can’t believe it!” he kept saying.

The get Nick down, the ground crew was going to have to jettison the gondola’s main balloon and allow the capsule to fall to earth beneath the cargo chute that sat underneath the main balloon. No one had ever attempted to land a human in that way. Ground crew ordered Nick to reattach the belt that stretched across the capsule door and his seat belt in preparation for his return to earth. But the gloves of his pressure suit were so large that this was an impossible task. He would have to simply wedge and brace himself inside the open gondola, hoping that the inevitable jolt when the cargo chute opened would not eject him into space or rip the oxygen tube from his pressure suit.

When the balloon was released, the gondola, with its door open, tipped forward at a 45 degree angle, but Nick hung on. He dropped for 25,000 feet, speeding towards the earth at 600 mph. After 15 seconds of freefall and 5 g’s of force, the cargo chute finally inflated.

He landed in one piece but was devastated his dream had been derailed by a little “quick disconnect” tube, a problem he felt could have been solved with a “$1.25 wrench.” He had set the new altitude record for manned balloon flight, but that didn’t matter. His dream had not been realized.

Project Strato-Jump III, May 1, 1966: Nick started dreaming about new projects and endeavors and according to Ryan no longer felt as “personally driven to make a third flight.” But his sponsors and ground crew remained enthusiastic and hopeful, and he told his wife that “he had promised the public a third Strato-Jump flight and he felt honor-bound to make good on his word.” He swore that no matter what the result of this last attempt, it would be his last try.

So on an early Sunday morning in 1966, Nick found himself rising above the earth for the final time. He and the ground crew felt supremely confident; Nick promised to be up and back in time for 11:00 Mass.

Just as in the second flight, things seemed to be going very smoothly. Everything was on track.

But as the balloon neared 57,000 feet the ground crew heard a sudden “whoosh” sound come over their radio. “What was that Nick?” they radioed back nervously. “Emergen….!” was the only reply. The radio transmission went dead.

Ground crew immediately jettisoned the main balloon. Just as in the second flight, Nick would return to earth swaying beneath the cargo parachute. It took 26 excruciating, silent minutes for the gondola to touch down in Minnesota. Nick was found moaning but unconscious. He was rushed to the nearest hospital where unfortunately doctors had no experience dealing with high-altitude decompression.

Brain damaged beyond recovery, Nick lingered on for four more months but never emerged from his coma. He died August 25, 1966 at the age of 34.

What had happened to Nick at 57,000 feet? There have been plenty of theories advanced and debated through the years. The most likely scenario is that Nick inexplicably lifted the visor of his helmet, and the sudden decompression and loss of oxygen quickly did him in.

Nick Piantanida’s altitude record for lighter-than-air flight has stood for more than 35 years. He was the last man to take a balloon into the upper stratosphere.

Legacy

“Where is the line between courage and folly?” Craig Ryan asks. Was Nick a reckless daredevil? His jumps were never about the thrill; he genuinely wished to aid scientific progress, to push the limits of what was out there, and to accomplish something no other man had done. Did he prepare enough? He did the best an ordinary civilian could have but inevitably lacked the opportunities for rigorous testing and the access to the very best and most experienced minds in the field.

What are we to make of a man like Nick? Was his inability to admit the risk of failure, and the chance he might leave his children fatherless a form of hubris? Or should we cheer his adventurous spirit, DIY effort, and manful demonstration that great daring is not reserved for the loners or the lucky?

Ryan neatly sums up the inevitable tension we experience as we weigh such questions:

“Nick Piantanida represents a quality we profess to admire: the unquenchable drive to exceed, to surpass, to fight on to the end. Yet the individuals who would take up that quest often make us uncomfortable. Why aren’t they content to recognize the limits that constrain the rest of us? What are they trying to prove?

When pioneers return from the frontier, we revere their risk-taking, their perseverance, their courage. When they become lost in the wilderness or are defeated by the elements, we shake our heads and curse them for their foolhardiness, their irresponsibility-and yet the difference between success and failure in such ventures is often a mere hairline…’Splendor and folly are so near to each other. Indeed, we can barely tell one from the other, so much alike are they, and so close the line between glorious fulfillment and crushing frustration.’

Nick Piantanida’s last shot at the stratosphere will be remembered, finally, as a magnificent but failed attempt to extend the front lines of humankind’s advance into that ultimate frontier…It was truly, to use Jim Winker’s cautiously enlightened phrase, ‘an attempt of the human spirit to do something remarkable.’”

If you missed it, read Part 1: Joseph Kittinger’s Long, Lonely Leap.

Source: Magnificent Failure by Craig Ryan. Ryan has written books on the “pre-astronauts” and Kittinger and Piantanida. All are excellent and highly recommended.

Harry Houdini. “The Handcuff King.” “The Man Who Walked Through Walls.” Master Magician. Escape Artist Extraordinaire.

Almost a century has passed since his death, and Houdini, who was the most famous entertainer of his time, is still a name nearly everyone knows and reveres. He was king of the “Golden Age of Magic.”

His enormous popularity can be traced to the human desire to defy death. Houdini seemingly flirted with death again and again, only to laugh in its face and emerge in the land of the living. It didn’t matter how many chains you bound him with, how strong the handcuffs, how tight the ropes; it didn’t matter whether you placed him in a crate or a vault or a safe or a prison; he would always find a way out. Nothing could hold him; he seemed truly invincible. He refused to be bound not only by ropes and chains, but also by the constricting assumptions of what is possible for an “ordinary” man to do. He has rightly been called America’s first “superhero.” And therein lies the heart of his appeal; he seemed in every way superhuman, but he was still one of us. He showed the enormous potential of man when he knows how to hustle and push the boundaries of his capabilities.

Houdini’s life and deeds could potentially provide enough fodder for a dozen posts; today we present just a few of his lessons in manliness.

Deliberate Practice Is the Key to Greatness

Throughout his entire career, fans speculated as to how Houdini accomplished his amazing feats. There was a camp that believed he was in touch with the spirit world and that supernatural powers allowed him to dematerialize to effect his escapes.

But the secret to Houdini’s success was not mystical, or even magical. It was his determination to pour every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears into being the very best in the world. In short, he was a master of deliberate practice.

When Harry first started practicing magic as a young man, he would have his brother tie him up in ropes and would then spend hours on the roof of his family’s tenement apartment attempting to free himself. He took up running and biking long distances to build his body and endurance. Having learned to converse on the streets of New York City, he worked to drop the “youse” and “aints” that revealed his lack of formal education. He took classes on speech and debate to hone his skills as a charismatic showman.

By age 18 he had trained himself to hold his breath for 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

He set out to learn the secrets of every lock in the world, unable to rest until he knew how to pick them all with ease. He collected every kind of handcuff he could find and pored over drawings of every lock made in the US and Europe, studying them until had he acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of every key and lock in the world.

“vigorous self-training, to enable me to do remarkable things with my body, to make not one muscle or a group of muscles, but every muscle, a responsive worker, quick and sure...” -Houdini on one of the secrets to his success

In his home, he built a large sunken tub in which to practice holding his breath and escaping underwater. To train himself for stunts in which he would jump into frigid rivers while handcuffed and shackled, he would add ice to the water to build up his stamina. He actually learned to like these freezing dips, to the point he could say, “I only feel good after one of these baths.”

He practiced using his toes to untie knots until they had the dexterity of the average man’s fingers. He practiced swallowing objects and bringing them back up again. He practiced sleight of hand and misdirection in front of a large mirror.

He rarely slept more than 4 hours a night and kept a notebook by his bedside in case he awoke with an idea.

His practice sessions were so constant, so all-consuming that he would frequently forget to eat and bathe; his wife Bess had to remind him to change his underwear.

He built himself into the man he wanted to become, element by element.

Conquer Fear and Pain

While Houdini may have made his escapes look so easy that people thought spirits were aiding him, the truth was that his exploits were often grueling, highly physical endeavors. The stunts were designed with safeguards and had “tricks” as to how they were done, but they still involved a great deal of strength, flexibility, and steely courage.

Houdini said that without the ability to conquer his fears, the result would not only be public embrassment, but potential death:

“When I am stripped and manacled, nailed securely within a weighted packing case and thrown into the sea, or when I am buried alive under six feet of earth, it is necessary to preserve absolute serenity of spirit….If I grow panicky I am lost.”

Crate containing Harry Houdini lowered into New York Harbor, July 7, 1912.

Success also required the ability to endure pain. Houdini would accept nearly any challenge thrown at him. Audience members would bring all manner of handcuffs, locks, and chains to his shows and groups would come up with bizarre tests of his prowess, like asking to chain him to a lit cannon. Every performance was his Waterloo; Houdini knew that if he failed a challenge, his reputation, his aura of invincibility would be ruined. He had to escape–no matter the cost to his body. Thus, while many escapes would only take a minute or two, others could require an hour and truly test his endurance and mind; he would emerge sweating and gasping for breath, his clothing torn and eyes bloodshot. Ropes would be tied so tight they would cut off his circulation, cruel shackles would leave his ankles and wrists bruised, and cuffs and locks would pinch his skin; freeing himself from them necessitated the tearing of his flesh. But for Houdini, the show would always go on.

"While the manacles and shackles are being adjusted so that my limbs are powerless to move, I look down at the water flowing so far below; then I make up my mind I am going to do it. From the time I let go till the moment I strike the water everything is blank, and my ears are filled with strange songs. If the season be winter with the temperature of the water in the vicinity of freezing, the ordeal is one to be dreaded. The bitter cold of the first plunge seems to cut right into my heart, and I very often bite my lips almost through, so great is the shock.”

Jumping 31 feet into the Woolloomooloo Bay, Houdini hit face-first; the impact caused two black eyes and loosened several teeth. On another occasion, he let young men tie him up and cover him with tar. He freed himself in 41 minutes, but it “Hurt like hell.”

When his ankle snapped while being lifted into the water torture cell, the doctor urged him to seek immediate medical attention and go to the hospital. But Houdini went through with the trick and finished the whole show. He made himself a splint for the fractured ankle and a leg brace and continued on the tour.

On another occasion, a blood vessel in his kidney burst while he was being sealed tightly in a canvas bag by a “gang of longshoremen.” He started urinating blood and the doctor told him to take it easy for several months and to lay off the strenuous escapes. Houdini informed the doctor that such a respite was impossible. “It is my duty to inform you that by continuing your present regimen you would be committing suicide. You must reconcile yourself to the fact that your strenuous days are over…If you continue at present, you will be dead within the year,” the doctor gravely intoned. “You don’t know me,” Houdini replied with a shrug. He took two weeks off and then went back at it with his usual aplomb. For the next 15 years, the magician sent the doctor photos and news clippings of his dangerous exploits along with a note: “Still alive and going strong.”

Of course this stoicism in the face of pain could be take to an unhealthy extreme and would be his undoing. After weathering several punches to the abdomen by a man who wanted to test the legendary steeliness of the magician’s stomach, Houdini was left in severe pain. Although he was running a temperature of 104, he felt obligated to his audience to continue his performances. When he finally consented to be taken to the hospital days later, his appendix had already burst, and despite surgery, Houdini failed his final escape…from death.

Spiritualism was all the rage after WWI, as many families longed to make contact with their loved ones who had been killed. Houdini always insisted that he kept an open mind and desperately wished that mediums really could make contact with dead spirits, but he could not find any mediums who were not fraudulent. An avowed enemy of humbuggery, Houdini devoted the latter part of his life to exposing false mediums and the tricks they used. He promised to try to make contact once he himself had crossed over, but so far, he has not pierced the veil with a message.

Keep Pushing Your Limits

Houdini became a national star at age 26 and several years later had conquered Europe as well. He escaped from jails cells around the US, federal prisons, Scotland Yard, and the dreaded Siberian wagon transport, essentially a safe on wheels.

Having freed himself from every mechanism thrown his way, he was known around the world as the undisputed “Handcuff King.”

But Houdini was never content to rest on his laurels. He couldn’t; imitators were constantly stealing his act, duplicating his feats, and falsely accusing him of being a fraud. So he would ever push his limits, forever looking to evince a stunt so incredible it couldn’t be duplicated.

When audiences became inured to his simple handcuff escapes he upped their difficulty—jumping from bridges into rivers while shackled, chained, and weighed down and emerging from coffins, chests, and packing boxes which had been nailed shut and even built right on the stage. He would complete such escapes in minutes, leaving the chains and handcuffs still locked and the containers seemingly untouched. He found his way out of a variety of interesting objects as well—a glass box, a canvas and leather mail sack, a giant football sown shut, a roll-top desk, an iron boiler, and even the belly of a “sea monster,” a strange creature that had washed up on shore and couldn’t be identified.

Houdini would escape from a staight jacket while hanging as much as 400 feet off the ground. To remove the jacket, he had to dislocate one of his shoulders.

When rivals copied some of these tricks, he introduced elements of greater danger. For example he combined his box escapes and his river jumps. He climbed into a heavy pine box so small he had to bring his knees into his chest to fit. He was then handcuffed and shackled, and the box was nailed shut, wrapped in ropes and chains, weighted with 200 lbs of metal, and tossed into New York City’s East Harbor. Houdini escaped in less than a minute-with the box intact and the ropes and chains still in place.

He then brought the specter of a drowning death to the indoor stage, first with the milk can escape and then with the water torture cell.

To build suspense for his milk can trick, Houdini would have the audience hold their breath for as long as they could. After a minute or so, all would have given up. He would then climb into the can, which was filled with buckets of water, the lid was locked on top with 6 padlocks, a cabinet was drawn around the can, and a giant timer began ticking down the seconds. Houdini's assistant would pace nervously with an axe, waiting to smash open the can if Houdini did not emerge. Around the 3 minute mark, with the audience nearly overcome with anxiety, Houdini would step dripping wet from the cabinet to thundering applause.

In the water torture cell trick, Houdini's feet were locked into the stock, and he was lowered upside down into a water filled tank, which was then padlocked shut. He emerged in 2 minutes, the tank still filled with water and the top still locked in place.

“The water torture cell was constructed by myself...It took two full years. Another year was required to give me sufficient courage to attempt same. And can you blame me? Imagine yourself jammed head foremost in a cell filled with water, with your hands and feet unable to move and your shoulders tightly lodged in this imprisonment...I believe it is the climax of all my studies and labors. Never will I be able to construct anything that will be more dangerous or difficult for me to do. Having flown a biplane and taught myself to become an expert aviator, I am in a position to state that flying is child's play in comparison.”

Houdini didn't slow down as he got older. At age 52, he had himself sealed in an airtight coffin which was then submerged underwater. He rested there for an hour and a half in 100 degree temperature. All to debunk a rival who performed a "buried alive" trick under the claim that a man could only survive in such a state for 3 minutes and that it was necessary to enter into a mysterious cataleptic state in order to last longer. It was just a matter of endurance and training, Houdini showed. Houdini also had himself buried under 6 feet of dirt and clawed his way out.

This was no trick: Houdini had a keen interest in flying and became one of the world's first pilots, even setting a flight record in Australia.

Practice, courage, discipline, strength, the hunger for greatness– these were the keys to Houdini’s success. It came down to will, as it does for all of us. How badly do you to become the man you want to be? Are you willing to pay the price?

“I want to be first. I vehemently want to be first. First in my profession…For that I give all the thought, all the power, that is in me. To stand at the head of my rank: it is all I ask…so I have struggled and fought. I have done and abstained; I have tortured my body and risked my life, only for that–to have one plank on the stage where they must fall back and cry ‘Master!’….I am strong, as you see; strong in flesh, but my will has been stronger than my flesh. I have struggled with iron and steel, with locks and chains; I have burned, drowned, and frozen till my body has become almost insensible to pain; I have done things which rightly I could not do, because I said to myself, ‘You must;’ and now I am old at 36. A man is only a man, and the flesh revenges itself. Yet the will is its master when the will is strong enough. Do you think that these religious martyrs-the willing martyrs-those in India, say-who torture themselves by driving hooks through their flesh and swinging suspended-do you think they suffer pain? I say ‘No; they do not.’ I have proved it in myself. To think vehemently of a thing, of the feat, that conquers the pain-some kinds of pain. If the thought is intense enough, the pain goes-for a time. Sometimes the task before me is very hard. Not every night, but sometimes. I must fling myself down and writhe; I must strive with every piece of force I possess; I bruise and batter myself against the floor, the walls; I strain and sob and exhaust myself, and begin again, and exhaust myself again; but do I feel pain? Never. How can I feel pain? There is no place for it. All my mind is filled with a single thought-to get free! Get free! And the intoxication of that freedom, that success is sublime.” -Harry Houdini

Sources and Further Reading

The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman

Houdini: Master of Illusion by Clinton Cox

In addition to being a magician, escape artist, pilot, actor, and spiritualism debunker, Houdini also penned many books and magazine and journal articles (and this was really the role he was most proud of). He wrote about magic of course, but also on revealing the tricks of criminals and debunking false mediums and superstition generally. His books are available free online from the Library of Congress and Google books.

When it comes to manly characters in literature, my thoughts always return to one man:

Atticus Finch.

Perhaps this character from To Kill a Mockingbird seems like an unusual choice. A gentleman in a three piece suit. A widower of two kids, Jem and Scout. A man who was quiet instead of brash. Polite instead of macho. A lawyer who used his mind instead of his fists, who walked away from insults. Who didn’t gamble or smoke, who liked to walk instead drive. A man who liked nothing better than to bury himself in a book. Yes, Atticus may not seem very “manly,” at least when measured by the modern rubric for manliness.

But it is the subtlety of his manliness, the way he carried himself, taught his children, made his choices, that makes his manliness all the more real, all the more potent. His manhood was not displayed in great showy acts but in quiet, consistent strength, in supreme self-possession. The manliness of Atticus Finch does not leap off the page; instead, it burrows its way inside of you, sticks with you, causes your soul to say, “Now that is the kind of man I wish to be.”

The examples of honorable manhood that can be wrung from To Kill a Mockingbird are plentiful and powerful, and today we’d like to explore just a few.

Lessons in Manliness from Atticus Finch

A man does the job no one else wants to do.

To Kill a Mockingbird unfolds against the backdrop of Atticus’s representation of Tom Robinson. Robinson, a black man, has been accused by Mayella Ewell, a white woman, of rape. While Atticus is assigned to be Robinson’s public defender by a judge, he earns the townspeople’s ire in his determination to actually defend him, honorably and fairly, to the best of his abilities.

He does the job that must be done, but that other people are unwilling and afraid to do.

Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she spread her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, and we waited.

“I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”

“Oh,” said Jem. “Well.”

“Don’t you oh well me, sir,” Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem’s fatalistic noises, “you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.”

A man stands in the gap and does what must be done. Doing so earns the respect even of one’s most ardent critics; after facing a myriad of taunts and threats from his neighbors for his defense of Tom Robinson, Atticus is once more re-elected to the state legislature …unanimously.

A man lives with integrity every day.

In Maycomb County, Atticus was known as a man who was “the same in his house as he is on the public streets.” That was the standard he lived by. He did not have one set of morals for business and one for family, one for weekdays and one for weekends. He was incapable of doing anything that would broach the inviolable sanctity of his conscience. He made the honorable decision, even when that decision was unpopular.

“This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience-Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

“Atticus, you must be wrong…”

“How’s that?”

“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…”

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Atticus understood that a man’s integrity was his most important quality-the foundation upon which his honor and the trust of others was built. Stripped of integrity, a man becomes weak and impotent, no longer a force for good in his family or community.

“If you shouldn’t be defendin’ him, then why are you doin’ it?”

“For a number of reasons,” said Atticus. “The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem to do something again.”

“You mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to mind you any more?”

“That’s about right.”

“Why?”

“Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine.”

The most important form of courage is moral courage.

There are different types of courage: physical, intellectual, and moral.

While unassuming, Atticus certainly possessed physical courage; when Tom was in jail, he sat outside all night reading and faced down an angry mob intent on lynching the prisoner.

But moral courage is arguably the most important type of bravery, and this Atticus had in spades. Moral courage involves the strength to stick with your convictions and do the right thing, even when the whole world criticizes and torments you for it. Atticus’s decision to represent Tom Robinson brought a slew of insults and threats to him and his family. But he was willing to bear the onslaught with head held high.

Moral courage also supplies the fortitude to take on a fight you know you’ll lose, simply because you believe the cause to be honorable. Atticus knows that he will lose his defense of Tom Robinson. When Scout asked him why he continued to press on, Atticus answered:

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

Atticus used the example of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose to teach Jem the power of this kind of moral courage.

Mrs. Dubose was a sick, cantankerous old woman who would berate Jem and Scout whenever they passed by her house. Jem tried to heed his father’s counsel to be a gentleman, but finally snapped one day and tore up her flower beds. As punishment, Atticus made Jem read books to Mrs. Dubose every day after school. She hardly seemed to pay attention to his reading, and he was relieved when his sentence finally ended.

When Mrs. Dubose died soon afterwards, Atticus revealed the true nature of Jem’s assignment. She had been a morphine addict for a long time, but wanted to overcome that addiction before she left the world; Jem’s reading had been a distraction as she worked to wean herself from the drug. Atticus explained to Jem:

“Son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her-I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”

Live with quiet dignity.

Despite the fact that Bob Ewell “won” the case against Tom Robinson, he held a grudge against everyone who participated in the trial for revealing him as a base fool. After the trial, Ewell threatened Atticus’s life, grossly insulted him and spat in his face. In response, Atticus simply took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, prompting Ewell to ask:

“Too proud to fight, you nigger-lovin’ bastard?”

“No, too old,” Atticus replied before putting his hands in his pockets and walking away.

It’s often thought that the manly thing to do is answer tit for tat. But it can take greater strength to refuse to sink to another man’s level and to simply walk away with dignity. Frederick Douglass said, “A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.” This was a credo Atticus lived by.

Atticus’s quiet dignity was also manifested in his authentic humility.

At one point in the book, Jem and Scout feel disappointed in their father; at 50, he is older and less active than the dads of their peers. He doesn’t seem to know how to do anything “cool.” This opinion is transformed when Atticus takes down a rabid dog with a single bullet, and they learn that their father is known as the “deadest shot in Maycomb County.” Jem becomes duly impressed with his father for this display of skill, all the more so because Atticus had never felt the need to brag about his prowess.

“Atticus is real old, but I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do anything-I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do a blessed thing.”

Jem picked up a rock and threw it jubilantly at the carhouse. Running after it, he called back: “Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!”

Cultivating empathy is paramount.

If Atticus had one dominating virtue, it was his nearly superhuman empathy. Whenever his children felt angry at the misbehavior or ignorance of the individuals in their town, he would encourage their tolerance and respect by urging them to see the other person’s side of things:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Atticus understood that people could only be held responsible for what they knew, that not everyone had an ideal upbringing, that folks were doing they best they could in the circumstances in which they found themselves. Atticus strove above all to see the good in folks and to figure out why they did the things they did.

When Scout complained about her teacher embarrassing a poor student, Atticus got her to see that the teacher was new in town and couldn’t be expected to know the background of all the children in her class right away. When a poor man that Atticus had helped with legal problems showed up in the mob to hurt him and lynch Tom, Atticus defended him, explaining that he was a really good man who simply had some blind spots and got caught up in the mob mentality.

Even when Bob Ewell spit in his face, he responded with empathy:

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?”

Teach your children by example.

Atticus is probably best remembered as an exemplary father. As a widower he could have shipped his kids off to a relative, but he was absolutely devoted to them. He was kind, protective, and incredibly patient with Jem and Scout; he was firm but fair and always looking for an opportunity to expand his children’s empathy, impart a bit of wisdom, and help them become good people.

“Do you defend niggers Atticus?” I asked him that evening.

“Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.”

“’s what everybody else at school says.”

“From now on it’ll be everybody less one.”

As a father he let his kids be themselves and nurtured their unique personalities. During a freak snowstorm in Alabama, Jem, determined to build a snowman from the scant snow on the ground, hauled a bunch of dirt from the backyard to the front, molded a snowman from the mud, and then covered the mudman with a layer of snow. When Atticus arrived home, he could have been angry with the kids for messing up the lawn, but instead, he was pleased with Jem’s enterprising creativity.

“I didn’t know how you were going to do it, but from now on I’ll never worry about what’ll become of you, son, you’ll always have an idea.”

Atticus’s sister wished that tomboy Scout would wear dresses, play with tea sets, and be the “sunshine” for her father; she often hurt Scout’s feelings with her disparaging remarks. But when Scout asked her father about this criticism:

He said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go about my business, he didn’t mind me much the way I was.

And he bought her what she wanted for Christmas-an air rifle.

Most of all, Atticus taught Jem and Scout by example. He was not only always honest with them, he was honest in everything he did himself.

He not only read them the newspaper each evening, but modeled a love of reading himself. And as a result, his kids devoured every book they could get their hands on. (Modern studies actually bear the truth of this out; kids with fathers who read are more likely to read themselves).

And he not only taught his children to be courteous, he was a model of courtesy and kindness himself, even to prickly types like Mrs. Dubose:

When the three of us came to the house, Atticus would sweep off his hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.”

I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight. It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

A few weeks ago, we covered the myriad of amazing benefits provided by the too-oft maligned nap. If you’re still not convinced of the benefits of napping and are in need of some additional inspiration, or, you’re simply curious about how some of history’s most famous nappers, today we provide a look at the napping habits of 8 eminent men.

Winston Churchill

“Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”

Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable part of his relaxed approach to his daily routine. Churchill would start his day at 8 am by eating breakfast, answering letters, and dictating to his secretaries, all of which was conducted while still in bed. This bout of work was followed by a bath, a long lunch, and plenty of sipping on watered-down whisky. After lunch it was time to paint or play cards with his wife, Clementine. Then it was nap time. Churchill would take off his clothes and climb into bed for up to two hours of solid napping. At 6:30 he would rise, take another bath, and enjoy a long dinner. He finally got down to business at 11 pm and would work for several hours before going to bed and repeating the cycle over again. An unapologetic night owl, Churchill felt that his naps helped him get twice as much done each day (which makes one wonder just how little he would have worked without it!)

Nap were so sacrosanct to Churchill that he kept a bed in the Houses of Parliament and believed that napping was the key to his success in leading the country through the Battle of Britain.

Lyndon B. Johnson

LBJ catches some winks aboard Air Force One.

When Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency, he set out to pass an extremely ambitious legislative agenda, including a war on poverty, the protection of civil rights, the commencement of public works, and the cutting of taxes. To accomplish his goals, LBJ was prepared to work like a dog and to this end he adopted a “two-shift day.” He woke up at 6:30 or 7, read the newspapers, and then headed to the White House where he worked until 2 pm. He would then exercise, taking a swim or brisk walk, before donning his pajamas and settling in for a 30 minute nap. He awoke up at 4, changed into clean clothes and began his “second shift” of the day, sometimes working until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Napoleon Bonaparte

During campaigns, Napoleon was a whirlwind of energy, galloping from place to place, poring over maps, and pondering strategy. He would go days without changing clothes or lying down for a full night’s sleep. But he had the ability, as many great leaders do it seems, of being able fall asleep at the drop of a hat. This ability was likely a product of his supreme confidence. Napoleon could sleep like a baby right before battle and even when cannons were booming nearby. As they have been proven to do by modern science, Napoleon’s naps staved off the fatigue which stalks those who skip a whole night’s sleep. Then, when the storm of battle was over, the general would sleep for an eighteen hour stretch.

John F. Kennedy

After a mid-morning stint of swimming and exercise, John F. Kennedy would eat his lunch in bed and then settle down for a nap. He would have his valet draw the drapes and ask not to be disturbed unless it was a true emergency. He would then quickly fall asleep for a 1-2 hour nap. Jackie would always join him no matter what she was doing when her husband’s nap commenced, leaving an assistant to entertain her guests. Head of the household staff, JB West, recalled that “during those hours the Kennedy doors were closed. No telephone calls were allowed, no folders sent up, no interruptions from the staff. Nobody went upstairs, for any reason.”

After awakening from his nap, Kennedy would take his second hot bath of the day, resume meetings in the Oval Office at 3:30 pm, knock off around 7:30 or 8:00, take another swim, and change his clothes for dinner. Kennedy wore at least three different sets of clothing every single day he was President.

Jackie was the one who later encouraged LBJ to take naps, telling him, “It changed Jack’s whole life.”

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was something of a self-hating napper. He liked to boast about how hard he worked, how he slept only three or four hours a night, and how he would sometimes work for 72 hours straight. But in truth the key to his spectacular productivity was something he was loathe to mention and hid from others: daily napping. Once when his friend Henry Ford paid a visit to his lab, Edison’s assistant stopped him from going into the inventor’s office because Edison was snoozing. Ford said, “But I thought Edison didn’t sleep very much.” To which the assistant answered, “He doesn’t sleep very much at all, he just naps a lot.”

Edison said he could sleep “as sound as a bug in a barrel of morphine” and he often got in a couple of 3 hour naps during the day. One of his associates said that Edison’s “genius for sleep equaled his genius for invention. He could go to sleep anywhere, anytime, on anything.” Indeed, he would often curl up for his naps on a workbench or in a closet.

Stonewall Jackson

Jackson, a general cut from the same cloth as Napoleon, could nap in any place—by fences, under trees, on porches–even in the stress of war. He liked longer naps but also had the reputation for taking quick, 5 minute siestas to rest his eyes. A couple of anecdotes of the General’s napping habits from A Thesaurus of Anecdotes of and Incidents in the Life of Lieut-General Thomas Jonathan Jackson by Elihu Rile:

“During the fury of the struggle at Malvern Hill, Jackson was roused with great difficulty from a heavy slumber, and informed of the situation. Those around him were apprehensive of the result, for attack after attack on our part had been repulsed with severe loss. Jackson, upon recovering his consciousness, merely said, ‘McClellan is only fighting to get away. In the morning, he will be gone.’ He immediately resumed his nap, and Dr. Dabney adds that, upon hearing his opinion, he at once followed his example. When the morning light dawned upon this scene of blood, every trace of the enemy had disappeared.” –Dr. B. L. Dabney

“Talking about Jackson’s propensity to sleep, I remember after the battles of the Seven Days’ Fight around Richmond one Sunday we went to Dr. Hoge’s church. He went to sleep soon after the service began and slept through the greater part of it. A man who can go to sleep under Dr. Hoge’s preaching, can go to sleep anywhere on the face of this earth. When the service was over the people climbed over the backs of the pews to get near him, and the aisles became crowded and General Jackson embarrassed. Presently he turned to me and said: ‘Doctor, didn’t you say the horses were ready?’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and we bolted out of church.

Many a night I have kept him on his horse by holding to his coattail. He always promised to do as much for me when he had finished his nap. He meant to do it, I am sure, but my turn never came.” — Dr. Hunter McGuire

Ronald Reagan

Reagan, preaching to the converted.

Ronald Reagan was a controversial napper. Critics tried to use his rumored propensity for napping as proof of a lackadaisical approach to the presidency and a reminder of his advanced age. Nancy always denied that her husband was a napper. But his diaries show that he at least occasionally indulged in the nap, noting in reference to his daily schedule that “afternoon is still nap time” and often taking one to recharge before donning a tux and attending a formal nighttime event. He also enjoyed turkey hunts for the opportunity they provided for naps. For his part, Reagan, as he did with many things, had a sense of humor about the criticism over his napping. When he was leaving office, he joked that his cabinet chair should be inscribed with, “Ronald Reagan Slept Here.”

Salvador Dali

Eccentric artist Salvador Dali believed that one of the secrets to becoming a great painter was what he called “slumber with a key.” “Slumber with a key” was an afternoon siesta designed to last no longer than a second. To accomplish this micro nap, Dali recommended sitting in a chair with a heavy metal key pressed between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. A plate would be placed upside down on the floor underneath the hand with the key. The moment Dali fell asleep, the key would slip from his finger, clang the plate, and awaken him. Dali believed this tiny nap “revivified” an artist’s whole “physical and physic being.”

Dali said that he had learned the “slumber with a key” trick from the Capuchin monks and that other artists he knew also used it. Albert Einstein “napped” this way as well, as have other inventors and thinkers who believed this nap inspired their ideas and creativity. These men were unknowingly taking advantage of what scientists today call the “hypnogogic” nap, when the mind, before it reaches Stage 2 sleep, unlocks free flowing creative thoughts. It’s a topic interesting enough to warrant its own post!

Who was the greatest Deputy U.S. Marshal of the Old West?

Wyatt Earp?
Wild Bill Hickok?

How about Bass Reeves? Bass who?

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was arguably the greatest lawman and gunfighter of the West, a man who served as a marshal for 32 years in the most dangerous district in the country, captured 3,000 felons, (once bringing in 17 men at one time), and shot 14 men in the line of duty, all without ever being shot himself.

He was also a black dude.

To understand the story of Bass Reeves, you first need to understand a bit of the fascinating history of Oklahoma. Let’s start there.

Before Oklahoma was a state, it was a territory. When the “Five Civilized Tribes” (Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, and Chickasaws) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homes in the Southeast, they were relocated to the middle of the country, to an area called the Indian Territory.

Because the Five Tribes sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, the federal government forced them to renegotiate their treaties and cede the Western half of Indian Territory for the settlement of other tribes. This was called the Oklahoma Territory, and it was opened in 1890 to white settlers. The two territories were referred to as the "Twin Territories."

The Indian Territory boasted an unusual mix of peoples and cultures. It was the home of Indians, Indian Freedmen (the black slaves of the Indians who were emancipated after the Civil War and made citizens of the Five Tribes), white settlers and African-Americans who had formerly been slaves to white masters in the South who rented land from the Indians as sharecroppers, and finally, outlaws fleeing the law and squatting on the land.

The Indian Lightforce police and the tribal courts governed this diverse population. But the tribal courts only had jurisdiction over citizens of the Five Tribes. So if a crime was a committed by an Indian and/or it involved a fellow Indian, it was handled by these tribal courts.

Non-Freedmen blacks, whites, and Indians who committed a crime against a person who was not a citizen of the Indian nations had to be tried in the U.S. federal courts in Paris, Texas and Fort Smith, Arkansas. And so the only U.S. law enforcement officers or judicial figures in Indian Territory were the U.S. Marshals, who rode for miles over the prairies, for months at a time, looking for wanted criminals to arrest and bring back to Fort Smith or Paris.

This made the Indian Territory a highly desirable place for horse thieves, bootleggers, murderers and outlaws of all varieties to hide out and lay low. At the time, it was estimated that of the 22,000 whites living in Indian Territory, 17,000 of them were criminals. This was truly the Wild West, or as the saying of the time went, “No Sunday West of St. Louis. No God West of Forth Smith.”

“Eighty miles west of Forth Smith was known as “the dead line,” and whenever a deputy marshal from Fort Smith or Paris, Texas, crossed the Missouri, Kansas & Texas track he took his own life in his hands and he knew it. On nearly every trail would be found posted by outlaws a small card warning certain deputies that if they ever crossed the dead line they would be killed. Reeves has a dozen of these cards which were posted for his special benefit. And in those days such a notice was no idle boast, and many an outlaw has bitten the dust trying to ambush a deputy on these trails.” -Oklahoma City newspaper article, 1907

Indian Territory was the most dangerous place for a U.S. Marshal to work then or ever. In the period before Oklahoma statehood, over one hundred marshals were killed in the line of duty. It helps to put that number in perspective: Since the US Marshals Service was created in 1789, more than 200 marshals have been killed in the line of duty. 120 of those were killed in the Indian and Oklahoma territories before statehood in 1907. That’s right, half of all the U.S. marshals ever killed were killed in the Twin Territories.

A man really had to have true grit to be a marshal at this time and in this place.

Bass Reeves had that grit in spades.

Reeves was likely the first African-American commissioned as a deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River and was brought into the service by Judge Isaac C. Parker, aka the “The Hanging Judge.” Parker presided over the largest federal court district in U.S. history (74,000 square miles) and sentenced 88 men to be hanged during the course of his career. For more than half of his years on the bench, no appeals of his decisions were allowed. Reeves and Parker enjoyed a professional and personal relationship of great mutual respect.

It was a respect Reeves worked hard to earn.

Reeves stood 6’2 in a time when men were much shorter, and he had very broad shoulders and large hands. He was a giant among men. Such a large man needed a uncommonly large horse (“When you get as big as me, a small horse is as worthless as a preacher in a whiskey joint fight. Just when you need him bad to help you out, he’s got to stop and think about it a little bit.”). He rode the territories with two six-shooters, his trusty Winchester rifle, and a big black hat upon his head. Needless to say, Reeves cut an extremely imposing figure.

But it was his reputation more than his appearance that really struck fear in the hearts of the “bad men” of the territories. Contemporaries described Reeves as a “lawman second to none,” a man who was “absolutely fearless,” and a “terror to outlaws and desperadoes.” He was said to be the “most feared U.S marshal that was ever heard of in that country,” and his nickname was the “Invincible Marshal;” the undisputed king of narrow escapes, “at different times his belt was shot in two, a button shot off his coat, his hat brim shot off, and the bridle reins which he held in his hands cut by a bullet.”

Reeves was also know for his honesty, dogged persistence, and unswerving devotion to duty and the law. He always got his man; having arrested 3,000 criminals, he only once failed to nab the man he was after. He never shot a man when it wasn’t necessary and they hadn’t aimed to kill him first. And he never changed his policies or treatment of folks on the basis of race, ethnicity, or even familial ties; all were equal under the law. Not only did Reeves arrest the minister who baptized him, he also arrested his own son after the young man murdered his wife in a fit of jealously. None of the other marshals wanted the latter assignment, but Reeves simply strode into the Chief Deputy Marshal’s office and said, “Give me the writ.” Two weeks later, he brought in his son to be booked.

Oh, and he had an awesome mustache.

Reeves’ deeds and exploits are the stuff of Hollywood films, but they’re absolutely true and offer us several lessons in manliness.

Lessons in Manliness from Bass Reeves

It’s Never Too Late for a Man to Have a Second Act

Bass Reeves was born a slave in Arkansas in 1838. When the Civil War broke out, his white master joined the Confederate Army and took Reeves along to serve as his body servant. Reeves bided his time, until one night he saw an opening, laid out his master with his mighty fists, and took off for the hills a free man. He was taken in by the Keetoowah, an abolitionist sect of the Cherokee Nation.

When the war was over, he struck out on his own and settled with his family in Van Buren, Arkansas, making a good living as a farmer and horse breeder. He was the first black man to settle in Van Buren, and he built his family an eight room house with his own hands.

He started making some extra money by helping the U.S. Marshals with scouting and tracking and soon earned a reputation for himself as a man who knew what he was doing and could be relied upon.

He was commissioned as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in his own right in 1875, when he was 38 years old. During this time marshals were paid for the number of criminals brought in and the distance traveled in capturing them and bringing them back to court. With so many miles to cover in Indian Territory, and with his legendary effectiveness for tracking down wrong-doers, Reeves made a great living at his job. And so it was only as he was nearing 40 that he found his true calling.

Compensate for Weaknesses by Cultivating Signature Strengths

“My mom always said she heard that Bass was so tough he could spit on a brick and bust it in two!” -Willabelle Shultz, granddaughter of fellow marshal

Because he grew up a slave, Bass Reeves did not know how to read or write. Being an illiterate U.S. Marshal was highly unusual—the men needed to fill out forms and reports–but Bass got and kept his job by compensating for this weakness with other valuable strengths.

First, he could speak the Muskogee language of the Creeks and Seminoles, and he could also converse pretty well in the languages of the other Five Civilized Tribes. He took the time to get to know the tribes and their customs, and they respected him for it. His friendly and sterling reputation among Indians, blacks, and whites alike led folks to trust him and give him assistance and tips they didn’t feel comfortable sharing with other marshals.

Reeves knew Indian Territory like the back of his hand, and his scouting and tracking skills were second to none.

But his most notable strength was his prowess with firearms. He carried two big .45 caliber six-shooters and wore them with their handles facing forward. He employed the cross-handed draw, as he believed it was the fastest way for a man to grab his guns. And indeed, he was known as a man who could draw with lightning fast speed; numerous men tried to beat him, and 14 of them died in the attempt.

But unlike what you see in movies, cowboys in the West did not rely on their pistols; those were their back-up firearms. A cowboy’s weapon of choice was his trusty Winchester rifle, and that was the gun Reeves used most. But he was a proficient marksman with both weapons. Ambidextrous and always cool under pressure, Reeves could fire an accurate shot with pistol or rifle, with his left hand or his right. It was said he could draw “a bead as fine as a spider’s web on a frosty morning” and “shoot the left hind leg off of a contended fly sitting on a mule’s ear at a hundred yards and never ruffle a hair.”

Turkey shoot competitions were popular at territorial fairs and picnics, but Reeves was banned from entering them because he was too darn good. Once, when he saw 6 wolves tearing at a steer, he took them all out with just 8 shots from the back of a galloping horse.

The Mind Is Just as Powerful a Weapon as the Gun

“If Reeves were fictional, he would be a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Superman, and the Lone Ranger.” -Historian Art Burton

Despite Bass’ legendary strength and prowess with firearms, he didn’t simply go after criminals with guns and fists blazing. Rather, he took a far slower, methodical, and ultimately more effective approach. He was an intuitive and quick-thinking detective who often got his man from being smart and crafty.

Reeves was a master of disguise, a tactic he used to sneak up on unsuspecting outlaws. They would undoubtedly see a giant black man on a giant horse coming for them, so when Bass was closing in on a man, he would switch to a smaller ride, and he learned tricks from the Indians on how to look smaller in the saddle.

And often he would ditch the horse all together. For example, one time he dressed like a farmer and lumbered along in a ramshackle wagon pulled by old oxen. He drove the wagon close to a cabin where six outlaws where holed up, and as he passed their hide out, he pretended to get the wagon snagged on a large tree stump. When the outlaws came out to help this humble farmer, he coolly reached into his overalls, drew out his six-shooters, and placed the men under arrest.

On another occasion, Reeves was after two outlaws who were hiding out at their mother’s house. Reeves camped 28 miles away to be sure they didn’t see him coming or hear he was in the area. Then he ditched his marshal duds and stashed his handcuffs and six-shooters under a set of dirty, baggy clothes, flat shoes, and a large floppy hat into which he shot three bullet holes. Dressed like a typical tramp, Reeves sauntered up to the felons’ hideout and asked for something to eat, showing them his bullet-ridden hat and explaining how he had been shot at by marshals and was famished from having walked for miles to flee the law. Having ingratiated himself as a fellow outlaw, the men ate together and decided to join forces on a future heist. After everyone had fallen asleep for the night, Reeves crept up to the two outlaws and handcuffed them in their sleep, careful not to wake them. In the morning, Reeves bounded into the room and woke them up with his booming voice, “Come on, boys, let’s get going from here!” As the men tried to get out bed, they quickly realized they’d been had by crafty old Bass Reeves.

Be Reliable–The Details Matter

Even though he was a tough-as-nails badass, locals also remembered Reeves as a man known for his “politeness and courteous manner” and as someone who was “kind,” “sympathetic,” and “always neatly dressed.” He was also a man who took pride in getting the details right.

Reeves was unable to read or write and yet part of his job was to write up reports on his arrests and serve subpoenas to witnesses. So when he had to write a report, he would dictate to someone else and sign with an “X.” When he would get a stack of subpoenas to serve to different people, he would memorize the names like symbols and have people read the subpoenas out loud to him until he memorized what symbol went with what subpoena.

He took great pride in the fact that he never once served the wrong subpoena to the wrong person. In fact, many of the courts specially requested that their subpoenas be served by Reeves because he was so reliable.

Keep Cool. Always.

“Reeves was never known to show the slightest excitement under any circumstance. He does not know what fear is. Place a warrant for arrest in his hands and no circumstance can cause him to deviate. ” -Oklahoma City Weekly Times-Journal, 1907

Bass Reeves had an uncanny ability to stay calm and cool, even when he was in a really tight spot.

He found himself in that kind of tight spot while looking to arrest a murderer, Jim Webb, who was hanging out with posseman Floyd Smith at a ranch house. Reeves and his partner moseyed up, tried to pull the old, “we’re just regular cowboys passing through” trick, and sat down to get some breakfast. But the two men weren’t buying it and sat glaring at the marshals, pistols at the ready in their hands. An hour went by and Reeves and his partner still didn’t have an opening to make a move on the outlaws. But when Webb was momentarily distracted by a noise outside, Reeves jumped up, wrapped his large hand around Webb’s throat, and shoved his Colt .45 in the surprised man’s face. Webb meekly surrendered. Reeves’ partner was supposed to jump in and grab Smith, but he froze. Smith fired two shots at Reeves; he dodged them both, and with his hand still around Webb’s neck, he turned and took Smith out with one shot. Then he ordered his partner to handcuff Webb and called it a day.

Reeves was the target of numerous assassination attempts but he often saved his own neck by staying completely calm and in control. One time, he met two men out riding who knew who he was and wanted him dead. They drew their guns and forced him off his horse. One of the men asked if Reeves had any last words, and Bass answered that he would really appreciate it if one of them could read him a letter from his wife before finishing him off. He reached into his saddlebag for the letter and handed it over. As soon as the would-be-assassin reached for the letter, Bass put one of his hands around the man’s throat, used his other hand to draw his gun, and said, “Son of a bitch, now you’re under arrest!” The outlaw’s partner was so surprised he dropped his gun, and Reeves put both men in chains.

Another time, Reeves faced a similar situation; this time three wanted outlaws forced him from his horse and were about to do him in. He showed them the warrants he had for their arrest and asked them for the date, so he could jot it down for his records when he turned the men into jail. The leader of the group laughed and said,“You are ready to turn in now.” But having dropped his guard for just a second, Reeves drew his six-shooter as fast as lightning and grabbed the barrel of the man’s gun. The outlaw fired three times, but Reeves again dodged the bullets. At the same time, and with his hand still around the barrel of the first man’s gun, he shot the second man, and then hit the third man over the head with his six-shooter, killing him. All in a day’s work for Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves.

Build a Bridge

When Reeves was appointed a marshal by Judge Parker, the judge reminded him that “he would be in a position to serve as a deputy to show the lawful as well as the lawless that a black man was the equal of any other law enforcement officer on the frontier.”

Bass took this responsibility seriously.

Black law enforcement officers were a rarity in other parts of the country, but more common in Indian Territory and surrounding states like Texas. In fact, despite Hollywood’s depiction of the Old West as lily white, 25% of cowboys in Texas were African-American.

Because of the reputation Bass earned as a marshal who was honest, effective, and doggedly persistent–the Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal of the Western District, Bud Ledbetter, called Bass, “one of the bravest men this country has ever known”–more black marshals were hired in Indian Territory; a couple dozen were part of the service during Bass’ tenure. Nowhere else in the country could a black man arrest a white man. Bass had paved the way, and done one of the manliest things a man can do—build a bridge and a legacy for others to follow.

Sadly, when Oklahoma became a state in 1907, it instituted Jim Crow laws that forced black marshals out of the service. Despite his legendary record as a deputy marshal, Reeves had to take a job as a municipal policeman in the town of Muskogee the year before he died. But his shining example of manhood cannot so easily be passed over and still speaks to us today.

Source: Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves by Art Burton

“Que va,” the boy said, “It is what a man must do.”

“Success” is all too often assumed to be the indicator of the value of a man. But success, in and of itself, merely speaks to a particular status and may have nothing to do with the journey that the man took to get there, or whether or not he retained his integrity along the way. Among the many aspects of the story, it is the idea of redefining success and victory that makes The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, so profound.

It is a seemingly simple story: Santiago is an old, experienced fisherman who hasn’t brought in a catch for months. On the 85th day of this dry spell, he heads far out into the Gulf of Mexico where he hooks a giant marlin. Unable to pull the fish into his skiff, he holds onto the line for three days before killing it with a harpoon. After lashing the fish to his boat, Santiago heads home with his hard-won prize. But along the way, sharks reduce the fish to bones, and the old man returns to port as he left–empty-handed.

Yes, a simple story on the surface, but also a tale with a much deeper message and a relevance that transcends time and place. It speaks to the universal truths of a man’s existence within this world, where pride, respect, tenacity, and dreams fuel a man in his quest to thrive in the face of struggle. It is a story about the indomitable spirit of man; Santiago stands as a symbol of an attitude toward life, and his fight with the mighty marlin offers numerous lessons to all men.

Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea

“A man is not made for defeat.”

Santiago has nothing but a broken-down shed and a rickety skiff with a sail that is “patched with flour sacks” and looks “like the flag of permanent defeat.” The skin of his gaunt body illustrates his hardships and is marked with deeply-set wrinkles, scars, and blotches from the punishing sun. And because of his terrible misfortune, he is a pariah in his small fishing village.

But while nearly “everything about Santiago is old,” his eyes remain “the same color as the sea and are cheerful and undefeated.” Instead of throwing in the towel after 84 days of terrible luck, he sails farther out into the Gulf than he has gone before.

A man continues to do whatever he must do to the best of his ability, no matter what tribulations befall him. While challenges and setbacks can strip a man of all outward signs of success, still his spirit can remain undefeated. For it can will a man to never give up and to keep on trying.

Or as Hemingway puts it: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

A man does not depend on luck.

Luck plays a major role in the story and in our everyday lives, and to a superstitious lot like fishermen, poor luck can seem paralyzing. In Santiago’s little Cuban fishing village he is labeled “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky,” after having gone eighty-four days without taking a single fish.

This makes him a outsider among his peers, and it costs him his trusty partner, the boy Manolin, whose parents forbid him from fishing with the old man. While Santiago deals with the suffering of being hungry and poor, other boats from his village continue pulling in good fish every day.

Anyone can have luck of course, but not everyone one can have determination, skill, and perseverance. Santiago knows this and therefore believes in his ability rather than chance. “To hell with luck,” he thinks. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”

He does this by not taking any shortcuts in his work. He keeps his fishing lines straighter than anyone, and he makes sure that, “at each level…there [will] be a bait waiting exactly where he wishes it to be for any fish that swim there.” Santiago keeps his lines with precision, and he is ready for whatever comes.

We cannot attain success simply by waiting for good things to happen. It is when we strive forward towards a goal that we open ourselves up to opportunity. As Santiago muses, “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when the luck comes you are ready.”

A man bears pain and hardship without complaint.

“He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.”

Whether it’s something as trivial as being cold or as significant as skirting along the borders of death, a man simply does what must be done, without self-pity and without complaint. Santiago does not whine about hunger pains or thirst, nor does he mope about the fishing line that cuts into his hands.

Out at sea, far beyond the other boats, Santiago is presented with the greatest challenge of his life. It comes in the form of an eighteen-foot marlin and makes for a long, long battle that spans days. Near the edge of his exhaustion, Santiago’s hand is cut deeply and cramps up “as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.” He washes the cut in the salt water and lets it dry and warm in the sun. But the hand refuses him and he is forced to work with his right hand alone, against the powerful fish that is two feet longer than his own skiff. Drained, Santiago “settles against the wood” and simply “takes his suffering as it comes. He is comfortable but suffering, although he does not admit the suffering at all.”

A man does not boast.

The quality of a man is best seen through his actions, and developing humility is a key ingredient in letting our actions do the talking for us. Santiago is given plenty opportunity to boast during a conversation with his young friend, Manolin, but he does not.

Manolin asks, “Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?”

“I think they are equal.”

“And the best fisherman is you.”

“No. I know others better.”

“Que va,” the boy says, “There are many good fishermen and some great ones, but there is only you.”

“Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.”

And it’s only because of Santiago’s determination that none do. Boasting only briefly satisfies insecurity. It leaves no lasting impression on the crowd who hears it.

A man finds inspiration from others.

“But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.”

For Santiago, it is “the great Joe DiMaggio” who inspires and motivates him. He possesses traits that Santiago admires, reminding him that to be successful you have to put all of yourself into a task and bear up under difficulty. Looking up to others–having heroes–provides us with examples to follow, the knowledge that others have overcome obstacles as well, and the assurance of the great possibilities of a man’s life.

A man goes down swinging–no matter his age.

Old age is a common excuse, and for certain things it is legitimate, but all too often it is used either where it has no place or before any effort has been made to prove the assumption wrong. When the sharks begin attacking Santiago’s marlin, at first he fears that he cannot defend himself because of his age, but before long, he gathers his tools to be used as weapons and does what he must. When he breaks the blade off his knife in the body of one shark, the fear sinks in again. “Now they have beaten me,” he thinks. “I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.”

And many more sharks do come. He has to club and strike them with all of his strength. During the fight, the sun goes down and Santiago wonders, “What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do?” He digs deep. “‘Fight them,” he says, “I’ll fight them until I die.”

Though the sharks do eventually tear Santiago’s marlin apart, they do not defeat him as a man, and he never gives up. Paddling in, he tastes blood in his mouth, so he spits into the ocean and says, “Eat that galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.”

Every man has sharks that circle him; they gather when they smell the blood of real achievement. But you’re never too old to put up a fight.

A man’s legacy comes from maintaining his integrity.

Santiago drifts away from the pages of this story with exactly the same thing he had when it began: almost nothing. His catch does not bring him money nor “success,” but it does provide him with a legacy that will endure far beyond any monetary gain ever could have. For he retains his own integrity in the face of great challenge; he exhausts himself in a good fight. A man doesn’t quit.

What other lessons in manliness can be found in The Old Man and the Sea? Share them with us in the comments.

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In September of 1914, Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton set out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with the goal of being the first man to traverse the Antarctic continent. Aboard what would become his aptly-named ship, the Endurance, he and 27 men set sail for the South Pole. But along the way, the ship became trapped in ice, setting off a series of events that would lead him away from his original goal and yet test him as a man and enshrine him as a hero far more than the attainment of it would have. While he did not complete the transcontinental journey he had hoped for, he brought back all 27 of his men alive, a feat of magnificent leadership without parallel.

How did he do it? Shackleton’s leadership abilities were myriad, but today we will focus on the two most vital: his resilience and service.

A Leader Must Be Supremely Resilient

Resiliency involves both the hardihood and courage to take on risks and challenges, and the ability to bounce back from difficulties and disappointments. Shackleton would face hardships that almost defy belief, and it was his iron-clad resilience that allowed he and his men to survive.

The story of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition is the story of surging optimism met with crushing defeat manifested over and over and over again. That the former never failed Shackleton, and the latter never broke him, is truly what brought his men through to the other side.

Numerous times, Shackleton and his men felt incredibly hopeful that a goal was in sight and things were turning their way, only to have these hopes utterly dashed:

The Endurance trapped in ice.

The Endurance gets stuck in the ice floes before reaching Vahsel Bay, where the expedition across Antarctica was to begin. But Shackleton is still hopeful that if they wait until the ice melts in the spring, they’ll be able to continue the journey.
But after months trapped in ice, the pressure from the shifting floes twists and breaks the ships; it slowly fills with water and Shackleton must issue the order to abandon the vessel. The men must now camp on the ice floe.

The men attempt to pull the boats across the ice floes.

Shackleton is hopeful that the men and dogs can pull the supplies and boats across the ice floes until they reach open water, at which point they can set sail for Paulet Island, 346 miles to the northwest. He leads the party, breaking the trail and trying to smooth the pressure ridges with a shovel and pick. But the wet snow soaks the men’s tents and sleeping bags and slows progress considerably. After only making it two miles in two days of marching, the plan is abandoned. The men will have to remain camped on a barren sheet of ice, where they must be careful that the ice does not crack and the killer whales do not rise to the surface and tip them into the freezing waters.
After 2 months camped on the ice, Shackleton decides to attempt another march. The men once more leave in high spirits, but again, the progress is so painfully slow that the expedition is quickly abandoned. The men will have to camp for four more months as their icy home drifts for hundreds of miles, their lives completely at the mercy of nature. At one point, the coast of Antarctica comes within sight, but the way is blocked by ice, and Shackleton is forced to slowly slide away from his goal.
After almost six months of living on ice, it finally melts sufficiently for the boats to be launched. The men set off for Elephant Island, which is only 30 miles away. After an arduous day of sailing, Shackleton feels hopeful they are almost there. But when their position is checked, they find they are now 60 miles from their destination—the current has carried them off course.

En route to Elephant Island the men first tried camping on ice floes, but this was abandoned when one cracked open as the men slept, tearing a tent apart and dropping its inhabitant, still inside his sleeping bag, into the icy waters. Shackleton, ever vigilant about the safety of his men, had sensed something was wrong, and was right on the scene, immediately fishing the man out.

For seven days, Shackleton and his men row and sail in small, open boats upon the stormy seas. Blocks of ice threaten their path. Rain and snow squalls soak them though. Snow showers dust them in white. The sun is absent for 17 hours a day, and the temperatures dip below zero in the dark. Sleep comes only in tiny, involuntary snatches, and the men are completely exhausted. On the fourth day of the journey, the water supply runs out and the men grow so dehydrated they cannot eat. Elephant Island is spotted, but as they pull close, a strong gale prevents them from landing. For two days they can see their goal but not approach it.
When the men finally make land, they dance along the “beach” and let the pebbles dribble through their hands. Despite the fact this was “an inhospitable place, devoid of any vegetation, covered with glaciers and swept by ice laden surges of the South Atlantic Ocean,” the men are overjoyed; this is the first time they’ve been on solid land in 497 days. But Shackleton realizes that their landing spot is too open to wind and waves, and the men must get back in the boats and move another 7 miles around the island.
The men make camp and are greatly relieved, believing they will be able to spend the winter on the island and be picked up by whalers in the spring. But Shackleton realizes there will not be enough food on the island to last that long; he must break the news to the men and get back in the boat to sail another 800 miles to the whaling stations on the island of South Georgia.

The launch of the 22-foot James Caird from Elephant Island, the boat that would carry Shackleton 800 miles on the open sea to South Georgia.

Shackleton chooses five men to accompany him, loads a boat with a month’s supply of rations, and takes off to their last hope of salvation. South Georgia was only a tiny speck of an island, and with the smallest mistake in navigation, the men would be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean, where the nearest land was thousands of miles away. For 16 days, the men are battered by waves and wind, fierce gales, and the constant spray of freezing ocean water, which chills them to the very marrow of their bones. Water makes its way into nearly every nook in the boat, including their moldering sleeping bags, and has to be continually pumped and bailed out by hand. The men cannot stand or sit up straight, and with the ship violently pitching back and forth, they must crawl over the stones serving as ballast to move from one part of the boat to another. Their bodies grow sore and bruised; exposure leaves their mouths cracked and swollen. As the men near the island, water rations grow low and have to be cut; desperate dehydration sets in. Land is spotted on the 14^th day, but there is nowhere safe to put in. The drinking water is now completely gone. A hurricane-force gale rocks and floods the boat. The men feel the end is near. But the next day they finally find a bay in which to put in.

The small boat encountered 80-foot waves.

But the men’s journey is far from over. They find themselves on the opposite side of the island from the whaling stations. Shackleton decides to make an overland journey to reach them, an expedition never before attempted, and one that would take the men over steep snow-slopes and glaciers, jagged mountain peaks, and impassable cliffs. But first another delay—bad weather keeps the men from starting the march for ten days, an anxiety-filled time as their thoughts continually turn to the men left on Elephant Island.

The island of South Georgia was beautiful and forbidding.

When the march begins, Shackleton as always breaks the trail for the other men, trudging through soft, knee-deep snow and across fields of ice. Without flashlights, the darkness hides the deadly crevasses until they are just upon them. Several times the men grow hopeful that they are almost there, only to realize they have gone the wrong way, forcing them to gloomily retrace their steps. For 36 sleepless hours the men march in search of the whaling stations, stopping only for meals.
Finally, Shackleton reaches the first signs of civilization he has seen in a year and a half. And still, the setbacks are not over. Shackleton is desperate to rescue the men on Elephant Island as quickly as possible. He makes three attempts to retrieve them, but each time the ship is forced to turn back because ice blocks the way. It takes a fourth ship and four months until Shackleton makes it back to Elephant Island, but he is greeted with the most rewarding sight of all: all 22 of the men he had left behind, alive, waving from the beach.

Hope. Progress. Crushing setback. Hope. Progress. Crushing setback. This was Shackleton’s reality for a year and a half. Such a string of endless disappointments might have made a lesser man want to curl up and die. But not Shackleton. Although he had moments where the weight of the situation sat heavily upon his shoulders, he would always shake off the gloom and resiliently move forward once more; his manly spirit could not be defeated.

This was true from his first setback to his last.

While the Endurance was trapped in ice, the ship’s captain, Frank Arthur Worsley, said of the man everyone called “The Boss:”

“Shackleton’s spirits were wonderfully irrepressible considering the heartbreaking reverses he has had to put up with and the frustration of all his hopes for this year at least. One would think he had never a care on his mind & he is the life & soul of half the skylarking and fooling in the ship.”

No matter what befell him, Shackleton remained of good cheer and always found reasons to laugh. Even on the soul-crushing boat ride to South Georgia, Worsley remembered him laughing. And on the arduous 36 hour hike to the whaling stations, Shackleton could still earnestly say, “laughter was in our hearts.”

And here is the mark of a real leader: the worse things got, the more cool and collected Shackleton became. Worsley remembered that Shackleton could sometimes be irritable when the going was good and he could afford it, “but never when things were going badly and we were up against it.”

How did Shackleton maintain his resilience amidst trials that would have made other men crumble? He concentrated not on the things that couldn’t be altered and weren’t under his control, but on what he could do.

After the Endurance sank, Worsley remembered that Shackleton was:

“bitterly disappointed, as sorely grieved as I was myself, and he let me get a glimpse of his mind when he said, sadly, one day: “It looks as though we shan’t cross the Antarctic Continent after all.” He paused, and then squaring his shoulders, added cheerfully, ‘It’s a pity, but that cannot be helped. It is the men that we have to think about.’”

And for the rest of the journey, that is essentially all he focused on, finding his strength in a service and a cause greater than his own ambitions.

A Leader Serves Those Under Him

“Shackleton’s first thought was for the men under him. He didn’t care if he went without a shirt on his back so long as the men he was leading had sufficient clothing.” –Lionel Greenstreet, First Officer

“How he stood the incessant vigil was marvelous, but he is a wonderful man…He simply never spares himself if, by his individual toil, he can possibly benefit anyone else.” –Thomas Orde-Lees

“Shackleton had a genius—it was neither more nor less than that—for keeping those about him in high spirits. We loved him. To me, he was a brother. The men felt the cold it is true; but he had inspired the kind of loyalty which prevented them from allowing themselves to get depressed over anything.” –FA Worsley

Equal in importance to Shackleton’s supreme resilience, was his care, almost obsession, for the well-being of his men.

Shackleton was ever concerned about his men’s morale. He understood that idleness quickly begets depression, and so he kept the men as active as possible, sending them out for vigorous games of football and hockey while the Endurance was trapped in ice. This is also why he chose to attempt the marches across the ice once the ship sank, wisely observing that:

“It would be, I considered, so much better for the men to feel that they were progressing—even if the progress was slow—towards land and safety, than simply to sit down and wait for the tardy north-westerly drift to take us from the cruel waste of ice.”

On the way to South Georgia, he assured that the men got regular meals and drinks of hot milk every four hours; the routine gave the men stability and something to look forward to. Worsley wrote:

“It was due solely to Shackleton’s care of the men in preparing these hot meals and drinks every four hours day and night, and his general watchfulness in everything concerning the men’s comfort, that no one died during the journey. Two of the party at least were very close to death. Indeed, it might be said that he kept a finger on each man’s pulse. Whenever he noticed that a man seemed extra cold and shivered, he would immediately order another hot drink of milk to be prepared and served to all. He never let the man know that it was on his account, lest he became nervous about himself, and while all participated, it was the coldest, naturally, who got the greatest advantage.”

He always thought of the needs of his men above his own, and he was always ready to sacrifice his own comfort for others. As Worsley put it, “It was his rule that any deprivation should be felt by himself before anybody else.”

When they sailed to Elephant Island, the expedition’s photographer, Frank Hurley, lost his mittens, so Shackleton gave him his own; when Hurley protested, Shackleton threatened to throw them them overboard. Hurley accepted the mittens, and Shackleton’s fingers became frostbitten. Yet he never complained. When they made land in South Georgia, the men were too exhausted to pull the boat all the way in. Therefore Shackleton decided to let the men eat and rest before finishing the job. But the boat had to be watched to make sure it did not float away. Shackleton took the first watch, and let the men sleep; he then took the second watch as well, which had been assigned to Worsley, because he was so grateful for the “Skipper” having brought them safely ashore. When the men marched over the island, Shackleton was in thin leather ski boots because he had given his warm, specially-made expedition boots to another man.

Shackleton thought of himself as the father of the men, and believed it was his responsibility to get every man out alive. This was a great weight to bear upon his shoulders, but he bore it stoically.

When the men landed on Elephant Island, Shackleton said to Worsley, “Thank God I haven’t killed one of my men!” Worsley replied, “We all know you have worked superhumanly to look after us.” To which Shackleton answered gruffly, “Superhuman effort…isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.”

A leader who serves and loves his men as Shackleton did, makes a sacrifice that is not simply altruistic, for such actions have the effect of forging the deepest loyalty.

When Shackleton prepared to leave on the voyage to South Georgia, he gathered his men, men who had just been through hell, and told them that the journey would be fraught with danger and had only the slimmest chances of succeeding. And then he asked for those who were willing to accompany him to step forward. Worsley recalled the scene:

“The moment he ceased speaking every man volunteered…On the island was still safety for some weeks. The boat journey promised even worse hardships than those through which we had but recently passed. Yet so strong was the men’s affection for Shackleton, so great was their loyalty to him, that they responded as though they had not undergone any of the experiences that so often destroy those sentiments. They were as eager to accompany him as they had been on the first of August, 1914, the day upon which we had sailed nearly two years before.

It must have been a great moment for Shackleton. There was a long and pregnant pause before he replied, and then he said only three words: “Thank you men.” I remember thinking that this was one of the finest and most impressive utterances I had ever heard.”

Sources:

South by Sir Ernest Shackleton

Endurance by F.A. Worsley

“Let Me Prove in 7 Days That I Can Make You a New Man!”

“The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac”

“Hey, Skinny! Yer Ribs Are Showing!”

It’s an ad the majority of readers out there can easily conjure up in their heads. A cartoon of a skinny, 97-pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face by a beefcake, uses the moment as inspiration to build his body, and comes back to the beach to give the bully his belated comeuppance.

The name associated with that image is just as familiar as the ad itself: Charles Atlas.

That these two images go hand-in-hand may have led you to see Atlas the man as a cartoonish caricature, or to view him in the light of the thousands of sometimes shady modern-day fitness hucksters who have taken Atlas’ old mail-order business model and ramped it up for the online age.

But Atlas was that true rarity, a man equal to the marketing hype—the real deal. He was a scrawny immigrant kid who transformed his body and launched a fitness revolution by creating a 12-lesson exercise course that was translated into seven languages and adopted by millions around the world, including King George VI, Joe DiMaggio, and Rocky Marciano. Even Mahatma Gandhi wrote to inquire about the program—no kidding! The mail-order business Atlas started has now been around for 82 years (although it’s currently run by others—Atlas died in 1972), and thousands continue to look to his program for a way to get in shape.

For the men who lost confidence in themselves during the Great Depression, Charles Atlas was a source of hope and inspiration. Today he remains a symbol of virile strength and vitality, and his life offers us several lessons in manliness.

Lessons in Manliness from Charles Atlas

Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Charles Atlas was born Angelo Siciliano in Acri, Italy in 1893. When he was ten, his family immigrated to America, and he landed on Ellis Island not speaking a word of English.

Little Angelo swore he’d do great things, but his prospects didn’t look too promising. He was a skinny, sickly, slope-shouldered boy–easy pickings for the bullies in his tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Coming home one Halloween night, a bully beat him with a bag of ashes, knocking him out for an hour. “It seemed like he was beating the brains out of me,” Atlas recalled. When he came to, Atlas lumbered home, crawled into bed, and said a prayer, telling God he’d never let another man beat him.

Young Angelo Siciliano: A real life 97-pound weakling. © Charles Atlas, LTD

But the pummelings continued. At age 15, Atlas really was a “97-pound weakling,” and said he really did get sand kicked in his face by a beefy lifeguard in front of a good-looking gal.

When he turned 17, Atlas finally reached his breaking point and made it his goal to change his body so that he could finally stand up for himself. He experimented with different exercises and developed his own fitness routine, and when he emerged on the beach after months of training, his friends were astonished at his transformation. “You look like that statue of Atlas on top of the Atlas Hotel!” one exclaimed. (When he later legally changed his name, he paired that heroic moniker with “Charlie,” a childhood nickname.)

From an auspicious start, Atlas built his body into a man’s whose measurements would be buried as part of the Crypt of Civilization at Oglethorpe University, which won’t be opened until 8113. He turned his most hated-weakness into his most famous strength.

Be open to inspiration.

How did Atlas go from a scrawny kid to what one scientist called, “the absolute masculine ideal?” From inspiration he received at a museum and a zoo, respectively.

While on a school field trip to the Brooklyn Museum, Atlas gazed with wonder at the statues of Greek gods, focusing particularly on the muscular physique of Hercules. He asked his teacher how he could build a similar body, and he suggested that the young man try lifting weights.

So Atlas began a diligent exercise program. He couldn’t afford to buy weights, so he jury-rigged some together at home and used them every morning. But after months of training, he wasn’t at all satisfied with the results—his body was still lean and lanky. Young Atlas wondered how to proceed.

The answer came as he was walking through the Bronx Zoo—a place he would often go to think. As he stopped to admire the lion exhibit, he saw that jungle beast stretch, and observed the way in which its “muscles ran around like rabbits under a rug.” That’s when his light bulb went off: The lion was strong but had never used a barbell or any exercise equipment. “He’s been pitting one muscle against each other!” Atlas thought.

Atlas went home, deciding to try something different—“working out” like the lion did. He discarded his weights and developed a new exercise program for himself—this one based on isometric exercises. Pushing one arm against the other, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, leg lifts, and so on.

Atlas’ business partner, Charles Roman, said that Atlas continued to observe animals his whole life, always on the lookout for a bit of inspiration on how he might improve his fitness regimen.

Carve out your own path.

Many men these days are constantly looking to other people to give them a plan for every aspect of their lives, but sometimes the best plan is the one you create yourself!

In the early 20^th century, the use of weights and barbells was just catching on, and bodybuilding was a fringe movement—strongmen were curiosities who performed at carnival sideshows. That’s where Atlas saw the most famous of the oldtime strongmen—Eugen Sandow. Atlas used Sandow as inspiration and tried lifting weights like his hero. He also experimented with pulleys, calisthenics, and other exercise programs that were popular at the time.

When you're as manly as Charles Atlas, you can wear leopard-print briefs too. © Charles Atlas, LTD

When these methods did not yield the results he was looking for, Atlas stopped trying the established regimens, and created one of his own. While isometric exercises had been around for thousands of years as part of disciplines like yoga, and were popular among professional strongmen, it was a relatively unknown approach to most Americans. Atlas self-reliantly experimented with and put together his own exercise routine. And he was able to put these time-honored exercises into a program that could be followed by the average joe. He came up with a way to make fitness truly accessible—his course was so popular because it required no equipment whatsoever and could be performed by anyone in their own home.

Atlas went against the grain, and in so doing, not only found success himself, but launched a whole cultural movement.

Always seize an opportunity…especially when it’s to work for yourself.

Having a skill or talent doesn’t automatically translate into success.

After building up his body, Atlas’ life didn’t immediately change. He continued to work as a leatherworker, before quitting to take a job as a janitor and a sideshow strongman at Coney Island. He would lie on a bed of nails while an audience member stood on his stomach, rip telephone books in half, and bend iron bars into U’s. But these kinds of stunts were common on the strongman circuit, and Atlas might have labored in obscurity forever had he not been noticed by an artist in 1916.

The commissioning of public statues was on the upswing, but artists were having trouble finding worthy models to pose for their sculptures. When the artist spied Atlas one day on the beach, he asked him to come back to the studio to pose for him. Atlas was unsure about doing it, but decided to see how the opportunity played out. Other artists heard about the man with the incredibly well-proportioned body, and soon Atlas was in great demand, running from one studio to another, and collecting $100 a week.

Charles Atlas was the model for 75 statues that can be seen all around the country.

But modeling did not satisfy Atlas’ great restlessness and ambition. In 1921, he submitted a picture to the “World’s Most Beautiful Man,” photo contest which was sponsored by the founder of Physical Culture Magazine, Bernarr MacFadden, and he easily won the $1,000 prize. A year later, he won MacFadden’s “World’s Most Developed Man” contest, beating out 775 men in a showdown staged publicly at Madison Square Garden. This time, the prize was either $1,000 or a screen test for the starring role in a new Tarzan film. Atlas took the money. He didn’t want his future to be at the mercy of Hollywood execs; he wanted to start own business and be in charge of his own destiny. A wise choice…after all, who remembers the name of the actor who starred in The Adventures of Tarzan?

Be humble enough to admit when you’re in over your head.

Atlas invested his $1,000 in selling his fitness course by mail. In the first two years of business, several thousand orders were placed, allowing Atlas to open his own gym in New York City. But in trying to run the two businesses at once, both of them floundered. Atlas realized he needed to focus on just one thing—promoting his exercise course—and that he couldn’t do it alone.

In 1928, his advertising agency hired 21-year-old Charles Roman to help create better ad copy. Roman came up with the idea of giving Atlas’ isometric exercises a snappier name–“Dynamic-Tension”—and formulated the now-famous 97-lb weakling ads and their memorable headlines. Atlas could see that Roman was a marketing genius, and he offered him half of his company, on the condition that Roman run it. The ad man agreed, and the rest is history. Roman created irresistible ad copy and booked Atlas promotional gigs; Atlas showed up with his muscles and charisma. The two were a match made in heaven.

Practice what you preach.

An enormous part of the appeal of Charles Atlas was that he didn’t just sell his principles, he lived them.

“Live clean, think clean, and don’t go to burlesque shows,” Atlas was fond of saying. Living the clean life meant not only exercising regularly, but keeping your room tidy, getting fresh air, eating healthy food, and avoiding tobacco and alcohol. Atlas himself didn’t smoke or drink, and on the rare occasion someone convinced him to come out to a nightclub, he’d spend the evening sipping a glass of milk and trying to convince other patrons to swap their beer for orange juice. Unsurprisingly, he held New Year’s Eve celebrations that provided carrot juice instead of champagne. He was also a tireless promoter of the Boy Scouts. And despite becoming a multi-millionaire, Atlas lived modestly; only splurging when it came to his beloved white double-breasted suits.

Atlas’ life was remarkably scandal-free, and his only brush with controversy, far from injuring his reputation, actually improved it. Bob Hoffman, who owned the York Barbell Company, sued Atlas, claiming that you couldn’t get an Atlas-like physique with just isometric exercises (which he called “Dynamic-Hooey”) or see a change in your body after just 7 days, and that Atlas was a fake. But the resulting Federal Trade Commission investigation found no evidence of false advertising or unfair trading practices, forcing Hoffman to drop his attacks.

Atlas was also incredibly devoted to his family and his wife. When she passed away in 1965 after their 47 years of marriage together, Atlas’ grief and depression were so profound he considered joining a monastery. But his parish priest convinced him to reconsider, telling Atlas his life’s mission lied not in the cloisters but in continuing to inspire young people.

The Father was not flattering the strongman. At the peak of his popularity in the 30s and 40s, Atlas received so much fan mail that he required a team of nearly 30 women to open and sort it. The letters, often written by young men, came from all over the world and expressed sincere appreciation to Atlas for changing their lives. Despite how large his company got and up until his 60s, Atlas always went into his office in the afternoons to answer some of the letters personally, and sign all of the replies himself. He would also sit and talk with fans who came by looking for advice.

As he grew older, be refused to let himself go, because he knew young people looked up to him, and he didn’t want to be a hypocrite and a bad example. So he kept up his morning exercise routine—50 knee bends, 100 sit-ups, and 300 push-ups–and at age 75, his measurements were almost identical to his measurements at age 30. He spent the last two years of his life reading his Bible and running on the beach, and died at age 79 in 1972.

Sources:

A&E Biography–Modern Day Hercules
“Charles Atlas: Muscle Man” by Jonathan Black

There aren’t too many television shows out there that portray men in a positive light these days. Men on sitcoms are usually dimwitted doofuses or cartoonishly macho. It’s not much better on TV dramas. While I can point to books or movies that inspire me to be a better man, it’s hard for me to do that with today’s crop of small screen offerings.

NBC’s Friday Night Lights is a refreshing exception. Friday Night Lights is a show about football that’s really not about football. Based on the book and movie of the same name, FNL takes place in the fictional town of Dillon, TX and follows the lives of head football coach Eric Taylor and his family, the players he coaches, as well as a whole host of other characters.

Kate and I were a little late getting started with FNL. The series began in 2006, but we didn’t start watching until 2010. We heard about FNL‘s masterful writing and quality acting, but we never got around to watching the show. When Gus was born, we rented the previous seasons and started watching the show from the beginning. We were hooked. The acting and writing was so realistic it was easy to forget that these weren’t real people. A few months later we sadly said goodbye to our friends in Dillon as we watched the final episode in the series.

There’s so much I could say about what easily became my favorite television show of all time. But what struck me most about the show was the way the men in Dillon, TX were portrayed. They weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. They were human, and they screwed up, sometimes royally. But despite their shortcomings, most of them strived to be better men and to do the right thing.

I never thought I’d say this about about a TV show, but Friday Night Lights helped me become a better man.

There are so many things I learned about being a better man from the show, but here are a few of the big ones. If you haven’t seen the show yet, do yourself a favor. Stop reading this post and go rent it on Netflix. I’ve got some spoilers in here, and I don’t want to ruin the show for you. If you’ve seen the show, then please join me as we explore lessons in manliness from Friday Night Lights.

Relish the Underdog Role

“Nothing’s gonna crush Matt Saracen. He’s like a little stinkbug, you can’t crush him. He’s tough, he’ll be fine.” – Coach Taylor about quarterback Matt Saracen

I love a good underdog story and FNL is filled with them. In the first season, we see sophomore Matt Saracen thrust into the starting quarterback position after star QB Jason Street suffers a paralyzing injury. The whole town writes off Saracen and the team’s aspirations for a state title. But Matt proves the naysayers wrong by quietly leading his team to a state championship.

A few seasons later, Coach Taylor is ousted from the head coach position at Dillon High and is given a head coaching job at East Dillon, a school in the poorer part of town that’s re-opening after years of being closed. The rundown facilities, lack of funding, and dearth of experienced players squelch any chance at a state title, let alone a winning season. But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Coach Taylor relishes his underdog role and sees it as a challenge to become an even better coach. Instead of relying on fancy equipment and facilities, Coach Taylor had to spend more time working on the basics and developing passion and teamwork in his players. The result? After a year of rebuilding, an unexpected state championship.

Whether it’s football or business, always relish the underdog role. It keeps you hungry and humble. It frees you from the scrutiny and expectations of others, and allows you to do things your way, to get creative and bootstrap. Most importantly, it forces you to focus on fundamentals. Instead of seeing the underdog role as a disadvantage, use it as an opportunity to become a better man.

A Man Needs to Come to Peace with His Father

“My mom asked me to forgive him, to be better. And you’re asking me to be better. I don’t know how to be better because he never taught me to be better!” – Vince Howard about his father

No man looms larger in a man’s life than his father. For better or worse, his influence is inescapable. He is our model for manhood. Thus few things elicit stronger feelings in a man than his relationship with his dad. I think every boy wants a perfect father. He wants the man who acts as protector when things go bump in the night, who teaches him how to break in a baseball glove and how to shave, who gives him advice on women, and who becomes a friend and confidant later in life. No dad lives up to their kids’ expectations 100% of the time, but when a boy’s father fails to even be there at all for his son, it can create emotional wounds that he carries into adulthood. For many men, coming to peace with their relationship with their father is the biggest step they have to take on the path to manhood.

FNL did a bang up job exploring the sometimes emotionally fraught relationship between father and son. Most of the players had issues with their dads. In season one, running back Smash Williams has to come to peace with his dead father. Tim Riggins’ dad just up and left him and his brother. He tries to reconcile with his dad–still holding out the hope that he might be the father he’s always wanted–but sadly learns that his dad’s a deadbeat, and so he moves on. In the final season, Vince Howard grapples with his ex-con drug-dealing dad getting out of jail and moving back home.

But perhaps the most poignant example of a young man coming to peace with the relationship with his father is Matt Saracen. Matt’s mom took off when he was young, and his dad is a career soldier who has been gone on deployments most of Matt’s life, leaving him alone to take care of his senile grandmother and forcing Matt to grow up faster than most boys his age have to. When Matt’s dad returns home, the two don’t get along, as Matt is filled with angry feelings of abandonment.

After Matt’s father returns to Iraq and is killed in combat, Matt is forced to come to terms with the man he claims to hate. We get to see him go through all the stages of grief. In the end, he doesn’t forgive his father. Instead, he figuratively and literally buries the relationship with his dad and moves on with his life.

Coming to peace with your relationship with your father can mean different things to different men. If you had a good relationship with your dad, it may mean learning to see your father as just a man instead of a larger than life character. If you had a crappy relationship with your dad, coming to peace with your father/son relationship doesn’t mean you have to feel good about your dad or even reconcile with him. It just means accepting the bad relationship, learning from it, and moving on with your life without it burdening you.

Nurture Manliness

“You are a teacher first, and you are a molder of men.” – Tami Taylor to her husband, Coach Eric Taylor

Coach Taylor loved to win football games. But watching the young players he coached mature and develop into good, strong men gave him even more satisfaction. Coach Taylor knew that many of his young players looked to him not only as a coach, but also as a mentor and father figure. Eric Taylor didn’t ask for that role, but he took it on because he understood that the greatest thing a man can do is leave behind a legacy of manliness by nurturing and fathering young men into manhood.

There are so many examples in the show of players showing up at Coach Taylor’s door in the middle of the night looking for help and advice. Without fail, Coach Taylor took them in. He didn’t handle his players with kid gloves by coddling them. He demanded excellence and would sternly rebuke his players if they didn’t fully perform to their potential both on and off the field.

We need mentors to develop fully as men. But at a certain point, it becomes our responsibility to become mentors ourselves and pass on the art of manliness. The great thing about mentoring is that the mentor often gets more out of the relationship than the mentee. In the last episode of the show, Coach Taylor tells Vince Howard, a one time juvie turned star quarterback, “You may never know how proud I am of you.” To which Vince answers, “You changed my life Coach.” That’s legacy.

A Man Seeks Redemption

“Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He is going to fight and he is going to lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle he does not lose himself. This game is not over, this battle is not over.” – Coach Eric Taylor

The theme of redemption was woven throughout each season. Several of the characters fell on hard times because of their own choices and because of just plain bad luck. My favorite example of a man redeeming himself is slick-talking car salesman and booster president, Buddy Garrity. When the show first started, I couldn’t stand Buddy Garrity. He was just a sleaze ball. He was a drunk, he cheated on his wife, and spent his daughter’s college education fund in a bad business deal. Buddy also had a tendency to sow the seeds of dissension on the team and cause Coach Taylor unneeded headaches. You could tell he did it purely for the power trip. People like that really bother me.

I’ll admit I was happy to see Buddy get his comeuppance when he lost his business, his family, and his cherished role as president of the Dillon Panthers booster club. It’s always nice to see cosmic justice in action.

But then something happened. Buddy Garrity quickly went from being my least favorite character on FNL to one my favorites. Why the change? Because Buddy sought for redemption.

Buddy used his personal crucible as an opportunity to become a better man. Ousted from his beloved Panthers, Buddy swallows his pride and becomes a big booster for a rival of his high school alma mater, the East Dillon Lions. He opens up another business in the poorer East Dillon side of town and quickly becomes a part of the community. He takes in a former juvenile delinquent named Santiago and becomes sort of a father figure to him. And in the last season we get to see Buddy repair his relationship with his estranged son, Buddy, Jr. Finally, at Tim Riggins’ parole hearing, he stands up for a young man he had respected as a football player but detested as his daughter’s boyfriend and offers him a job at his restaurant, and his own shot at getting back on his feet.

There are such things as second acts in life. Buddy Garrity is a perfect example of that. If you’ve screwed up in life, humble yourself, and fight like the dickens to make things right.

Texas Forever

A recurring theme on FNL is the desire of the young folk to get out of Dillon, TX. They feel trapped by the town. They hate that everyone knows everything about them. And yet…they always come back. It’s a part of them. They can never fully leave it. I think we’ve all experienced that feeling. We want to explore the world and find new horizons, yet we long for the comfort of home and community. We want the freedom and the lack of responsibility that comes with anonymity, but we also long for a sense of place and belonging.

Tim Riggins has a catchphrase he drops throughout the series: “Texas Forever.”

Texas Forever began as a pact that between Tim and his friend Jason Street that they’d never leave Texas. But I think there’s more to the saying than that. It means never forgetting where you came from. It means holding in your heart the community that molded you into the man you are.

No matter where the branches of life take you, keep your roots planted in firm soil. It keeps you grounded as a man.

A Man’s Closest Ally Is His Wife

“Marriage requires maturity. Marriage requires two people that will listen, really listen to each other. Marriage most of all requires compromise.” – Coach Eric Taylor

While on the surface Friday Night Lights was a show about football, the heart of the show was truly the relationship between Eric and Tami Taylor. It’s by far the most realistic depiction of a good marriage I’ve ever seen on TV. Most TV shows depict marriages in which the husband is suffocated and henpecked by the wife, or ones in which each of the partners is forever on the verge of an affair or the couple is sliding towards divorce. Instead, the Taylors looked like most married couples I know–solid, happy, and committed. They were confronted not with the over-the-top drama typically depicted on the small screen, but with the everyday struggles that strain most marriages, like balancing work and family, handling an unruly teenager, or just figuring out who’s cooking dinner.

Perhaps the biggest conflict between Eric and Tami was balancing their respective career aspirations. Eric wanted to coach football. That was his calling in life. And for most of their marriage, Tami supported her husband’s dream by moving from job to job. Without her support, Coach Taylor could not have been as successful as he was. But when Tami’s career in education starts to take off, her personal goals quickly become incompatible with her husband’s. Cue the marital tension, and the eventual self-sacrificing compromise.

Despite their relationship conflicts, Tami and Eric were committed to their marriage. They were always able to resolve their problems with love and respect.

Eric understood that a man’s closest ally and adviser is his wife. When he had a problem with the team, he’d often ask Tami for her input while they were laying in bed right before they fell asleep. (Kate and I have those same kinds of bedtime conversations. I’m sure most married couples do too.) He understood the power of a marriage mastermind. He saw his wife not as his inferior or superior, but as an equal companion that was there to help him become the best man he could be.

A Man Needs a Team

“A few will never give up on you. When you go back out on the field, those are the people I want in your minds. Those are the people I want in your hearts.” – Coach Eric Taylor

Despite the popular depictions of men as lone wolf types, the reality is that men thrive most when they’re part of a team that’s united by a common goal and purpose. We need other men who will be there to push us to reach our potential and who’ll offer a hand when we fail. Knowing you belong to a group of men who have your back instills confidence and a sense of belonging and brotherhood that we all crave.

In FNL, we see the power of team take center stage. The young players took on challenges together on and off the field. They’d often meet on the empty football field with a few beers in hand to throw the ball around and just talk life. Sometimes they fought and argued, but if one of them needed something, the whole team was there to support him.

Two specific instances from FNL come to mind that showcase the power of male friends in a man’s life. The first is Vince Howard. When we first meet Vince, he’s running from the cops. But Coach Taylor brings him onto the football team and his life transforms. We see him mature into an honorable young man in just two short seasons. Sure, Coach Taylor’s mentoring had a big role in Vince’s transformation, but I think being surrounded by a group of good guys had an even bigger impact on Vince.

The second example is Buddy Garrity, Jr. His mom ships him back to Texas from California because he’s been acting out. After finding Buddy, Jr. in the aftermath of a massive bender, Buddy convinces his son to go out for the football team, knowing that it will help turn his life around. And it does. The East Dillon Lions bring Buddy, Jr. into the fold and give him the sense of belonging he’s needed.

Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can’t Lose

I couldn’t possibly end a post about Friday Night Lights without extrapolating the lessons from Coach Eric Taylor’s iconic motto for his teams.

Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.

So simple and yet so profound. What does it mean? I think it means no matter what the score is on the scoreboard at the end of the game, as long as you can say with a clear conscience (clear eyes) that you played with everything you had (full heart), you can never lose.

And so it is in life. Our goal as men should be to be able to look ourselves in the mirror each night and tell ourselves we gave it our all. Even if things don’t turn out the way we wanted, there’s a peace of mind that comes from knowing you did all you could to succeed and you did it with integrity.

Are you a Friday Night Lights Fan? What lessons in manliness did you learn from the show?

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Andrew Ratelle.

“I see man’s mind cannot be satisfied
unless it be illumined by that truth
beyond which there exists no other truth.”

- Paradiso IV.124-126.

Auguste Rodin’s famous sculpture, The Thinker, is probably the single most well-known depiction of the poet Dante. Originally entitled The Poet itself, the statue has since become as much of an icon of the strength of the human intellect as the man who first inspired it. Crouched in life as in Rodin’s bronze over some of the greatest problems life has to offer, Dante remains one of history’s foremost thinkers, a visionary who places man at the center of his own epic journey between good and evil.

Born in Florence to a noble family in 1265, Dante Alighieri was a man whose life was shaped by conflict. After the defeat of the Ghibellines, the rival political power in Florence, Dante’s own party, the Guelphs, split in half and turned on itself for control of the city. Having made a name for himself as a statesman and “man of letters,” Dante was sent on an ambassadorial mission to Rome to help treat for peace. Detained there by Pope Boniface VIII while his political enemies seized control of the city, Dante was fined and eventually banished from Florence for his opposition to the new ruling party. He would never again return home. For the next twenty years, Dante lived as an exile until his death in 1321, during which time he penned one of history’s greatest epics.

A poetic journey through the flames of hell, purgatory, and heaven, the Divine Comedy takes place on a truly massive scale. Encompassing the entire breadth of man’s moral actions, it has resonated with each passing generation for the last seven hundred years, never ceasing to inspire readers of every walk of life with its immortal themes of sin, suffering, and redemption. Along with its author, the Comedy has long been a touchstone of the Western intellectual tradition, ensuring an enduring legacy for those who would seek to learn from the life and work of “the central man of all the world.”[i]

Lessons in Manliness from Dante

“Nobility, a mantle quick to shrink!
Unless we add to it from day to day,
time with its shears will trim off more and more.”

- Paradiso XVI. 7-9.

Never underestimate the power of a well-rounded mind. Some two hundred years before Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo etched into tradition the archetype of the multi-talented Florentine, Dante had already taken the stage as a kind of “pre-Renaissance Renaissance man.” Though his renown stems chiefly from his abilities as a poet and writer, Dante maintained an enormous appetite for learning throughout his life.

The arts of war, politics, philosophy, linguistics, music, painting, and the natural sciences were all pursuits he engaged with the same discipline and intensity, completely immersing himself in a chosen subject for its own sake. Diverse though they were, much of Dante’s success lay in his ability to incorporate his many interests into the service of his larger work, creating a piece of literature that is at once an achievement in subject, style, language, and visual artistry.

The Divine Comedy is in many ways the first poem of its kind, an epic written not in the classical Greek or Latin, but the vernacular of the common people. To achieve this, Dante essentially standardized the language we now know as modern Italian, applying his abilities as a linguist to synthesize the varying dialects that stretched across medieval Italy into a single, cohesive whole. Likewise woven through the Comedy are many of Dante’s other scholarly interests, now conveyed to a new and broader audience through his skill with language. Set to an almost musical tempo, the Comedy’s narrative moves the reader through a vision of the afterlife that rivals the imagery of any artist, while taking on the world of politics, history, and even the metaphysical nature of the earth itself.

Breadth of study is no hindrance to a mind that can harness its resources toward a singular goal, bringing to bear the weight of one’s discipline and experience on the subject at hand.

“…for sitting softly cushioned,
or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame;
and without it man must waste his life away,
leaving such traces of what he was on earth
as smoke in wind and foam upon the water.
Stand up! Dominate this weariness of yours
with the strength of soul that wins in every battle
if it does not sink beneath the body’s weight.”

- Inferno XXIV.46-51

Learn as much from experience as you do from books. To borrow a line from Mark Twain, Dante may have studied much, but he never allowed it to get in the way of his education. Scholarly work was an essential element to his intellectual formation, but he was far from letting it be the only one.

Not content with simply playing the part of the studious observer, Dante approached life with the same vigor he applied to his studies. He was, as he later remarks in the Inferno, as much of a glutton for knowledge as he was for experience. In his youth, he fought with sword and spear against the Ghibellines as a feditore, or heavy cavalryman, on the front lines of the Florentine army at the Battle of Campaldino and later at the Siege of Caprona. Six years later, he began a career in public life, serving on councils and in debates before eventually being elected to the office of Prior for the city of Florence. During his time in exile, Dante traveled extensively, often attending meetings and delegations to try to restore peace between the factions of the Guelph party and then returning home.

But it was far from a bed of roses. Dante’s intensity as an intellectual was likely the result of the fact that he experienced much of the darker side of life. By the time he began the Comedy, Dante was a man whom life had chewed up and spat back out. Hardened by war, conflict, betrayal, and the burden of exile, Dante had seen firsthand the coarseness of the world, and it left an indelible mark on him and his work. Gleaning as much from the rawness of life as from his subjects of study, Dante allowed his mind and poetic imagination to be shaped not just by the good or easy things in life, but also by its bitterness, truly making him a man who could reflect on the world as a man of the world.

“How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),
a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good.”

- Inferno I.4-9

Accept the consequences of your own moral vision. Moral courage can take many different forms. At times, it may require a man to defend the principles he lives by, or even to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. At others, it could mean something a little more basic.

Justice was much more than a nice idea in Dante’s mind. It was real, the standard of a higher moral order that bound the actions of all men. Right and wrong weren’t just arbitrary designations, but degrees of talking about the inherent value of human behavior. His life in politics and exile had shown Dante the face of corruption and treachery, and knew that the perpetrators of both and many more ills rarely received any punishment for their deeds. But that did not mean they shouldn’t be held accountable for what they did.

The standard that evil is to be punished and good rewarded is written into the very fabric of the Divine Comedy, and it’s a standard Dante uses to measure the deeds of all men, even his own. Moral judgments require courage, because in so judging, a man must hold himself and his own actions to the very same standard. The vision that allows one to see evil for what it really is also illuminates his own rights and wrongs. For Dante, a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven isn’t just a matter of looking into the fate of other people, but a way of viewing oneself, facing up to both one’s strengths and weaknesses as they really appear.

“You have the light that shows you right from wrong,
and your Free Will, which, though it may grow faint
in its first struggles with the heavens, can still
surmount all obstacles if nurtured well.
You are free subjects of a greater power,
a nobler nature that creates your mind…
So, if the world today has gone astray,
the cause lies in yourselves and only there!”

- Purgatorio XVI.76-83

At the end of the day, a man lives the life he chooses. Simplicity can matter as much as any level of depth or richness when it comes to creating a great work of literature. For all its timelessness and complexity, the Divine Comedy has a singular message at its core–how man, “subject to the justice of punishment or reward,” either “gains or loses merit by the exercise of his free will.”[ii]

Dante knew that men rarely live how they want, but they will always live as they choose. Though circumstance may often decide many things in one’s life, it cannot ultimately effect the control a man has over the direction he takes. Fortune may work for good or ill upon the path he walks, but it will always be the path he chooses to walk, just as it will always be his choice to move forward or to turn back.

In Dante’s mind, man was the ultimate custodian of his own fate. He alone was responsible for the outcome of his life from beginning to end, and it was he that had to accept the consequences of his choices. With all earthly distinction faded away, the characters in Dante’s Comedy are seen solely in the light of the decisions they made in life. Their lot was their choice, as it is every man’s. Placed within a moral realm ordered not by human laws, but by an inherent standard of justice, one’s merit in life lies squarely in his own hands, to rise or fall as he so chooses. For by virtue of his freedom of will, a man’s ultimate fate is his to decide and his alone.

“Expect no longer words or signs from me.
Now is your will upright, wholesome and free,
and not to heed its pleasure would be wrong:
I crown and miter you lord of yourself!”

- Purgatorio XXVII.139-142

Further Reading

Probably the most readable biography of Dante is R.W.B. Lewis’ Dante: A Life. For a more detailed bio, check out Barbara Reynolds’ Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man.

For the Divine Comedy, The Portable Dante contains Mark Musa’s translation of both the Comedy and Vita Nuova, one of the poet’s minor works. Also worth looking into is Dorothy Sayers’ translation of the Comedy, which is available in three separate volumes: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Allen Mandelbaum’s translation can be found online at The World of Dante, a website that also contains a collection of images, maps, and biographical information.

Danteworlds at the University of Texas at Austin is probably the best “sparknotes” version of the Comedy you can find online, while The Princeton Dante Project and Columbia University’s Digital Dante Project provide a more in-depth look at Dante’s life and writings.

[i] John Ruskin. Stones of Venice, vol. III, sec. lxvii.

[ii] Dante Alighieri. Letter to Can Grande Della Scala.

cato

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, co-authors of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato.

Cato the Younger—the great Roman soldier, senator, and Stoic—was a hard man to like. He was ungracious in his friendships, uncompromising in his politics, blunt in his conversations, yet able to talk the Roman Senate’s ears off from sunup to sundown. We’re fairly confident that he wouldn’t have liked us, either. But we were fascinated enough by Cato to write his biography, and to tell the story of how he became the last man to stand against Julius Caesar in defense of the Roman Republic. For us, the most admirable part of his character is something entirely unexpected in an ancient Roman culture so conscious of the weight of its own past. He was, in the truest sense of the words, a self-made man.

Cato wasn’t self-made in the familiar sense: he came from a long line of statesmen, and he never had to worry about money. But Cato was self-made in a deeper sense: he made it his life’s work to live deliberately. Many of us find that our character simply happens to us: we spend an inordinate time worrying about what we’d like to accomplish, but give little thought to who we’d like to be. Cato was different. His character—austere, tough, principled to a fault—was a conscious creation.

There are plenty of obvious places in Cato’s life to look for lessons in the art of manliness: his month-long march across the North African desert with the last remnants of troops loyal to the Republic, or his decision to take his own life rather than submit to Caesar’s dictatorship. And to be fair, there are plenty of things in Cato’s life we shouldn’t emulate—for starters, his stubbornness and refusal to compromise for the good of the Republic. Yet we think Cato’s most important lesson in manliness is still worth learning: how we can take control of our character. These are some of the keys to becoming a self-made man.

1. Respect Your Roots—But Don’t Let Them Trap You

Imagine that you had an image of every male ancestor dating back four or five generations. Imagine that they were masks pressed in wax from the flesh at the moment of death, then copied in stone to hang on your wall. Imagine, in other words, that these were literally the faces of your father, and his father, and his, watching every one of your comings and goings. If you can picture that, you can understand something of what it meant to be a Roman, and something of what it meant to feel your roots as a living, palpable presence.

And if you want to understand what it meant to grow up as Cato, then add this detail. Most days, you would also have to walk past a life-sized public statue of your sainted great-grandfather, complete with an inscription honoring him for saving his country “when the Roman state was tottering to its fall.”

Many of us, in Cato’s position, would be paralyzed by the weight of the past. Cato was different. He didn’t run away from his roots: at the age of 18, he made his first public splash by saving a public hall built up by his great-grandfather from renovations, and he made his mark in Roman politics as a defender of the mos maiorum (“the way of the ancestors”). But he also knew when to depart from the past and make his own way. He expressed his independence most publicly when, as a young man, he committed himself to a philosophical school with a suspect, foreign, and cultish reputation: Stoicism.

Stoicism was a Greek philosophy that had been exported to Rome just a few generations before Cato came on the stage. It taught its adherents that they could have an unshakable happiness in this life, one that was safe from any loss or disaster—because the key to happiness was virtue. The road to virtue, in turn, lay in understanding that destructive emotions, like anger and fear, are under our conscious control—they don’t have to control us, because we can learn to control them. As Brett and Kate explained on this site last year, Stoicism has a lot to do with “self-sufficiency and self-control.”

Why would Romans of Cato the Younger’s time object to that? First and foremost, Stoicism was foreign. And in Rome, that was a grave strike against it. Cato the Elder’s xenophobic opinions, left in a letter to his son, weren’t too far outside the mainstream:

“In due course, my son Marcus, I shall explain what I found out in Athens about these Greeks….They are a worthless and unruly tribe. Take this as a prophecy: when those folk give us their writings they will corrupt everything.”

The movement was also mocked for its outlandish paradoxes, eyeball-grabbing statements meant to serve as an introduction to the Stoic way of life. Opposing Cato in a high-profile court case, Cicero ridiculed these Stoic beliefs:

“That wise men, no matter how deformed, are the only beautiful men; that even if they are beggars, they are the only rich men; that even in slavery, they are kings. And all of us who are not wise men, they call slaves, exiles, enemies, lunatics. They say that all offenses are equal, that every sin is an unpardonable crime, and that it is just as much of a crime to needlessly kill a rooster as to strangle one’s own father!”

While Cicero wasn’t fabricating those paradoxes, he was ignoring the deeper concepts they were meant to illustrate. But most Romans stopped where Cicero did in that trial, laughing at the provocative packaging of Stoic ideas without considering their content.

So when Cato adopted Stoicism—and eventually became the public face of the philosophy—he was taking a significant risk. But Cato’s choice was his own declaration of independence. It showed that he knew when to honor the Roman past, and when to leave it behind. That was the same independence of mind that would make Cato a pivotal figure in Roman history. And through the force of his example, Cato made Stoicism respectable. If you know how influential Stoicism would become, you understand just how important Cato is.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Ridiculous

As part of his education, Cato sought to teach himself “to be ashamed only of what was really shameful.” It meant wearing outmoded and odd-colored clothing, walking barefoot in all weathers, going without creature comforts, and silently enduring abuse and insults. The ancient biographer Plutarch notes that Cato was mocked by ambitious friends for not jumping straight into politics. The imperial Stoic Seneca relates the story of the time Cato was attacked in the public baths, yet shrugged off the incident in silence.

Someone who carries himself as unconventionally as Cato is bound to raise eyebrows, or even to provoke attacks. But that’s just what Cato was looking for. Roman Stoicism was not a series of idle speculations and deep thoughts. It was a practical guide to life, and a collection of exercises that could be put to use the day they were learned. Cato learned how to subsist on a poor man’s food, or no food at all, how to speak bluntly and how to shut up, how to meditate on disaster and endure the imagined loss of everything again and again—techniques that were designed to steel him against hardship and concentrate his mind on virtue as the only lasting happiness. Just as a young Teddy Roosevelt vowed, “I will make my body,” Cato must have had a similar resolve: “I will make my character.”

We’ve joked that if our book were ever made into a movie, Cato’s Stoic education would be the obligatory training montage, set to an ‘80s rock song. But there’s a larger point here: becoming self-made isn’t just something you think. It’s something you do. It isn’t just coming to the right conclusions. It’s putting those conclusions into practice—literal practice, deliberately training ourselves in the habits we want until they become second nature.

3. Know What’s Important, and What’s Superficial

Cato always cast himself as a traditionalist in his politics, the defender of Rome’s ancient liberties in a time of encroaching autocracy. Some people have seen a contradiction between his traditionalism in politics and his adventurousness in philosophy. But we think they’re missing the point.

Rome in the late Republic was full of public figures who bucked the status quo in flashier ways: rabble-rousing politicians like Catiline and Clodius, or Catullus, who scandalized Rome with his erotic poetry. Next to them, Cato looks like something of a square—yet he challenged the assumptions of his time in a much deeper way.

Becoming a self-made man didn’t require Cato to turn wildly countercultural. It simply gave him the freedom to examine the dominant culture with clear eyes—and when he deliberately rejected parts of that culture, he left a lasting impression. In a city of conspicuous consumption, he lived simply and frugally, even though he inherited great wealth. In a political culture that winked at bribery, corruption, and election-buying, he kept his hands clean. He pioneered a theatrical form of civil disobedience: on a number of occasions, Cato won popular acclaim by forcing his enemies to arrest or physically silence him.

Most intriguingly, Cato sometimes displayed a distinctly un-Roman sympathy for the well-being of conquered peoples and “barbarians.” Once, as Rome celebrated Caesar’s slaughter of an entire Gallic tribe, including women and children, Cato rose in the Senate to demand that the general be tried as a war criminal. It’s a reminder that Stoicism was arguably the first school to teach universal respect for all peoples, an idea transmitted to Christianity and also preserved in the Stoic word “cosmopolitan” (literally, “world-city”).

In fact, we think there’s a lot of Stoicism in the way Cato strove to be countercultural in a deep sense, rather than a superficial sense. Stoicism teaches that we should constantly separate the trivial from the essential, the distractions from the sources of lasting happiness. Cato put that ruthless drive to get at the essentials at the heart of his political life.

4. “Self-Made” Means More Than You Think

If few people are inspired to follow in Cato’s footsteps today, perhaps that’s because we’ve inherited an impoverished idea of what it means to be “self-made.” In America, to be self-made means that you’ve made your own money. But think about how limiting that idea is: every time we repeat the phrase, we’re unconsciously passing on the idea that the only way to make yourself is to make your fortune. We’re celebrating the idea that we are what we earn, and passing over richer ways to be self-made.

If Cato wanted conventional success, it would have been handed to him. He had the pedigree, the name recognition, and the wealth to be a perfectly respectable and forgettable official in the Republic’s governing machine. History remembers him, though, because he made a different choice.

What if we insisted on more room for self-made men in public life today—not in the narrow sense of that phrase, but in Cato’s? From student council elections through the electoral college, public life can look like a continuous weeding-out of the idiosyncratic, the original, and the critical. Year to year, politics is conducted by the same narrow range of eminently safe people. And if they offer the same narrow range of eminently safe and unsatisfactory solutions, should we be surprised?

Would someone of Cato’s courage and originality stand a chance in American politics? It’s not likely—and that’s our loss.

__________________

Rob Goodman is a former congressional speechwriter. Jimmy Soni is Managing Editor of the Huffington Post. They are co-authors of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato.

hobbit

The Hobbit has been a favorite of children and adults alike since its publication in 1937. It used to take a backseat to The Lord of the Rings, but with the movie being released last summer, interest has been renewed in Bilbo Baggins’ adventure.

When it was originally published, it was put into the children’s category and even won prizes for best juvenile fiction that year. Tolkien himself, however, said that a simple tale like The Hobbit can be enjoyed by children and adults alike, making it a great story to read with your kids.

In the book, the reluctant Bilbo Baggins is recruited by a wizard, Gandalf, to join a group of dwarves on an adventure. There are 13 dwarves in the party (an unlucky number, hence the recruitment of Bilbo) who have been exiled from their home, the Lonely Mountain, by a dragon. In that mountain are mounds and mounds of treasure, which is what attracted the dragon in the first place. Nobody has yet had the gall to try to fight off the beast and reclaim the mountain, so these 13 dwarves, plus Bilbo, make a run at it. Together they cross valleys, mountain ranges, murky forests, and raging rivers in order to make their way back home to the Lonely Mountain to fight the dragon.

There are many lessons we can glean from The Hobbit, but today we’ll focus on just a few of this classic tale’s most salient takeaways:

1. You can aspire to and achieve greatness no matter who you are and no matter your stage in life. This sounds extraordinarily like a cliché, but do you really believe it? Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, in the book, Bilbo was 50 years old when he set out on his adventure. (So was Frodo, in fact, in Lord of the Rings.) He had “little to no magic,” and “didn’t like to be called audacious.” He was a thoroughly middle-aged fellow who had no interest in spicing up his life. He lived comfortably, ate and drank much, and enjoyed his cozy home. He even said, “We are plain, quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”

And yet, Bilbo ultimately becomes the hero of our story. He often complains and longs for home, but he keeps pressing on. He even gets to a point where he can feel the desire for adventure calling out from within him. We’ve written about the importance of taking full advantage of your 20s, but the potential of your middle and elder years shouldn’t be squandered either. Will you be an empty nester or retiree with a quiet, comfortable life? Or will you say “yes” to whatever adventure or dream is trying to make itself heard from within your spirit? When you feel yourself trying to say that you’re not the kind of person to start your own business or that you’re too old to travel the world, harness your inner Bilbo Baggins. Say yes, take the first step outside your front door, and keep on going.

2. A great leader knows when it’s time to step back and let go. There are plenty of leadership lessons we can learn from Gandalf, but his wise style of mentorship is what stands out most. Gandalf travels a good distance with Bilbo and the company of dwarves, but ultimately leaves them to their own devices. He says, “Indeed we are now a good deal further east than I ever meant to come with you, for after all this is not my adventure.”

A great leader and mentor will certainly assist his followers, especially at the start. But there comes a point when the leash has to come off. It’s difficult because it means you have to trust the person with whatever task you’ve charged them with. You’re giving up control of the situation, which is a tough thing for humans to do. Think about what a great coach does, though. He teaches and guides as far as he can, but ultimately he’s not the one who can win the game. He has to put his trust in his players to actually make the plays. The same thought rings true of parenting. The instinct is to just hold a child’s hand for ever and ever, and yet there comes a day when you have to let go, even if it means allowing them to make mistakes and giving them the space to find their way through those mistakes on their own.

3. There are some things in life we just have to accomplish on our own. Just as a great leader knows when to let go, a mentee must embrace the challenge of sometimes going it alone. One of my favorite lines in the book comes after Bilbo has killed a giant spider. His friends had been kidnapped, he was all alone, and to top it off it was the pitch black of night. “Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder.”

I can relate to this, albeit in a comparatively very small way. In the last half-year or so I’ve taken up running, something I had never done before. In the beginning, progress was quick. I went from walking half of my three miles, to only walking a few blocks of it in a matter of weeks. But after that, it felt like a barrier went up, and I couldn’t make much progress. My wife finally convinced me to run with her, and for the first time, I went 3+ miles without once stopping. Huzzah! I now knew that I could do it. And yet, I had to also do it on my own to prove to myself that it was legit. So a couple days later I went out for a run, and sure enough, my brain wanted to walk. Even just for 10 seconds. And yet, I knew that I physically could do it, so I powered through and did it on my own. It took a friend along the way (my wife) to show me I was capable, but to ultimately break through the barrier and feel stronger as a runner I had to do it on my own. Can you relate?

4. To simply continue on is one of the bravest things that can be done. Near the end of the story, Bilbo is in the mountain and ready to gaze upon the dragon that is guarding the lost treasure. He’s alone, and in the dark (seems to be a common setting, doesn’t it?). He could see the glow of the dragon’s fire, but not the dragon himself. “It was at this point Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.”

His greatest battle was not with the dragon, but with his own will. He knew danger was ahead. He didn’t know what it looked like, but he knew it was coming. He steeled himself, and continued on. That singular moment of deciding to move forward was braver than any other thing that Bilbo ever did. Quite a statement, isn’t it? And yet, it rings true. Deciding to do something, with unknown waters ahead, is much harder than doing the thing itself. When we moved to Denver from Iowa a year ago, my wife and I were both jobless. She had just graduated from physical therapy school, and I had just been laid off from my job, which was supposed to continue as a work-from-home position. I can say with certainty that the decision to move out here anyway and follow the adventure was much harder than the actual moving day. Our toughest challenges are mental; and once you clear that hurdle, you can do just about anything.

5. A great story always has conflict or hardship. Imagine your life as a story. Not too long ago, we even had a guest post about this — our life is a journey, and a heroic one at that. Imagine yourself sitting down with your grandkids and telling them the story of you. “Well, I made some money, bought a few cars, sat around and watched TV for a few hours every night, and that’s about it.” Pretty boring, isn’t it? Now imagine that you can start hours worth of stories with, “I explored…I traveled…I fell in love…I fought and won…I overcame…I sweated…” Not only would the story be better, but you likely would be far more satisfied with the course of your life.

J.R.R. Tolkien agrees. “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyways.” He is saying that a life of good ease is a boring one. It’s often what the American dream aspires to, but the reality is that personal growth, and even enjoyment, are things that come out of some kind of challenge. Whether it’s huffing and puffing and groaning your way up a mountain for the view at the top, or getting laid off and finally realizing you don’t want to be in a cubicle anymore, joy is often found after a bit of trudging. Don’t shy away from challenge. Embrace it, and know that someday it’ll make for a great story.

What lessons have you gleaned from The Hobbit? Which of these five most resonate with you? Tell us in the comments!

jackson

“I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.”

While his countenance graces our $20 bill, many Americans do not know much about the life of Andrew Jackson. He is often remembered as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans or condemned as the man responsible for the Trail of Tears. He was in truth a man of many contradictions: impetuous and reckless frontiersman and charming gentleman; signer of the Indian Removal Act and devoted father of an adopted Indian orphan; champion of freedom and the preservation of the Union and unrepentant slave holder. He was described as both a quintessential man’s man, “fond of well-cut clothes, racehorses, dueling, newspapers, gambling, whiskey, coffee, a pipe, pretty women, children, and good company,” and a gentleman with a soft side: “there was more of the woman in his nature than in that of any man I ever knew — more of a woman’s tenderness toward children, and sympathy with them.”

He was the first president to come from the common people and break the Virginia aristocracy’s hold on that office. After his inauguration, he threw open the doors of the White House for a public reception; the crowd of drunken well-wishers who attended grew so huge and unruly they had to be lured back out with large tubs of spiked punch placed on the front lawn. He was the first president to see himself as the direct representative of the people and thus to believe that his office should have great power and authority in shaping national affairs.

There is much to find repugnant in Andrew Jackson’s life and career as it pertains to slavery and Native Americans. But that a man is flawed in some ways does not mean he cannot be inspiring in others, and it would be a shame not to learn from the high points of the life of “The Old Lion”:

Don’t Let Your Circumstances Determine Your Fate

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Andrew Jackson’s life story could have been torn straight from a Horatio Alger novel. Jackson’s father died just 2 months before he was born. His mother could not keep the family farm going herself and moved in with her sister. So began a life of dependency for young Andrew. His aunt put his mother to work like a housekeeper, and the boy was always keenly aware of his inferior place in the household. Growing up without a father, he developed a propensity towards anger, recklessness, and defensiveness.

Yet Jackson’s troubles had just begun. The Revolutionary War would grant the country independence, but exact a heavy price on this future president. Hugh, his 16-year-old brother who had gone off to fight, became the first casualty, dying of heat exhaustion at the Battle of Stono Ferry. Andrew, who at age 13 had joined a local militia to serve as a courier, was then captured by British soldiers and imprisoned along with his other brother, Robert. Jackson’s mother successfully pled for the boys to be released, but Robert, who had contracted smallpox while in jail, died two days later. Andrew was also sick, but his mother, assured he was doing well, decided to travel to Charleston to tend to prisoners of war who had become stricken with cholera. Jackson would never see her again; she soon fell ill and passed away. Andrew Jackson, only 14 years old, was now an orphan.

Jackson now had no immediate family and only a few years of education. He lived with a series of relatives, chafed at feeling like an inferior houseguest, squandered an inheritance from his grandfather, and sowed his wild oats. His relatives feared he would become a great embarrassment to his family. He described his situation during this time as “homeless and friendless.”

Jackson felt deeply adrift, but his mother’s last advice to him before she departed for Charleston kept returning to his mind, urging him to turn things around and live a proper and successful life:

“Andrew, if I should not see you again, I wish you to remember and treasure up some things I have already said to you: in this world you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have friends. You can make friends by being honest, and you can keep them by being steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will in the long run expect as much from you as they give to you. To forget an obligation or be ungrateful for a kindness is a base crime — not merely a fault or a sin, but an actual crime. Men guilty of it sooner or later must suffer the penalty. In personal conduct be always polite but never obsequious. None will respect you more than you respect yourself. Avoid quarrels as long as you can without yielding to imposition. But sustain your manhood always. Never bring a suit in law for assault and battery or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man. Never wound the feelings of others. Never brook wanton outrage upon your own feelings. If you ever have to vindicate your feelings or defend your honor, do it calmly. If angry at first, wait until your wrath cools before you proceed.”

Desiring to honor the memory of his mother, Jackson tried to get back on track and decided to study and apprentice to become a lawyer. He was still living a rowdy life at that point –“I was a raw lad then, but I did my best,” Jackson would later recall — but he began to mark out a path for himself.

He was able to gain admittance to the bar but could not find any clients to represent; he had no clout or experience. So he leveraged the one quality that would help carry him all the way to the White House: his magnetic bearing and charisma. It was a time where connection to great and prosperous families was essential to success, and Jackson used his charm to insinuate himself into these families’ good graces. He was never considered attractive, but his gentlemanly manners, steely, attentive blue eyes, and ability to converse with and warmly engage with people from all walks of life drew others to him. While his rowdy reputation would often precede him, Jackson would instantly disarm those he met and absolutely confound their expectations.

Jackson made the right connections, worked hard, and moved up in the world. With vast stores of personal strength, self-confidence, and perseverance as his only resources, he set out to make a name for himself. His biographer, Jon Meacham, details his astonishing and unexpected rise: “An uneducated boy from the Carolina backwoods, the son of Scots-Irish immigrants…became a practicing lawyer, a public prosecutor, a US attorney, a delegate to the founding Tennessee Constitutional Convention, a US Congressman, a US Senator, a judge of the state Superior Court, and a major general, first of the state militia and then of the US Army.” And then, of course, he would reach the very top of the ladder – attaining the highest office in the land.

Instead of letting adversity break him, Andrew Jackson gathered a gritty strength from his experiences that would enable him to make it through all the tests and trials of his life.

Cultivate Your Leadership

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Before he became a politician, Jackson was a great and storied war hero. He was the kind of leader that men would gladly follow to the ends of the earth. Having grown up without a father, Jackson sought to be a father to the men under his command. He treated his men as sons, and in so doing, won their undying loyalty.

When the war with Britain began in the winter of 1812-13, Major General Jackson gathered together 2,000 volunteers and marched them from Tennessee towards New Orleans in anticipation of action. The men had picked up and left behind their professions and families — their entire lives, really — in hopes of being of service to the country. But after journeying for 500 cold miles and reaching Mississippi, the Secretary of War ordered them to disband and return. Jackson refused to leave his volunteers adrift and force the men to find their own way back home. He promised to keep them together, and even use his own money to furnish the supplies necessary for the return trip.

Many of the men had by then fallen ill and could not make the long journey unaided. Yet there were only 11 wagons for the 150 sick men. The regiment’s doctor, Samuel Hogg, asked Jackson what he should do with the sick. “To do sir? You are not to leave a man on the ground.” “But the wagons are full and they will convey not more than half,” Hogg countered. “Then let some of the troops dismount, and the officers must give up their horses to the sick. Not a man, sir, must be left behind,” Jackson declared. The general set the example by immediately turning over his own horses. He walked alongside his men all the way back to Tennessee. By the time the weary troops arrived in Nashville, the men had taken to calling their tender but tough leader “Old Hickory,” a tree whose wood is described thusly: “Very hard, stiff, dense, and shock resistant. There are woods that are stronger than hickory and woods that are harder, but the combination of strength, toughness, hardness, and stiffness found in hickory wood is not found in any other.”

Prize Your Honor and the Honor of Your Loved Ones

jacksonboy

One’s honor was a central occupation of all men during this period, but starting from a young age, Andrew Jackson took it even more seriously than most. During the Revolutionary War, when he and his brother were captured by the red coats, a British officer ordered Jackson to polish his boots. The nervy boy refused, declaring, “Sir, I am a prisoner of war and claim to be treated as such.” Enraged, the officer swung his sword at Jackson. Though he tried to block the blow, it left a scar on his hand and a dent in his head.

Jackson was also ferocious in his desire to protect the honor and well-being of his loved ones. The orphan drew his extended family to him and greatly valued their loyalty. Above all, he valued the bond and honor of his wife of 40 years, Rachel. Because their marriage began under a cloud of controversy (Rachel was not yet divorced when their relationship began), she was subject to attack from Jackson’s political opponents. To Jackson, the slanderer was “worse than a murderer. The murderer only takes the life of the parent and leaves his character as a goodly heritage to his children, whilst the slanderer takes away his good reputation and leaves him a living monument to his children’s disgrace.” Defaming his wife was, as a contemporary recalled, “like sinning against the Holy Ghost: unpardonable.” Biographer James Parton claimed that Jackson “kept pistols in perfect condition for thirty-seven years” to use whenever someone “dared breathe her name except in honor.”

They were dueling pistols. For a southern gentleman of this time, dueling was the honorable way to resolve quarrels and insults. Jackson took his mother’s maxim “that the law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man” to heart, and involved himself in more than 13 “affairs of honor.” These showdowns left his body so filled with lead that people said he “rattled like a bag of marbles.”

Practice Stoic Self-Discipline

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Jackson’s anger, born from his troubled youth, constantly threatened his ability to reach his goals. He knew he had to get it under control if he wished to find success. He was never able to entirely subdue his temper, but he was largely able to transform himself from reckless hothead to cool and calculating leader.

During his presidential campaigns, his opponents were constantly trying to provoke Jackson, goading him to lose control and reveal himself as exactly what some voters feared him to be: a knuckle-dragging, unhinged frontiersmen, unfit for the highest office in the land. Though they besmirched the character of his wife, Jackson’s great Achilles’ heel, he would not give them the satisfaction of an embarrassing outburst.

The election of 1824 was a particularly bitter contest. Jackson had won the popular vote, but without a majority from the electoral college, the decision was thrown to the House, which chose John Quincy Adams to be the next president. On the night he lost the election, Jackson attended a party at the White House where he came face-to-face with Adams. The moment was tense as the two men stared at one another. With his wife on his arm, it was Jackson who made the first move, extending his hand to the president-elect and cheerfully inquiring, “How do you do, Mr. Adams? I give you my left hand, for the right, as you see, is devoted to the fair. I hope you are very well, sir.” Answering with what an eyewitness recalled as “chilling coldness” Adams responded: “Very well, sir; I hope General Jackson is well.” A party guest was struck by the irony of the exchange: “It was curious to see the western planter, the Indian fighter, the stern soldier, who had written his country’s glory in the blood of the enemy at New Orleans, genial and gracious in the midst of a court, while the old courtier and diplomat was stiff, rigid, cold as a statue!”

Be a Badass

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Andrew Jackson was the first president on which an assassination attempt was made. And he is the only one who gave his would-be assassin a thorough thumping.

In 1835, Jackson was leaving a funeral when a deranged man, Richard Lawrence, approached the president wielding two pistols. Lawrence leveled one of his guns and pulled the trigger. It failed to fire. He pointed at Jackson with the other pistol, but it misfired as well. Without blinking, the 68-year-old president went after Lawrence with his cane, striking him several times before others in the crowd subdued the would-be assassin.

But Jackson’s greatest claim to badass status actually came years earlier. In 1806, in a dispute over a horse race and an insult made about his wife, Charles Dickinson challenged Jackson to a duel. Dickinson was a well-known sharpshooter and Jackson felt his only chance to kill him would be to allow himself enough time to take an accurate shot. So as the two faced off along the banks of the Red River in Kentucky, Jackson purposely allowed Dickinson to shoot him first. He hardly quivered as the bullet lodged in his ribs. Jackson then calmly leveled his pistol, took aim, and knocked Dickinson off. It was only then that he took heed of the fact that blood was dripping into his boot. Dickinson’s musket ball was too close to his heart to be removed and forever remained lodged in Jackson’s chest. The wound would lend him a perpetual hacking cough, cause him persistent pain, and compound the many health problems that would beleaguer him throughout life.

Yet Jackson never regretted the decision, saying, “If he had shot me through the brain, sir, I should still have killed him.”

__________

Sources:

American Lion by Jon Meacham

Andrew Jackson by James Curtis

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Victor Frankenstein does not get much attention in popular culture. It is Frankenstein’s creation – a nameless monster (often mistakenly called Frankenstein) – in all his green, bumbling glory that attracts the attention and the horrified screams of people worldwide.

To the contrary of how film directors and producers have portrayed Frankenstein’s monster, Mary Shelley wrote the character as an intelligent and physically astute being. He wasn’t a stiff, monosyllabic beast with a flat head and a bolt in his neck. And while Victor Frankenstein himself is often mostly ignored in media portrayals, he retains the image of mad scientist. That’s about as far as we ever get in analyzing Frankenstein.

This is unfortunate, as some of the mistakes Frankenstein made along the way, mistakes which ultimately led to him losing everything he cared about – his brother, his best friend, and ultimately his wife – are incredibly instructive to any man who wishes to improve himself. After reading Shelley’s masterpiece, both previously and for this month’s AoM Book Club selection, my gut feeling was actually of sympathy towards the monster rather than Frankenstein.

While highlighting a character’s positive traits can be inspirational, it can also sometimes be quite educational to examine the ways in which he stumbles. So today we’ll take a look at Victor Frankenstein as a profile in un-manliness and explore what his flaws can teach us about what it means to be human, the importance of owning up to our responsibilities, and the danger in blaming anything other than ourselves for our mistakes.

Lesson #1: Unchecked Passion Can Be Dangerous

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The creation of the monster was a long process. It didn’t happen overnight. It was months and months of studying and experimental tinkering before the creation rose to life. Frankenstein notes while narrating his story, “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.” His studies and his obsession “swallowed up every habit of [his] nature.”

While Frankenstein was away at college, he became utterly obsessed with finding out what the spawn of life really was. In spite of the insistence of his family and professors to give up this all-consuming pursuit he continued on. He did nothing with his time but study this science of human animation and tinker in his lab. He lost sight of any other thing in life that brought him joy…so he really did become the mad scientist that we all know from pop culture.

What’s telling is that when Frankenstein took breaks to go home, his passion would be tempered, he would realize what truly brought him joy in life, and he would be happy once again. But then he’d return to college, and continue in his madness. It was almost an addiction.

While passion today is touted as a necessary and driving force in our career path, if unchecked it can lead to losing the things we truly care about in life. The late Steve Jobs is often looked up to (heck, even worshiped) for his brilliant business acumen and product innovation. But his passion and obsession for his company led to him being an angry and temperamental boss, and a mostly absent husband and father. What is more important in life? I can’t offer a one-size-fits-all answer, but Frankenstein himself gives us a great bit of wisdom while reflecting on this passion of his:

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if not man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”

Lesson #2: Giving Up the Ship Won’t Solve Your Problems

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One of my constant annoyances while reading the book was that Frankenstein incessantly blamed the ethereal forces of the universes for his problems. At one point, he comes close to giving up his pursuit of animating a lifeless object, only to be pulled back into his obsessions once again. Frankenstein notes, “It was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” Later he blames “chance – or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me…”

Frankenstein felt he was at the mercy of the fates and had no trust in his own willpower to overcome his dangerous passions. He had what’s called an external locus of control – a belief that you’re not responsible for your behavior, that life happens to you, rather than you making it happen.

A resilient man, on the other hand, seeks to have an internal locus of control – the confidence that one is captain of his destiny and can pilot his ship wherever he wants it to go. He takes responsibility when things go awry and actively seeks to get back on course.

Everyone falls somewhere on a spectrum between the two perspectives, even changing depending on the situation. When we don’t believe we can solve a problem, we tend to assume the victim mentality and look externally to assign blame.

The reality, however, is that we have way more control over our lives and actions than we tend to think; when practiced, our focus and our willpower are incredibly potent tools for shaping our lives. Sure, circumstances will always have something to say, but if your life hasn’t gone the direction you thought it would, take action and don’t let it stay that way. One of our mantras here at AoM is that if you want to feel like a man, you have to act like one. And a man doesn’t blame his life on destiny or fate, he takes responsibility and assumes command of his actions. Which leads to our next lesson…

Lesson #3: When You Don’t Accept Responsibility, Your Mistakes Can Take On a Life of Their Own (Literally)

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After the monster rose to life, Frankenstein was horrified at his creation, and ditched. Plain and simple. He got out of dodge, ran home, and hoped that his perceived disaster would somehow remedy itself.

This is understandable. We’ve all run at one time or another from some problem we’ve created. And hopefully we’ve come to learn that running only escalates those problems, and they can truly take on a life of their own. Think of the snowballing lie where you’re spending more time and thought on the lie than the reality of the situation. And those instances usually come back to bite us in the rear even worse than had we owned up right away.

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What’s most frustrating about Victor Frankenstein is that he had multiple chances to take responsibility and own his mistakes and fix them, and each time he shrank like a coward and came up with excuses.

At one point early in the novel, the monster kills Frankenstein’s young brother and frames a woman in the village named Justine. She is caught and sentenced to die. Only Frankenstein knew the truth of the matter. He says, “A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.”

His excuse is that the people in the village would not have believed his tale. How lame is that? And Justine is killed without Frankenstein uttering a word of truth.

When we create something awesome, we practically fall over ourselves to claim credit. But when we create a problem, our natural tendency is to slowly walk backwards while casually whistling the tune of abnegation and denial. But being a man means taking responsibility for all of our creations, both the good and the monstrously bad.

Humans are not perfect. Not by any means. But it’s within our power to correct the problems we create. And when we don’t exercise that power, our problems fester and only get worse. Think about the dentist. If you go every six months for regular cleanings, brush your teeth twice a day, and floss regularly, you’ll likely be just fine. But when you put off those appointments, when you slack on flossing, when you forget to brush every once a while, you end up being poked and prodded for two hours so they can give you a deep clean and fix the problem you created. Not fun. (If it seems like this is from personal experience, it is.) And that’s just with oral hygiene, let alone something far more serious.

Frankenstein at one point says, in regards to a potential solution to his monster problem, “I clung to every pretense of delay, and shrank from taking the first step.” Can’t we all relate? There are a whole host of reasons why ripping the band-aid off is a better solution than the slow peel. Most importantly, it’s the simple fact that a man takes responsibility for his life, and therefore the problems he’ll inevitably sometimes create.

I’ll leave this lesson with one final bit of advice from the reflective Frankenstein, “Nothing is more painful to the human mind than the dead calmness of inaction.”

Lesson #4: Loneliness Leads Us Down Unhealthy Paths

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One of the catalysts of Frankenstein’s unchecked and dangerous passion was simply that he was by himself at college. His friends and family weren’t around to give him balance and to temper his flame. It wasn’t until he could hear the voices of those closest to him that he realized how selfish and frankly, crazy, he was being.

“Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow creatures, and rendered me unsocial, but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children… A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me.”

Author Mary Shelley notes that the theme of loneliness and its effect on humans was important to her in this novel. In Frankenstein’s case, it can be argued that it’s mostly his loneliness that led to the creation of the monster.

Loneliness also plays out in the monster’s life. He turns to killing because he’s so lonely – nobody accepts him, he has no companion, and even his creator has rejected him. At one point he tells Frankenstein that if he simply had a female mate, he’d stop killing and run away to never be seen again. Frankenstein, who should understand the perils of loneliness, rejects this idea, however. So not only did loneliness lead to the creation of the monster, the monster becomes murderous and kills everyone close to Frankenstein because of his own loneliness. One can’t help but think of the mass shootings of the last two decades, and how most are perpetrated by males whose profiles include words like “isolated” and “lonely.” Would things have been different, even in just a couple instances, if loneliness wasn’t as pervasive in their lives?

Humans are not meant to live solitary lives. Science has shown again and again the importance of friends – in everything from stress levels, to happiness levels, to life expectancy. What’s more telling, however, is simple life experience. As an introvert, I often just want to sit at home and hang out with myself and my wife, and I quite love working from home, alone in my office. When I spend time with friends though, there’s just something that happens inside that gives me a more satisfied feeling with life. There is simply greater joy in my day-to-day when friends and family are a regular part of it.

While it can be and is a difficult and messy endeavor, be sure you have friends and family you can turn to, and perhaps more importantly, who can keep you accountable when you get off track. Victor Frankenstein isolated himself, and paid dearly for it.

Lesson #5: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

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This is the most heartbreaking lesson of all from the novel. The monster (for ease of identification, I’ve been calling it “the monster” the whole time – but it’s not really a fair assessment) is intelligent, reasonable, even caring. It strongly desires to interact with other humans and simply be loved. But, every single person he encounters shrieks and runs the instant they see him. He’s never even given a chance.

Frankenstein himself says, “Begone! Relieve me from the sight of your detested form.” The creature’s own creator refuses to see past appearances. Even later on, when having a discussion with the creature, Frankenstein observes, “I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred.” Frankenstein begins to have compassion, and to see past the ugly exterior, but in the end, his reliance on his senses takes over, and his heart doesn’t have a chance to respond.

The creature himself notes that “the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.” What a sad commentary on how powerful appearances are. Sure, they are important in business and in first impressions, but to let appearances be the final say in any judgment is simply not giving someone their proper worth as a person.

The creature has feelings of joy, hope, despair – isn’t this what makes us human? Our commonalities on the inside as people far outweigh our differences and our appearances. Don’t allow what’s on the outside to have the final say.

Let Frankenstein’s tale serve as a variety of lessons in how not to act as a man.

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Sometimes stories are so slender that to become movies, Hollywood has to generously pad and exaggerate the scanty details.

In the case of the current effort to bring the life of Louis Zamperini to the silver screen, the challenge for filmmakers is quite the opposite — managing to fit all the unbelievable details into only 3 hours of running time.

As a boy, Zamperini was a troublemaker who seemed destined to become a bum or a criminal.

At age 15, he found running and turned his life around. He set high school cross-country records, won a scholarship to run track for USC, became a two-time NCAA champion miler, and represented the United States in the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Olympics.

When WWII broke out, Zamperini joined the Army Air Forces, and was deployed to the Pacific as a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator bomber. While flying a rescue mission in search of a downed plane, his bomber crashed into the ocean. 8 of the 11 men aboard were killed.

Louie and two of his crewmates (pilot Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips and Francis “Mac” McNamara) were stranded on a pair of small life rafts. Constantly circled by sharks, with no food and minimal supplies, the men survived for 47 days and drifted 2,000 miles before being rescued/captured by the Japanese.

Being picked up hardly brought an end to Louie’s journey of survival. Having been declared dead stateside, he spent the next two years imprisoned in a series of interrogation and POW camps, where he was starved, diseased, and beaten almost daily by a sadistic guard nicknamed the Bird.

At the end of the war, Louie struggled with alcoholism, anger, and nightmares before finding faith and forgiveness.

Just as it will be impossible for filmmakers to capture the entirety of Louis Zamperini’s amazing life story, I cannot hope to summarize all the incredible lessons that can be learned from it. But here are just a few that will make you a better man.

1. Energy Needs an Outlet

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Louis Zamperini was born in Olean, New York, on January 26, 1917. The second of four children, it was clear from the get-go that he would be the hardest for his parents to handle. Even as a toddler he was a bundle of energy that was impossible to corral or constrain.

Young Louie liked action and he liked attention, but the kind he got as a boy wasn’t the variety he hoped for. When the Zamperini family moved to Torrance, California, Louie’s peers mocked his Italian accent, and hit, kicked, and threw stones at him in an effort to get him to curse in his parents’ native language — an outburst which would double them over with laughter. He informed his father of his troubles, who then made Louie a set of weights from lead-filled cans welded to a pipe, set up a punching bag, and taught Louie how to box and fight back. After six months of training, Louis set out to even the score. He pummeled his schoolyard bullies, and won a formidable reputation that deterred future attacks.

Louie’s success emboldened him, and shrunk the already short fuse of his temper. He hit a teacher, threw tomatoes at a police officer, and accosted anyone who crossed him the wrong way. He formed a gang of fellow toughs that engaged in hijinks both comical and criminal; they rung church bells in the middle of the night, grabbed pies from a bakery, and pinched liquor from bootleggers (Louie said they made the best victims, since they couldn’t incriminate themselves by reporting the theft!). Louis loved seeing his escapades written up in the papers.

As a young teenager, Louie only became more surly and wild. He isolated himself from his family and his classmates. But despite his tough façade, inside he felt miserable. He wanted to be better and not cause his parents so many headaches and heartaches, but he continued to feel like “the proverbial square peg who couldn’t fit into the round hole…or appreciate what he had.”

Luckily, Louie’s older brother Pete had a plan. Pete had seen how quickly Louie could run away from the scenes of his crimes, and figured that speed could be put to better use. He understood that Louie craved recognition, and decided to help him get it in a more constructive way. To that end, he pushed his brother into joining the high school track team. At first Louie balked, and his first race was a disaster; he came in dead last. But Pete incessantly dogged him to enter another meet, and this time the results improved; Louie placed third, and more importantly, experienced a taste of the thrill of competition and the sweet sound of his name being shouted by a crowd of spectators.

At first Louie still fought against wholly giving himself over to becoming an athlete. His training regimen was spotty and he continued to drink and smoke. But after a short and unromantic stint as a train-hopping hobo, and the realization that he didn’t want to spend his adult life as a bum, he was ready to tell Pete: “You win. I’m going all out to be a runner.” As Louie later recalled, “It was the first wise decision of my life.”

As the fledging runner trained, improved, and started to win, his neighbors and classmates started to treat him much differently. He began to catch “a whiff of respect: Louis Zamperini, the wop hoodlum from nowhere, had made a success of himself.”

Louie would always have a temper, and a penchant for rebellion, but here began his training in how to harness it for worthy ends. He kept his fire and fight, but made them his servant instead of his master. It was a power that would serve him well in the many challenges to come.

2. Toughness Is the Ultimate Preparation for Any Exigency

The transformation from local hellraiser to dedicated athlete wasn’t easy. As Louie later recalled, “I still wanted to do almost everything my way.” On his training runs, Pete would follow behind his whining brother on a bike, hitting him with a stick to prod him along. Louie gradually began “to accept the physical pain of training” and Pete had to employ the switch less and less often. He gave up smoking and drinking and even ice cream sundaes, and he did it because he didn’t want to let his brother down. But Pete understood that Louie needed to want it for himself. “You’ve got to develop self-discipline,” Pete told his brother. “I can’t always be around.” Louie took the advice to heart and worked to develop his own commitment to running:

“I knew however much I struggled against it, that running was the right course to follow. To stay on the straight and narrow I made a secret pact with myself to train every day for a year, no matter what the weather. If I missed working out at school, or the track was muddy, I’d put on my running shoes at night and trot around my block five or six times, about a mile and a half. That winter we had two sandstorms and I had to tie a wet handkerchief across my face and mouth just to go out. I also kept boxing, to develop my chest muscles. In the end I was probably even more disciplined than Pete wanted me to be.”

As part of Louie’s self-created training regimen, he started to literally run everywhere. Instead of hitchhiking to the beach as he once had, he would run the four miles there, run 2 more miles along the beach, and then run the 4 miles back home. When his mother asked him to run to the store to pick up something for her, that’s exactly what he did. On weekends, he’d “head for the mountains and run around lakes, chase deer, jump over rattlesnakes and fallen trees and streams.”

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Louie also strengthened his lungs by practicing how long he could hold his breath at the bottom of the local pool. He’d sit holding on to the drain grate until his friends feared he would drown and would jump in to save him. And he researched the workouts of his fellow runners, and then doubled them for himself. “When I started to beat them,” Louie later remembered, “I knew the simple secret: hard work.”

Louie continued to challenge his body and strengthen his willpower when he became a collegiate runner. His coach at USC forbid his athletes from running uphill, including stairs, believing it was bad for the heart. But Louie had spent plenty of time scaling hills on his solo runs, and knew how good it was for his body and his ability to embrace pain. So he did his own stair workouts outside official practice:

“Every evening I’d climb the Coliseum fence and do the ‘agony run.’ At the top my legs seared with fire, then I’d walk across a row, go down again, and up another staircase. I did that after each normal workout. Here’s why. People say all anyone needs is a positive attitude. It’s nice to have, but a positive attitude has nothing to do with winning. I often had a defeatist attitude before a race. What matters is what you do to your body. Self-esteem can’t win you a race if you’re not in shape.”

Louie’s studied cultivation of toughness put him in good stead for his mile-long races. He was famous for his ability to dig deep and dial up a ferocious kick on the last lap. At the start of his running career, he had often complained to Pete about the pain and exhaustion inherent in that final, minute-long push to the finish line. His brother had then given him a piece of advice that always stuck with Louie: “Isn’t one minute of pain worth a lifetime of glory?”

That was the question running through Louie’s mind during the final for the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He fell behind the lead runners and stayed there for most of the race. But as he moved into the last lap, he remembered Pete’s advice: “When I felt done-in was the time to exert myself.” Louie kicked it into high gear, and turned in a scorching lap time of 56 seconds, enough for 8^th place and to become the first American to hit the tape. His last lap was so memorable, even the Führer himself asked to meet with him after the race to shake Louie’s hand.

Louie demonstrated his toughness in a different way during a NCAA meet in 1938. A group of runners had conspired to sabotage him by roughing him up mid-race. As the competitors raced around the track and jostled for position, the runners blocked Louie in, and the one directly in front of him reached back with his foot and raked his shoes’ razor-sharp spikes across Louie’s shin, creating three gashes a quarter-inch deep and an inch and a half long. When the aggressor did it a second time, the wounds widened and blood began to run down Louie’s leg. He tried to escape the box, but the runner on his flanks threw an elbow into his ribs, causing a hairline fracture. Even with the wind knocked out of him, and his socks filling with blood, Louie remained undaunted. He finally managed to sprint free and cross the finish line ahead of the pack. His would-be saboteurs’ plans had been foiled; not only had Louie won, but he had broken the national collegiate record.

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All of these episodes of toughness trained and toughness won might have been just a footnote in yet another athlete’s story, except for how they singularly prepared him for a much more trying contest to come: Louie vs. Death.

When Zamperini emerged from the wreckage of his bomber and pulled himself into a life raft in the middle of the ocean, it was his confidence in his body, his self-discipline, and his ability to withstand pain in the pursuit of a goal that enabled him to maintain his composure. He remembers his initial thoughts as he assessed the dire situation:

“Look, no one wants to crash, but we had. I knew the way to handle it was to take a deep breath, relax, and keep a cool head. Survival was a challenge, and the way to meet it was to be prepared. I’d trained myself to make it. I was in top physical condition.”

The response of Mac, one of Louie’s two raft mates, could not have been more different; he started wailing about how they were all going to die. While a slap across the face from Louie snapped him out of it, Mac’s panic continued to grow within. When Louie woke up the first morning after the crash, he found all the chocolate bars – the men’s only form of subsistence – had been gobbled up by Mac while he and Phil had been sleeping. The unthinkingly selfish act was a harbinger of what was to come – Louie and Phil would remain calm, hopeful, and mentally strong, while Mac would slip into an anxious, paralyzing malaise.

What accounts for the difference in the men’s responses to the same crisis? In Unbroken, the bestselling account of Louie’s life, author Laura Hillenbrand calls it a “mystery” and muses that perhaps genetics played a factor. Some people are surely born more optimistic than others, but Louie had his own, more frank theory on the matter:

“Mac never took proper care of himself. On the base he skipped our physical-fitness program. He chain-smoked. Drank. Spent his nights in Honolulu doing who knew what. He also missed meals. We had pretty good food in the dining room, but he’d come in, eat whatever was sweet, and leave. You couldn’t make him listen. Several cups of coffee and three pieces of pie? No problem. Mac had developed a sweet tooth long before he met our chocolate. I should have known I couldn’t trust him…

Everybody in the service gets the same combat training. We go to the front line with the same equipment. When the chips are down, some will panic and run and get court-martialed. Why? Because we’re not all brought up the same. I was raised to face any challenge. If a guy’s raised with short pants and pampering, sure, he goes through the same training, but in combat he can’t face it. He hasn’t been hardened to life.

It’s important to be hardened to life.

Today kids cut their teeth on video games. I’d rather play real games. This generation may be ready to handle robotic equipment and fly planes with computers, but are they ready to withstand the inevitable counterattack? Are they emotionally stable? Are they callous enough to accept hardship? Can they face defeat without falling apart?”

In the initial aftermath of the crash as Louie bandaged Phil’s head wound, he said softly, “Boy, Zamp, I’m glad it was you.” When the chips are down, isn’t that something every man would like to hear?

3. Always Have a Purpose and a Vision for the Future

Another big difference between how Louie and Mac approached their dilemma was that Zamperini focused on the future, and on keeping himself busy with tasks, even small ones, that helped get him closer to it. Though he himself experienced a moment of anxiety as he surveyed how few supplies they had at their disposal, “rather than give in, I made myself a promise: no matter what lay ahead, I’d never think about dying, only about living… I adapted myself to my fate instead of resisting it. Rescue would be nice, but survival was most important.” If in his youth, Louie’s fight and resourcefulness had gotten him into trouble, now they were his ace in the hole for beating back death and coming out of the crucible alive.

Louie inventoried what they’d need to survive: “food, water, and a sharp mind.” As to the first two requirements, he set to work testing out various fishing methods with their limited equipment, catching birds that landed on the raft, and turning canvas cases into rain catching devices. He was a shipwrecked MacGyver and his persistent ingenuity was so inspiring, we’ve dedicated a separate post to detailing it. The small successes he had with his experiments fueled his confidence; it became a positive cycle, in which the more he and Phil tried to survive, the more hopeful they became about their chances, and the more strength they developed to stick it out. In contrast, Mac remained passive, and this became a cycle as well; the more he withdrew, the more listless and dejected he became.

Beyond the procurement of food and water, Louie made mental exercise a top priority. He had read the story of what had happened to another pilot and his men who were adrift at sea for 34 days. After several weeks, many of those castaways had gone to pieces, seeing hallucinations and babbling to themselves. As Hillenbrand writes, this knowledge made Louie “determined that no matter what happened to their bodies, their minds would stay under their control.”

Louie thought back to a college class he had taken in which the professor compared the mind to a muscle that would atrophy through disuse. So he decided that he and his fellow castaways would give their brains daily workouts. The raft became a “nonstop quiz show” with Louie and Phil constantly trading questions back and forth. They talked about their families, the dates they’d been on, their college days, and what they wanted to do when (never if) they got home. Each response would bring a follow-up question from the other (no conversational narcissism here!). Louie would describe his mother’s delicious Italian dishes in detail, and the phantom meals would temporarily fill the men’s bellies. As Hillenbrand writes, “For Louie and Phil, the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing. As they imagined themselves back in the world again, they willed a happy ending onto their ordeal and made it their expectation. With these talks, they created something to live for.”

Mac, on the other hand, rarely participated in the discussions, and slipped further away. As Louie put it, he “lost his vision of the future.” On the 33^rd day of their odyssey, though he had gotten as much food and water as his raftmates, Mac passed away.

Louie carried his field-tested conviction in the importance of active purpose throughout the rest of his brutal journey towards home. When the Japanese rescued/captured Louie from his raft, they first placed him in a tiny, sweltering, maggot-filled cell on the island of Kwajalein. Here guards regularly kicked and punched him for fun, and poked sticks through the bars of his cage, treating him like zoo animal. To take his mind off his de-humanizing circumstances, Louie spent his time memorizing the names of the 9 Marines that had been inscribed on the wall of his pen — men who had once shared his cell before being executed. If he was freed, he wanted to be able to pass along the list to Allied intelligence. “It was my small way of keeping hope alive,” Louie said.

When he was later transferred to a series of interrogation and POW camps, Louie put his energy into fueling an information network between the prisoners. He kept a tiny diary made of rice paste, even though he knew its discovery would bring a severe beating, and he daringly stole newspapers from guards when they weren’t looking. News of Allied progress was crucial in buoying the spirits of the men. He also took part in the camp’s well-organized ring of thievery – stealing food, supplies, and tobacco to distribute to the prisoners.

Even in darkest moments of camp life, when he was beaten daily and lay sick in his bunk with dysentery and scorching fevers, Louie held to the prospect of being rescued and refused to give up. In his mind he envisioned embracing his family again, competing in another Olympics, living his life.

When his camp was finally liberated, and he found himself aboard a train on the first leg of his long journey home, some of the men around him “grumbled about years of miserable treatment or complained that we should have been liberated from Camp 4-B sooner.” But Louie didn’t join in and continued to uphold the philosophy that had gotten him through those brutal, de-humanizing years: “I’d made up my mind to stay focused on the future, not the past.”

4. A Man Keeps His Promises

Louis Zamperini, Fred Garrett

When Louie was captured by the Japanese, and imprisoned on Kwajalein, he wondered why he wasn’t executed like the other Marines who had once shared his cell. As his internment progressed, he found out.

One day, he was taken from his prison camp to a radio station that broadcast Japanese propaganda programs. His hosts treated him kindly and showed him around the premises. There was a cafeteria with hot, heaping portions of American-style food, and clean hotel-style beds with sheets and pillows. Louie could stay here, the men told him, and never have to return to camp, never have to see the Bird again, if he would simply do a little broadcast for them. The message they wanted him to read wasn’t overtly traitorous, it just expressed his astonishment that the US government had declared him dead, and hurt his family with the news, when he really was alive and well. But as Hillenbrand explains, Louie knew its purpose was to “embarrass America and undermine American soldiers’ faith in the government.” He realized he had been kept alive because his prominence as an Olympic runner would make him a more effective propaganda tool. And he understood that once he read one message for them, they’d ask him to read increasingly critical ones, and there would be no way out. Though refusal meant returning to a wooden slab infested with bed bugs, starvation rations, and the endless beatings of a mad man, Louie declined the offer. The Japanese broadcasters pressed, warned he’d be punished, and still he refused. Acceptance was not even an option for Louie: “I’d taken an oath as an officer.”

Living up to another promise would prove more difficult. While floating on their life raft, Louie and his crewmates once went 6 days without water. The men felt on the doorstep of death, and Louie prayed fervently to God, pledging that he would dedicate his life to him if only it would rain. The next day brought a downpour. Two more times they prayed, and two more times the rains came. Throughout his later captivity, Louie would repeat his promise, praying, “Lord, bring me back safely from the war and I’ll seek you and serve you.”

When Louie was finally freed from his torments and sent back home, his vow was forgotten amongst numerous homecoming parties and let-it-all-hang-out celebrations. “Ignoring the future and the past,” he would later remember, “I drank and danced and gorged myself, and forgot to thank anyone, including God, for my being alive…I completely dismissed my promises because no one could remind me of them except myself.”

While the revelry took his mind off his harrowing experiences for a time, inside the scars and trauma of war festered. Louie’s fun-loving drinking turned into alcoholism, he struggled to find steady employment, and he was terrorized in his dreams by the Bird. His post-war marriage disintegrated, and his wife wanted a divorce. Bereft of the kind of active purpose that had once carried him through his most trying of challenges, he centered all his energy on a fantasy of revenge – on finding the Bird and killing him.

In a last ditch effort to save their marriage, his wife begged Louie to come with her to a Billy Graham revival meeting. Louie balked; he had no need for religion in his life. She persisted, and Louie reluctantly tagged along. Graham’s preaching made him feel condemned, angry, and defensive; he bolted home halfway through.

His wife managed to convince him to attend another meeting, and though he again felt like running away, this time the memory he had tried so long to forget burst upon his mind: he saw himself in the life raft, parched, desperate, dying, the heavens opening, and the cool rain drops falling on his skin. Louie fell to his knees and asked God “to forgive me for not having kept the promises I’d made during the war, and for my sinful life. I made no excuses.” After the meeting, Louie felt filled with forgiveness not only for himself, but for his former captors and tormentors. He poured all of his alcohol into the sink, and experienced a joyful, “enveloping calm.” The Bird never again came to him in his dreams. And he spent the rest of his life doing exactly what he had promised – offering inspiration to those adrift in their own ocean of struggles.

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Tom Sanders Photography

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Sources:

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Devils at My Heels by Louis Zamperini. While Hillenbrand’s book has rightly been greatly celebrated, I highly recommend giving this one a read too. It’s an incredibly enjoyable book, even if you’ve already read Unbroken, as it’s great to hear the story in Louie’s voice.

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“The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

Today we’re gonna break the first rule with aplomb. Hey, everyone else does too. Though it came out a decade and a half ago, the film version of Fight Club continues to be a cultural touchstone, especially in discussions about masculinity. Its many quotable lines — like “We’re a generation of men raised by women” — pop up regularly on the social media landscape. So much so, that mentioning Fight Club has become a bit of a cliché, and runs the risk of inducing seen-it-all-before eye rolls rather than reflection.

Yet after reading the book on which the movie is based last month for the AoM Book Club, I was able to see these timeworn insights with fresh eyes, and gain a deeper appreciation for how true, and profound, they really are. Today I’d like to dig into those insights and take a look at what Fight Club can teach us about living manfully (all quotes are from the book):

1. Memento Mori Will Kick Your Butt Into Gear

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

AoM has referenced the concept of Memento Mori multiple times, including dedicating an article to it, as well as an article on art inspired by the concept. Memento Mori is a Latin phrase meaning “Remember that you will die.” It’s the idea of reflecting on your mortality. Pretty bleak, isn’t it?

Until, that is, you actually think about it and let it move you into action. Even after reading those articles, it wasn’t until I read Fight Club that the concept really hit home. Seeing it in the form of a story truly solidified both its reality and importance.

With each minute that goes by, your life is one minute closer to ending. It’s a little terrifying to think about, and that’s the whole point. So many of us, especially when we’re young, go through life with no concept whatsoever of the fact that we aren’t going to live forever. This is a standard theme of youthful ignorance, and one that can greatly hold us back.

Tyler Durden knows that our knowledge of death is crucial to our growth: “You will die, and until you know this you are useless to me.”

Once we know that someday we’re going to die — that with each passing day our remaining time on Earth is a little bit shorter — we’re more likely to actually do something meaningful with our life.

To the AoM Book Club, I asked the question (echoed in the book), “What will you wish you’d done before you died?” When they thought for a few minutes about the reality of death, they all came up with something they’d do differently, be it an actionable task (travel/explore more) or simply a change in their personality or character (be less timid).

What about you? Will your life change at all when you realize that death is a reality? That every minute it’s one step closer? Make that change now instead of waiting until the Grim Reaper knocks at your door.

2. A Clean Life is Overrated

“I just don’t want to die without a few scars, I say. It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body. You see those cars that are completely stock cherry, right out of a dealer’s showroom in 1955, I always think, what a waste.”

We live in a very clean world. Disinfectants, laundry detergent, daily showers, and car wax are normal parts our routine. We do everything we can to keep our little worlds neat and tidy and free from scars. We cover holes in the walls of our home, we repair dings in our car as soon as possible, and we even use anti-scar creams on ourselves to hide these ugly and permanent blemishes.

Certainly these things aren’t bad, but what if scars were good for us? What if a little dirt and grime and bruising is beneficial to our well-being?

In recent years, the number of children with food allergies has skyrocketed, with dairy and peanut allergies leading the way. It’s become such a problem that there are many schools where children are no longer allowed to even bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the premises. What could be causing this?

While certainly not conclusive, research is starting to find that our addiction to cleaning — both ourselves and our home — could actually be leading to weaker immune systems, especially in children. In our younger years, it’s crucial for us to be exposed to common pathogens; in layman’s terms that means dirt, dust, grime…germs. It works the same way that vaccines do — a little bit of exposure helps our body fight those things in the future.

The same concept can apply to our adult lives as well. Our narrator notes that he doesn’t want to die without a few scars. To him, a few blemishes are actually desirable. Why would this be?

For one thing, to have scars means that you’ve lived. You haven’t just been in your house eating Cheetos your whole life; you’ve been doing things — taking action, taking risks, and pursuing the hard way in order to live a more satisfying life. Nobody wants to live in a bubble, and being out in the real world means the occasional scrape.

Beyond that, scars make us stronger. In fight club, you get socked in the face, leaving behind a nasty mark that you’ll see in the mirror every day until you die. And it serves as a learning experience and reminder for future fights: keep your hands up, make swift movements…duck and weave! That scar has made you a better fighter.

This concept doesn’t apply only to your body, either, but your mind as well. Psychological scars, although emotionally painful at the time, can serve to make us mentally stronger. If you’ve taken the risk to open a business and it fails after a couple years, you’re going to have your confidence and drive shaken. But if you don’t let that failure crush you, and instead use it as a learning experience, it can act as a springboard for success in a future endeavor.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you go seeking bodily or psychological harm, but don’t shy away from new experiences that might offer a scar or two. Strive to always be in the arena. Remember, pain is just weakness leaving the body.

3. Keeping Up With the Joneses is Overrated

“And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue… You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”

In high school and college, I understood the concept of keeping up with the Joneses. But only as a working and home-owning adult do I truly know what it means. I’m perfectly content with my car, my house, my stuff…until I see friends and neighbors with nicer cars, bigger homes, more stuff. It’s a phenomenon I honestly didn’t think I would be subject to. I’m a pretty laid back and content guy as it is, so to see some jealousy creeping in at the unintentional hands of friends and neighbors was a very strange feeling.

But then comes the realization that ultimately, stuff carries a greater burden. A nicer car means more expensive repairs, a bigger home means more square feet to keep clean, more stuff means infinitely more clutter and stress. There are costs for everything — it’s not like quality of life automatically goes up as the number and quality of things you own increases.

As our narrator above notes, you get caught up in having the perfect tidy little life. It even starts with good intentions — you just want a nice sofa. But then you need the matching tables, and matching carpet, and expensive art prints to go with it all. And all of a sudden, as the narrator observes, your stuff ends up owning you versus the other way around.

We see all that new shiny furniture in the IKEA catalogue and we think it will make us happy, but all it does is make us terribly depressed, not to mention sometimes leaving us in financially dire straits. There’s a reason “Thou shall not covet” is one of the ten most important things God tells his people in the Bible. Coveting makes you crazy, and you end up working your 9-5 job in order to simply pay for more stuff that you don’t want or need.

So how do we escape the rampant materialism that grips our society? Our unnamed narrator’s unnamed doorman gives us the surprising and simple answer: “If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.”

A sense of direction and purpose — knowing what you want — will keep your mind off the Joneses and on your own goals. It will help you achieve a balanced minimalism, where you have the things you need (and that bring you real pleasure) without any of the wallet-pinching, soul-suffocating stuff you don’t. For example, if your aim in life is to become a writer, enjoy your library of research books, and then throw yourself into mastering your craft – you won’t have time to focus on whether you should be playing a game of tit-for-tat with your neighbors.

Take some time to think about what you want the blueprint of your life to look like, then create actionable goals. When you’re focused on crafting your own world, you’ll worry less about other people’s.

4. There Is a Fighter in All of Us

One of my favorite parts of the book is near the end, after the narrator realizes him and Tyler are the same person:

“I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not. I’m not Tyler Durden.

‘But you are, Tyler,’ Marla says.”

Our seemingly pale, wimpy, shy narrator has been the cool, tough, fearless Tyler the entire time. He has to be reminded by Marla that he is in fact Tyler Durden. I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for the state of masculinity today if I tried.

There is a confident, strong, resilient, and virile man in each and every one of us. I need to remind myself of this sometimes, and so do you. When we sit in an office all day and come home and eat dinner and sit on our arse and watch TV and go to bed and rinse and repeat, it’s all too easy to lose sight of that fact.

Tyler Durden was funny and charming and independent from the beginning, but the narrator had to realize those characteristics slowly. There is a gap between the ideal man (Tyler, in the novel) and who we really are, and it’s the task of every man to close that gap. Punch by punch, that’s what the narrator did. And so it is with us — becoming a man and becoming a fighter doesn’t happen all at once. Luckily, Brett has already laid out an extensive framework for what that road might look like.

There’s also the mental side of masculinity. Remember, the quote above is near the end of the novel. He’s been through fight club, Project Mayhem, and all the rest, and yet he still doesn’t believe it’s in him to be to be courageous and capable. The first part to becoming a man is believing that you can in fact become a man. And here’s the paradox: you have to do manly things in order to believe you can become manly — you have to do so you can feel. Go split wood. Go exercise for an hour. Go start your novel. The experience you gain from doing will fuel your belief that you can grow, and then you’ll continue to take action that gets you closer to that ideal man.

There is a fighter inside you waiting to burst out as soon as you let it. Don’t squelch him with Candy Crush and Family Guy; enable him by reading more, working out more, and maybe even starting your own fight club.

What did you learn about being a man from the book? Let me know in the comments!

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When one hears the word “Viking,” it almost instantly conjures images of brawny warriors wielding fierce swords, riding in waves of long ships to pillage and plunder unsuspecting villages. It’s an accurate image, though not a complete one.

The Vikings, more than almost any other people that actually lived in history, have taken on a mythological reputation. This is likely because we simply know so little about the Norsemen — literally, “men of the North.” Most of the writings from their time period were written by Christians, who were one of the main targets of Norsemen raids. As the monks and other historians weren’t keen on fondly remembering the Vikings, they didn’t give them much space in their records.

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Consequently, few detailed accounts exist of this Northern Germanic people. What we do know is for the centuries roughly spanning 700-1100 AD, the Norse emigrated all over Europe, literally and figuratively spreading their seed throughout Ireland, England, France, Germany, and even Greenland and Canada’s Eastern shores; if you have Northern European ancestors, there’s a good chance you have some Viking in you. As to our knowledge of Viking culture, we are largely limited to reports of their martial endeavors, conveyed in vague descriptions like “the Northmen at this time fell on Frisia with their usual surprise attack,” and, “the Northmen got to Clermont where they slew Stephen, son of Hugh, and a few of his men, and then returned unpunished to their ships.” As author Anders Winroth notes in The Age of the Vikings, our only surviving descriptions are “the Vikings show up, ravage, and kill many if not all.”

This dearth of historical information has turned the Norsemen into a pure symbol of the warrior archetype, and raised their standing to that of near gods. They didn’t see themselves in that regard, however. The Vikings had their own pantheon of revered deities, as well as accompanying stories of the role these gods and goddesses played in creating the world, spurring mortals’ heroic deeds, wreaking destruction, and catalyzing renewal.

While figures like Thor, Loki, and Odin are making an appearance in pop culture (and will only continue to do so based on Marvel’s tendency to make sequel after sequel) the old myths behind those figures are even more interesting than the films they star in. On the big screen, all we see are Thor’s heroic deeds of strength, likening him to a Norse version of Hercules. And of other Norse figures, we get almost no information at all.

To the Viking people, these gods provided the very breath of life; they served as models for manhood to Norse warriors. No matter the religion you practice (or none at all), all men can learn from the Norsemen’s myths, just as we can learn from those of Rome and Greece (Got Thumos?). Over the course of a few monthly articles, we’ll explore the Viking worldview and gods, which were different and more complex than their classical counterparts. In some ways, this makes the Norse gods more relatable to us mortals than the likes of Zeus or Hercules (even though he was partially mortal himself).

Today, we’re going to look specifically at Odin. He’s the chief god in Norse mythology — the Allfather. I found his story and the myths surrounding him to be utterly captivating, and he provides an excellent study for today’s man.

Odin’s Origins

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Among the many Viking deities who inhabit Asgard, the fortress of the gods, Odin plays the role of Chieftain. But he is not the Creator, nor the first god to come into existence. To understand Odin’s place amongst the Viking deities, we first need to briefly look at the Norse creation story.

Before humanity existed and even before sky or ground or wind, there existed a gaping abyss known as Ginnungagap. At one end of the gap flamed elemental fire and at the other end blew elemental ice. The cold and the heat met in the gap, and the drops formed a frost ogre named Ymir. As frost continued to melt in the gap, a cow emerged named Audhumbla. She fed Ymir with her milk, and she was in turn nourished by salt licks that formed in the ice. As Audhumbla licked away, she uncovered Buri, the first of the Norse gods. Buri had a son named Bor, who with the giantess Bestla had three sons: Odin, along with his brothers Vili and Ve. The three brothers killed Ymir and constructed the world with his corpse. The frost ogre’s blood became the seas and lakes, his flesh the earth, and his bones the mountains.

After assembling the world, Bor’s three sons also created the first humans, Ask (the man) and Embla (the woman). Odin had the most important task, imbuing the first people with spirit and life, while Vili and Ve gave the power of movement and the capability of understanding, as well as clothing and names. Because of Odin’s role in creating the Norse universe, he became known as the Giver of Life.

While this origin myth lives on, it’s possible that the deity is based on an actual man. Snorri Sturluson, a 13th century Icelandic historian, believes Odin was a famous warrior who led his people out of Troy and into Scandinavia. His greatness was such that he ascended to the status of a god, and became worshiped as one. His myth continued to grow, especially among Germanic peoples, and he eventually usurped Tyr as the chief god, both in myth and in religious practice and worship. If this is true or not, we’ll never know, but either way his mythological status has been cemented.

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However Odin’s apotheosis came about, he is typically depicted as a white-haired, bearded old man, and often resembles Zeus or the Christian God in artistic renderings. The noticeable difference? Odin has but one eye (we’ll get to that story in detail later), and is most often flanked by an assortment of creatures, namely his ravens and his eight-legged horse.

Odin’s other main companion is his wife, a goddess named Frigg. We don’t have too many important myths about her, but because of her matronage, Frigg was given a day of the week, which to this day is known as Friday. Odin sired many children, the most important of whom for our purposes are Thor and Baldur (we’ll discuss them later in this Norse series). Eventually, Odin is killed by the great wolf Fenrir during Ragnarok (the Norse apocalypse and subsequent recreation).

Lessons from the Myths of Odin

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One key difference between most current, monotheistic religious systems and the polytheistic ones of old, is the flawed nature of the latter’s gods. The Norse gods weren’t 100% “good” like the Christian Jesus or Islamic Allah. They more or less had certain desirable characteristics, but in many ways mirrored the humans who worshiped them in their faults and oddities. Odin was no exception.

He is perhaps the most complex god in all of mythology. He’s the Allfather, but also a bit of a wandering, magical shaman. In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien imagined the now-revered Gandalf as being an “Odinic wanderer” (among many other Norse influences in The Lord of the Rings). So when you picture Odin, imagine many of Gandalf’s qualities: wise, discerning, inspiring, fierce; but also quite mysterious and prone to doing things not easily explained.

Odin, like many other chieftain gods, displays characteristics that Viking culture deemed most important and worthy of emulation. Let’s take a look at those traits, the myths behind them, and what modern men can learn from the Viking Allfather.

The Relentless Pursuit of Wisdom

Odin is not an omniscient god; in fact, his chief characteristic is that he’s always seeking wisdom, even at great personal cost, as we’ll next see.

The most famous of Odin’s myths is how he lost his eye in seeking greater knowledge and discernment. The story goes that Odin visited a certain well — the Well of Urd — because he knew its waters contained wisdom. When Odin arrived, he asked Mimir, the shadowy, wise being who guarded the well’s depths, for a drink. Mimir knew the tremendous value of such a gift, however. Instead of giving a drink from the waters straightaway, he first required Odin to sacrifice an eye. Whether given easily or after an agonizing internal debate we don’t know, but Odin gored out an eye, and in return Mimir allowed him to quench his deep thirst. Odin lived the rest of his life with a single eye, but much wisdom.

One interpretation of this myth notes that Odin exchanges worldly vision (his eye) for internal vision (wisdom). While he didn’t give up his worldly sight entirely, he realized that in some cases, wisdom and discernment propel us further towards our goals than what’s on the surface. I rather appreciate this insight, and it correlates well with what Brett wrote about situational awareness a couple weeks ago (I highly recommend you read that article). Visual observation is certainly important in being aware and present, but what’s more important is orienting yourself to what you’re seeing, which can’t be done without the help of knowledge, foresight, and wisdom.

Another famed tale that communicates Odin’s relentless pursuit of knowledge is his discovery of the runes. In our modern understanding, runes are simply ancient forms of writing, but in the Viking age, they were far more than that, and held the secrets to wisdom and the very meaning of life. Let’s take a quick look at the tale:

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At the center of the Norse universe is the great tree called Yggdrasil (pronounced ig-druh-sill), which grows from the fathomless depths of the Well of Urd — the same well mentioned above. (Asgard, the gods’ fortress, is held within the upper branches of this great tree; it’s a biggen.) In a complicated bit of magic, three powerful and shrewd maidens called Norns carve runes into the tree’s trunk, which dictate the destiny of all the Norse worlds (there are nine worlds — most of them invisible to the human eye — in which different creatures reside; Midgard is the realm of the humans while Asgard, as just noted above, is the gods’ dwelling place). As you can imagine, understanding the runes would be quite desirable. From Asgard, Odin could see the Norns’ activity, but couldn’t discern the mysterious carvings. He envied this knowledge mightily, and decided to take on the task of finding the runes’ meaning.

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Knowing the runes only revealed themselves to those who were worthy, Odin hanged himself on the tree, pierced himself with a spear, and denied any sustenance or help from other gods. Odin peered upon the runes with an intense focus, and after teetering on the balance beam between life and death for nine days and nine nights — and perhaps even dying a little bit — Odin beheld their secrets. In spite of his pain and exhaustion, he then let out a great, beastly yell. After this, he became the great god he is known as, and wielded a number of magical powers.

In one source for this story, the Havamal, Odin says he was “given to Odin, myself to myself.” He sacrificed himself, for the sake of himself. Part of him had to die so another part could gain wisdom and understanding. It’s analogous to our more modern concept that the child is father to the man. In order to progress, small parts of us need to die every now and then to allow new shoots of wisdom to grow in their place.

The lesson from both of these tales is that gaining wisdom often comes with sacrifice. In our modern age, it seems people have come to believe that if something is hard, or sacrificial, it’s not worth doing. Odin, and his Viking followers, believed in just the opposite. If something is worth having, it absolutely requires sacrifice, and it’s always worth it, no matter how great the cost.

When it comes to wisdom, hopefully you don’t have to lose an eye, but certainly you should be willing to place time, energy, attention, and even money on the altar of your goal. Read difficult and dense books, seek challenging experiences that will push you outside your comfort zone, swallow your pride — perhaps the hardest sacrifice of all — and put yourself out there to find a mentor. Consider the sacrifices to be investments in your wisdom in the long run. It will be well worth it.

Poetry, the Gift of the Gods

Odin often spoke in poems, and was credited with giving poetry to humanity. This happened when he stole and consumed the Mead of Poetry, which unsurprisingly required a great deal of effort and sacrifice. Beyond just poetry as we think of it today, this mead was truly a source of knowledge and inspiration — it even came to be nicknamed “the stirrer of inspiration.” Drinking the mead not only gave knowledge and words to the mind, but the ability to inspire and persuade and arrange those words in meaningful ways.

The story is fairly lengthy, so I can’t give all the backstory, but you’ll get the gist of it:

In the Norse pantheon, there exists two groups of gods, the Aesir and the Vanir. The Aesir were the primary gods — Odin, Thor, Baldur, etc. The Vanir, on the other hand, were secondary gods whom we don’t have many myths about. Usually, the two groups got along, but not always. During one particular skirmish, they sealed a truce by spitting into a vat. Their spit then formed a being named Kvasir, who became yet another eminently wise creature who wandered the earth giving counsel. He not only possessed wisdom, but dispensed advice freely to those who asked.

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Once upon a time Kvasir was invited to the home of two dwarves, Fjalar and Galar. When he arrived, the dwarves killed him and made a mead with his blood. This elixir contained within it Kvasir’s ability to provide wisdom, as well as inspiration. Anyone who drank it would be conferred these gifts.

Eventually, the dwarves got themselves into further trouble, and were forced to give the mead to a giant named Suttung, who hid it beneath a mountain. Odin knew the mead’s general movements, but couldn’t figure out access to the mountain. Seeing as how Odin desired wisdom and knowledge above all else, he unsurprisingly set his sights on doing whatever it took to find and drink the mead.

Odin’s first step was to go to the farm of Baugi, who was Suttung’s brother. He disguised himself as a farmhand, and dispatched the nine servants who were already there (in a clever bit of trickery he got them to all kill each other). Odin approached Baugi and offered to do the work of those nine men, and in return he wanted a drink from the mead. Baugi had no control over the elixir, but he promised to help Odin acquire it should he indeed be able to complete the work.

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Odin did so, and he and Baugi trotted off to meet Suttung, who angrily denied them access to the mead. So, Odin and Baugi attempted to venture into the heart of the mountain themselves. After Baugi drilled a hole into the rock, Odin shapeshifted into a snake and crawled through into an inner chamber. Once inside, he shapeshifted once again into a young man and was greeted by a fair maiden-guardian named Gunnlod. As the guardian, she had to grant him permission, and they struck a deal in which Odin would get three sips after sleeping with Gunnlod three nights. Odin obliged, consumed three whole vats (rather than three sips), and flew off to Asgard in the shape of an eagle, where he then regurgitated some of the mead so he could dispense it to others at will.

Odin previously had knowledge and insight, but now added to that the gift of dispensing it in meaningful and motivating forms.

It’s a wonderful thing to have vision and insight, but if you can’t share it others, and convince them to take action, you’re powerless to affect the world. The potency of wisdom’s power is predicated on cultivating charisma and mastering rhetoric. Think of a man like Winston Churchill; he had a vision of where his beloved England needed to go to win the war, but his efficacy as a leader came down to his ability to change and inspire his countrymen’s hearts through his radio broadcasts and Parliamentary speeches. Pure wisdom is like electricity, and rhetoric the conduit which channels that current into effective power.

Conclusion: Odin the Breath of Life

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While Odin is sometimes seen as a war god, that title belongs to Tyr in Norse mythology. Odin doesn’t often take part in battles himself, and we don’t have many war myths about him. He’s more about providing the vim and vigor warriors need to vanquish their foes. One writer from the year 1080 writes that Odin “imparts to man strength against his enemies.”

There’s an old Norse poem from The Poetic Edda that identifies Odin as “ond” — the breath of life. He provided the first humans in Norse mythology — Ask and Embla — with their animating force. It’s through his magical powers and bestowing of spirit that humanity strives to better itself, to flourish, and to rid stagnation from its existence.

While the comparison isn’t perfect, it seems like Odin to the Norsemen is what thumos was to the Greeks. Wisdom, passion, and inspiration are his domain, and as we’ve seen, he sacrificed much to attain those traits.

And Odin expected humans to do the same. The Norse culture, like many ancient ones, wasn’t a democracy, but a meritocracy. You had to work for your blessings from Odin; they weren’t just handed down freely. In tale after tale, men had to literally and metaphorically bleed themselves in order to attain their aims and transform into warriors — the only type of man who had a chance at accompanying the Allfather to Valhalla.

As we’ve seen over and over on the Art of Manliness, characteristics like passion and vigor are not necessarily inherent within us. It’s through action and work that we build up these properties and form the foundations of who we are. Follow the example of Odin and relentlessly pursue wisdom, even sacrificing time, energy, money, etc. to obtain it. Study not just for the sake of knowledge, but to be able to convey that knowledge to others; come to learn the intersection of information and expression. Let the great, bearded, one-eyed Chieftain serve as one of your invisible counselors; he’ll advise you in perhaps mysterious ways, but also always towards fierce inspiration and wisdom.

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Sources and Further Reading

The Age of the Vikings by Anders Winroth. This is a history of the Viking people, rather than a specific look at Norse mythology. It helps set the stage, however, and does well in giving an honest account of their culture.

The Poetic Edda (Hollander translation). A collection of anonymous mythical poetry and verse from the 1300s that serves as an origin text for many Norse myths.

The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. A textbook-like work from the Icelandic historian which compiles Norse myths. This, along with The Poetic Edda, offer the majority of source material for Norse mythology.

Nordic Gods and Heroes by Padraic Colum. This is a collection of reimagined and rewritten Norse myths. They’re in a language that captures the beauty and inspirational nature of the tales rather than a rote translation of ancient words.

Norse Mythology for Smart People. An online treasure trove of articles and information about the mythological Norse universe.

lessons from viking mythology

Thor — Giant-Slayer and God of Thunder — is the most well-known Norse god in our modern world. The Marvel comic books and films have of course spurred his fame, but they’ve also hampered our understanding of the Thor that Viking people worshiped and revered and looked to for protection. For one thing, rather than the flaxen-haired, neatly-groomed Marvel version, Thor was a red-haired, long-bearded half-giant. (I had to get the red-haired part in right from the get-go; as a fellow ginger, I’d be remiss not to call attention to this defining feature.)

thor, the god of thunder

Even though Odin carried the Allfather title, Thor was the most venerated god in the Norse pantheon. His hammer, Mjolnir, was a symbol of this reverence, and much like the Christian cross, Vikings would don it in the form of necklaces, bracelets, skin markings, etc. to remember the strength and hope of the mighty god. Even today, Thor remains a popular name for boys in Scandinavia.

In this article, we’ll look at how the God of Thunder earned the unmatched reverence of the Norse people, and what every man can learn from his mythology.

Who Was the Thunder God?

thor battling giants while in his goat-drawn chariot

The eldest son of Odin (his mother was the giantess Jord), Thor had humble origins. We don’t know much about his beginnings, other than that he quickly overtook his father in popularity. Whereas Odin was mysterious and favored royals and leaders, Thor was protective of not only his friends and family, but common humans as well. His wife was Sif, a goddess whom we don’t know much about, other than her having a role in the creation of his famed hammer. Thor had three children, two boys and a girl, who survived Ragnarok — the Norse apocalypse — and went on to help recreate the world.

Thor’s most common foes were the giants who resided in Jotunheim — one of Norse mythology’s nine worlds. While sometimes cordial, the gods and giants got into frequent battles, with Thor almost always leading the charge and coming out on top. Riding in his goat-drawn chariot, his incessant fighting with the giants was perceived as thunder and lightning in Midgard (the world of the humans). When storms came, people knew that Thor was fighting on their behalf. This is why in Norse poems, he’s often referred to as the Thunder God.

thor battling the world-encircling serpent, jormungand

Beyond the giants, Thor’s other primary enemy was Jormungand, the giant serpent who encircled Midgard. Having failed to kill him in multiple previous attempts, Thor finally succeeds during Ragnarok, only to fatally succumb to the monster himself.

Let’s take a look at some of Thor’s most enduring myths; thankfully, they’re more easily untangled than those of the complex Odin!

The Power of Power

Thor’s preeminent characteristic, like that of the Greek Hercules, was his strength. His power and prowess were unsurpassed in the Norse realm. He relied on his muscle and simple tools (more on those below) to overcome the fiercest of enemies. The gods of Asgard looked to Thor as a protector and defender; so too did the humans of Midgard, whose daily lives were disrupted and threatened by interloping giants. The wily figures of Odin and Loki (among other gods) didn’t give much hope to men; sure, they were clever and wise, but didn’t possess the strength or courage to go to battle with the ogres. Thor alone had the power and skill to fight the beasts and protect mankind.

There are countless stories of Thor engaging in epic battles with the giants and other creatures, almost always for the sake of protecting others. Let’s briefly look at a couple.

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Odin was wandering around near Jotunheim, and encountered the giant Hrungnir. Odin challenged him to race their horses back to Asgard. While Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged stallion, was victorious, Hrungnir was still invited to stay for a feast. He got drunk and boastful, and joked about destroying Asgard and keeping their goddesses as concubine, including Sif, Thor’s wife.

Thor did not take this joking well, and challenged Hrungnir to a fight. The giant agreed, but it wouldn’t be then and there, as Hrungnir had no weapons on him; they’d instead meet near Jotunheim. In the meantime, the giants constructed a massive clay figure. Like, really massive: it was 30 miles high and 10 miles wide, and was brought to life for the purpose of being Hrungnir’s right-hand man. But when Thor saw Hrungnir and his new sidekick, he wasn’t fazed; instead, it was actually the clay giant who wet himself from fear.

thor doing battle with hrungnir

Through some trickery of his own, Thor first sent a servant to occupy the clay giant, and then charged Hrungnir. At the Thunder God hurled Mjolnir towards his opponent, Hrungnir threw his own weapon — a giant whetstone. The hammer broke the giant’s weapon in half before continuing on and crushing Hrungnir’s head.

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In another tale of Thor’s combative prowess, the ever-curious and up-to-trouble Loki was flying around in the form of a falcon when he was captured and imprisoned by a giant named Geirrod. The giant wouldn’t release Loki unless the trickster god could get Thor to come to the giant’s court. Thor agreed, and thinking it was a peaceful invitation, traveled without his trusty Mjolnir. Luckily, he made a pit-stop along the way at the home of a friendly giantess named Grid. She warned Thor that Geirrod actually planned on killing him, and loaned out her unbreakable staff.

thor and geirrod's daughters

When Thor arrived at Geirrod’s court, he was taken to a chamber and seated in the room’s only chair. The chair began invisibly rising towards the ceiling and Thor was on his way to being crushed to death. He pushed Grid’s staff against the roof and forced himself down with all his might until he heard two loud cracks, followed by agonizing screams. Thor looked down to see Geirrod’s two daughters writhing in pain; they were the ones lifting the chair upward, and he had cracked their backs while pushing himself back down.

An enraged Geirrod stormed into the chamber and threw a molten iron rod at Thor. When the god easily caught it, the giant fearfully hid behind a pillar for cover. Thor then threw the molten rod towards Geirrod, easily piercing the pillar, as well as the giant himself. The Thunder God was once again victorious.

thor riding on his goat-drawn chariot

Stories like these abound in Norse mythology; for the sake of brevity I shared just these two characteristic examples. If you’d like to read more, Padraic Colum has a few fantastic collections of Norse tales.

The myths about the Thunder God tend to share the common themes of either defending someone’s honor, or helping someone in trouble. When the sh*t hits the fan, Thor is the one that both the gods and humans turn to defend their safety. Because he provides that basic necessity which overrides nearly all others, and because nothing else — no higher culture or refined virtue — is possible without first “securing the perimeter,” Thor was looked upon and revered more than the other gods. His physical strength put him into a place of leadership and power, even among the other Norse deities. In many ways, his strength made possible the rest of the Viking universe.

Today, strongmen are typically just sideshows who break records and participate in competitions on TV. Our culture has shifted to valuing mental strength over physical strength, and bulging muscles have come to be seen as more characteristic of self-indulgent bros than well-rounded, virtuous men.

This is a shame, as physical strength can actually serve as the lynchpin for all other virtue. As Brett has written, “[physical strength] provides the necessary backbone — the proper framework — on which to build our moral values. The cloak of virtue hangs very awkwardly on a man without fire and fight; it droops and sags when draped across a structure that lacks strength and firmness.” Even Socrates — the patron saint of philosophy and intellectualism — viewed the cultivation of one’s physique as being just as important as building up one’s mental muscles. He said: “For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health.” The lessons of discipline and willpower that are imparted by building one’s muscles are not just physical in nature, but carry over into every other aspect of life.

Brett has written an excellent article about why every man should be strong, and Thor exemplifies that imperative better than any other mythological figure.

Thor’s Tools of the Trade

thor and mjolnir

Beyond just his incredible strength, Thor is most associated with his trusty hammer — Mjolnir. It’s a tool imbued with magical powers and can only be hoisted by the god himself. Beyond his hammer, Thor also dons a magical belt (named Megingjoro) which doubles his strength, and iron gloves (named Járngreipr) that allow him to wield the mighty Mjolnir.

Let’s look at the myth which explains the origins of Thor’s signature tools (even though it’s more about Loki than Thor).

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One day, Loki was feeling especially mischievous and decided to cut off the beautiful, golden hair of Thor’s wife, Sif. Thor was obviously quite angry at this, and swore he’d break every bone in Loki’s body to defend his wife’s honor. The trickster, however, pleaded with Thor to let him go down to the cavernous home of the dwarves and see if those master craftsmen could fashion new and better hair for Sif.

So Loki ventured to the home of the dwarves, where Ivaldi’s sons indeed made new hair for Sif (made of fine strands of gold), as well as two other gifts — a ship that always had a favorable wind and could be folded into one’s pocket, and a marvelous, deadly spear.

mjolnir being fashioned by dwarves

Loki enjoyed being down in the caves and wanted to stay and have some more “fun” with the dwarves. So he made a wager (betting his own head!) with two brothers that they couldn’t fashion three gifts for the gods which would best the three offerings made by Ivaldi’s sons. While the dwarves were forging new gifts, Loki shapeshifted into a fly, and stung the brothers over and over in an attempt to interrupt their precious work and win the bet. While fashioning the final gift — a ferocious hammer — Loki managed to sting the brothers badly enough to partially interrupt their vision, and the hammer ended up with a short handle. Nevertheless, even in its imperfection, the hammer was deemed the best of all the gifts, and given to Thor, as he was the only god worthy of carrying it into battle. Of course, through some clever trickery, Loki didn’t lose his head, but that’s a tale for another day.

thor on a mountain precipice with mjolnir and his chariot

When Thor was presented with Mjolnir, it’s not a reach to assume he had to learn its proper use and form before truly getting the most out of it. For instance, the hammer had magical powers which allowed it to fly back to Thor, like a boomerang, whenever he threw it. Given that he’s not a perfect god — nor are any in Norse mythology — it’s easy to picture him hanging out in his backyard just tossing the hammer and learning its movements so he could deftly catch it and fling it once again into oncoming enemies.

Without this kind of pursuit of mastery, our tools are worthless. The more you practice and train, the more they become second nature, and less brain power is needed to operate them. When properly mastered, our tools can even enhance our courage in the heat of battle. Imagine the confidence Thor possessed while battling giants with Mjolnir in his hand; he knew the hammer’s every idiosyncrasy, and understood that it wouldn’t fail him if he used it properly and strategically.

While tools of the trade are important for any man, don’t be tricked into thinking that a certain tool or weapon can make or break you. We tend to think that if we had the right techno gadget, we’d be more productive; if we had a nicer-looking journal we’d write in it more, and therefore be more reflective; if we only had the perfect home gym we’d work out more and lose that extra flab. The reality is that even when we get these seemingly perfect tools, our life stays more or less the same. What truly accelerates virtue and progress in a man’s life is action — including mastering the tools in front of us — rather than simply having the perfect equipment.

Ultimately, while tools are necessary and can aid and enhance our courage and effectiveness, a man must be willing to take action with imperfect tools. Thor’s hammer wasn’t a perfect creation, and yet he used his strength to overcome that flaw, and bested his foes at nearly every turn. But, as we’ll see next, not even Thor could beat every enemy.

Even Gods Fail

In any collection of tales about the Norse gods, one of the first you learn of is not Thor’s conquering of a great beast, or the slaying of an enemy-warrior, but his defeat at the hands of the giant-king Utgard-loki.

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One particular winter, the giants were being especially mischievous by causing gigantic blocks of ice to fall from the sky onto men’s homes, as well as directing enormous amounts of snow to cover the farmers’ fields. Thor, as the guardian of humanity, was incensed. So he ventured into Jotenheim, the world of the giants, with Loki and two other companions.

As they were traveling, they stopped in an oddly-shaped, empty house to spend the night. Upon returning to the trail in the morning, they discovered that a nearby hill was in fact a prostrate giant, and the house they slept in was in fact his glove. This giant awoke, introduced himself as Skrymir, and offered to guide them on their journey.

thor, loki, and skrymir

They traveled all day, with the gods struggling to keep up with the bounding giant. After a fretful night in which Skrymir’s snoring — as strong as earthquakes — kept them awake, they continued on to Jotunheim. This time, the giant roared ahead and left the gods and their companions behind. Thankfully, the beast’s immense size left a clear trail, and they found their way to a great palace, which they entered by slipping through the bars of an enormous gate.

Upon arriving, they were greeted by a band of giants, including the king, Utgard-loki. Thor, Loki, and their companions were not welcome, however, unless they completed a series of arduous tasks. Loki engaged in a meat-eating contest, but lost when his opponent ate not just the meat, but the bones and even the platter. Thialfi, one of the gods’ companions, lost three consecutive footraces. It was now Thor’s turn, and he took part in three contests.

Thor said he could drink a great deal, so was brought a large horn which he was challenged to drain in a single gulp. After three enormous swallows, however, he hadn’t managed to imbibe more than a few inches. Thor then boasted of his strength, and King Utgard-loki challenged the god to simply lift a gray cat off the ground. After three attempts, Thor inexplicably found he could only raise a single of its paws. Finally, the enraged Thor welcomed a wrestling match with anyone who would accept. Surprisingly, it was a frail old woman who came forth. Yet Thor met with failure again; though he tried with all his might, he mystifyingly could not even defeat his geriatric opponent, who handily brought him to his knees.

After this, Utgard-loki declared that the contests would be over, and in spite of the gods’ failure, they could stay the night and feast.

The next morning, Utgard-loki led the traveling company out of his land. Once past the boundary, he declared himself to be one and the same as the giant Skrymir, and revealed he had known their godly status the whole time. He then also disclosed the tricks he had played on them: Loki’s competition was in fact wildfire, which consumes everything it touches. Thialfi’s opponent was thought, which cannot be outrun. Thor then learned that the tip of the horn he drank from was connected to the ocean; he had in fact lowered sea levels. The cat he tried to raise was none other than the world-encircling Midgard serpent. And the old woman? Age itself. Thor had fought bravely, but even the mightiest invariably fall to that cunning crone.

After learning all this, Thor raised his hammer to strike down the giant-king, only to find that he and his entire palace had disappeared, leaving only a vast plain.

***

You see, even gods have limitations. The greatest of men cannot defeat the forces of nature — be it natural calamities or the onslaught of disease and old age. Hubris is one of man’s greatest foes; humility one of his greatest allies. Rather than becoming enraged at “failure” over these elements, it’s best for a man to understand that not everything is in his control. When realizing that there are greater forces at work in this world, he is actually free to take charge of what he can control, and simply do the best with the cards that life has dealt.

Additionally, Thor used his defeat at the hands of Utgard-loki as a moral reminder to spur him to greater deeds in the future. As author Graeme Davis noted, “He never forgot the humiliation…and he promised himself a reckoning against the giants.” Thor had a manly sense of honor and used the shame he felt to channel his fire and fight into his continued defense of both gods and humans. Instead of wilting away, he only grew stronger from his failure.

Thor: The Ultimate Example of Manliness

thor god of thunder and lightning

When looking at the three pillars of manhood — Protect, Provide, Procreate — Thor arguably embodies them all more than almost any other god in any culture’s mythology. Though he’s not the pinnacle of “goodness,” he’s the ultimate example of being good at being a man (or a god, that is). Thor uses his strength to defend his own honor, as well as that of his friends, family, and loved ones; he’s the ultimate defender of the perimeter. His tools help him provide for his family, but he knows how to improvise should he need to. And even though we don’t know many details about his family, he does indeed procreate and helps raise up the next generation of world-creators.

While Odin represented the cultivation of the mind and the attainment of wisdom, Thor represents the cultivation of the body. Physical strength is just as important as mental strength; just because it’s not as needed in our current climate doesn’t make it a less worthy pursuit. In the Viking age, those men who deftly combined the characteristics of Thor with those of Odin (as well as other gods) were the most revered and fulfilled. They could recite poetry and engage in “battles” of words and rhymes (yes, the Vikings had rap battles), but could also maneuver a hefty battle axe and willingly sacrifice themselves for their family and community. May we emulate those Viking men of old, and seek to better not just our minds, but our bodies as well, using Thor as our compass.

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Sources and Further Reading

Thor: The Viking God of Thunder by Graeme Davis. A short but very informative book that covers every aspect of Thor’s mythology and what he meant to the Vikings.

Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by H.R. Ellis Davidson. This textbook from 1965 is a surprisingly readable guide to not only Norse myths, but their context and symbolism within the Viking culture.

The Poetic Edda (Hollander translation). A collection of anonymous mythical poetry and verse from the 1300s that serves as an origin text for many Norse myths.

Norse Mythology for Smart People. An online treasure trove of articles and information about the mythological Norse universe.

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So far in this series we’ve taken an in-depth look at both Odin and Thor. We’ve been through their stories, and figured out some ways in which their mythological examples can help men be better men. Those two are truly the titans of Norse mythology. We’ll end this series by offering two shorter profiles of a couple of figures who don’t star as prominently in Viking tales, but still offer insight into Norse culture and masculinity: Tyr and Loki. The former provides a mythological example of honorable manliness to us moderns, while the latter shows us how not to be a man. Let’s tackle Tyr first.

Tyr — The God of Honor and Justice

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Tyr is a fairly recognizable name among Scandinavian people and Norse enthusiasts, but doesn’t have much mainstream recognition. This is likely due to the fact that he hasn’t starred in a Marvel movie (yet), and that there’s really only one prevailing myth about him (which we’ll get to in a bit). This lack of surviving Tyr-centered tales is surprising, as he’s the “guarantor of justice” and sometimes even called the boldest of the Norse gods — one who inspires heroism and courage. With that pedigree, you’d think there would be more myths surrounding him. Well, at one time, there probably was.

Prior to the Viking age, the Northern Germanic people had a similar set of gods and goddesses. They were more primitive, however, and not as fleshed out. In that pantheon, Tyr was perhaps the chief god, and went by the name Tiwaz. He was one of the war gods, and seemed equivalent to the Roman Mars. Like Tyr, his primary characteristics were honor and justice and courage. By the time of the Vikings, however, the centrality of Tyr/Tiwaz was supplanted by Odin and Thor. This tells us something of the different cultures. In the Germanic world of the early and mid-100s, battle was crucially important. Courage and bravery in war was something deeply foundational to a man’s life.

When the Vikings gained prominence, that foundation changed a little bit. Martial courage was certainly still valued, but the Norsemen were raiders and pillagers rather than soldiers on a battlefield. They took seaside ports by surprise with their longships, and quite simply outmuscled their foes. So a standard that encompassed wisdom, cleverness, and strategy, coupled with pure strength, took hold — the chief characteristics of Odin and Thor. Thus Tyr took a backseat, relegated to being a minor god.

As I mentioned above, however, there is one important myth about him which shows his character, and offers a great lesson for both Viking men and those of us in the modern world.

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Loki — the wily trickster — was father to three great and terrifying beings: Jormungand — the world-encircling serpent, Hel — the death goddess, and Fenrir — the great wolf. The other gods had a terrible foreboding about these offspring of Loki, and took action to keep them at bay. They threw Jormungand into the ocean, relegated Hel to the underworld, and kept Fenrir in Asgard so they could keep a close and watchful eye on him. Even when the wolf was just a pup, only Tyr had the courage to feed Fenrir. The beast grew and grew, however, and the gods decided they could no longer keep him in their home. Knowing the destruction Fenrir would wreak were he to be set free to roam the world, they decided to try to bind him with various chains and ropes.
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To get Fenrir to consent, the gods would tell him that these bindings were merely competitions of strength; they even clapped and cheered when the wolf broke through each attempted constraint. Desperate for a solution, the gods sent down word to the dwarves — the greatest craftsmen in the universe — to create something that not even Fenrir could wrestle free from. They forged Gleipnir — a rope which was made from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, the beard of a woman, the roots of a stone, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. Since these things don’t exist, it’s futile to struggle against them.

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When the gods presented Gleipnir to Fenrir as yet another challenge of strength, he grew suspicious. The rope was too light and silky; how could it possibly hold him? Something was afoot. So he insisted that he would not be bound unless one of the gods placed a hand in his jaws as a sign of good faith. Tyr — knowing full well the ramifications of his decision — was the only god to step forward. Fenrir was bound, and of course took Tyr’s hand as retribution. From thence on, Tyr carried a permanent disability and scar which spoke of his bravery for the sake of the entire world.

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You’ll remember that Odin sacrificed an eye for the sake of gaining wisdom. It was in many ways a selfish pursuit — sure, others benefited, but he was primarily seeking knowledge because he had a ravenous desire for it. Tyr also sacrificed himself physically, but it was largely for the sake of his community. Yes, Fenrir’s binding obviously gained Tyr security as well, but ultimately his motivations were directed towards helping his peers as well as the humans, who resided below Asgard in Midgard.

Sacrifice for the sake of bettering yourself is certainly a good thing. Better yet, though, is to sacrifice in a way that also benefits others. That’s the essence of legacy. In giving up his hand, Tyr both made the world safer and won a place of honor among all of the gods. He earned the respect of his peers, and was elevated among them as being the most courageous of all. Sure, Thor was the strongest, but how courageous are you really when your strength is second-to-none?

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Just as Christians look to and draw strength from the sacrifice of Christ, Vikings (and even modern followers of the old Norse religion!) looked to Tyr in much the same way. His example imparted courage and bravery. If Tyr could sacrifice his hand — something crucially important to a war god — then surely even common folk could make small sacrifices for the sake of their kith and kin.

Serving other people is easy when it fits into our schedule and our talents. Far more difficult is it to serve our community when we’re tasked with doing something we don’t enjoy, or that we aren’t good at, or that we know will bring some amount of financial or physical pain. And that last one is the toughest, isn’t it? Physical sacrifice hurts in a very literal way, and can have lasting physiological (and even psychological) consequences. And yet it’s been a moral imperative that men have shouldered for thousands of years. Cavemen would risk their lives to go hunt dinner, explorers and frontiersmen traversed great spans of sea and land to find a better life (and many didn’t come home), and today, first responders — the vast majority of them men — put their wellbeing on the line every day. And in times of danger and disaster, average men continue to put their own lives on the line to protect others.

Opportunities to make physical sacrifices do not always arise in our generally safe and secure modern world, but a man should be ready if/when such an exigency arises. Tyr certainly didn’t want to lose his hand to Fenrir that day, but when the community was in dire need, he stepped forward.

Beyond physical sacrifice, there are other ways to serve those around you in difficult circumstances. Maybe you serve on the board of a bureaucratic, stuck-in-their-ways local non-profit because you know it can better the community, or the next time a friend (or neighbor, or acquaintance) asks for help moving, perhaps you’ll actually say yes.

Will you be the kind of man who serves only when it’s easy and convenient? Or will you, like Tyr, willingly extend a hand, even when you know it will cost something?

Next time, we’ll take a look at Loki, the wily trickster of the Norse world.

What takeaways do you get from the myth of Tyr? Share your insights with us in the comments.

“The Indian, in his simple philosophy, was careful to avoid a centralized population, wherein lies civilization’s devil. He would not be forced to accept materialism as the basic principle of his life, but preferred to reduce existence to its simplest terms. His roving out-of-door life was more precarious, no doubt, than life reduced to a system, a mechanical routine; yet in his view it was and is infinitely happier. To be sure, this philosophy of his had its disadvantages and obvious defects, yet it was reasonably consistent with itself, which is more than can be said for our modern civilization. He knew that virtue is essential to the maintenance of physical excellence, and that strength, in the sense of endurance and vitality, underlies all genuine beauty. He was as a rule prepared to volunteer his services at any time in behalf of his fellows, at any cost of inconvenience and real hardship, and thus to grow in personality and soul-culture. Generous to the last mouthful of food, fearless of hunger, suffering, and death, he was surely something of a hero. Not ‘to have,’ but ‘to be,’ was his national motto.” –Charles Alexander Eastman

It has sometimes been said that the life of the American Indian has been overly romanticized by those who lack firsthand knowledge of what that life really consisted of, and are merely looking back through the hazy mists of time.

Yet one who was not long removed from growing up immersed in Native American culture, remembered it as wistfully as anyone, saying, “The Indian boy enjoyed such a life as almost all boys dream of and would choose for themselves if they were permitted to do so.”

The writer of this sentiment was a man known at his death as Charles Alexander Eastman. But that was not his original name. He was born a member of the Eastern Dakota (or Santee) Sioux tribe in 1858 and dubbed Hakadah, or “pitiful last,” for his mother died in giving birth to him. The boy’s father, Many Lightnings, was thought to have been killed by whites during the Dakota War of 1862, and he was raised by his grandmother and uncle in the ways of traditional Sioux life; this included being given a new name when he became a young man: Ohiyesa or “always wins.”

Before this boy’s life would take a dramatic and unexpected turn, and Ohiyesa would became Eastman, he would nearly complete the Sioux journey from boy to man. The elements of this journey contain much wisdom for young men in the present day, and the grown men who wish to see them raised to honorable manhood.

How a Sioux Boy Became a Man

“From childhood I was consciously trained to be a man; that was, after all, the basic thing; but after this I was trained to be a warrior and a hunter, and not to care for money or possessions, but to be in the broadest sense a public servant. After arriving at a reverent sense of the pervading presence of the Spirit and Giver of Life, and a deep consciousness of the brotherhood of man, the first thing for me to accomplish was to adapt myself perfectly to natural things — in other words, to harmonize myself with nature. To this end I was made to build a body both symmetrical and enduring — a house for the soul to live in — a sturdy house, defying the elements. I must have faith and patience; I must learn self-control and be able to maintain silence. I must do with as little as possible and start with nothing most of the time, because a true Indian always shares whatever he may possess.” –Charles Alexander Eastman

The education of a Sioux boy began before he was even born. While he grew in his mother’s womb, she would choose a model of manhood from among the heroes of the tribe whom she hoped her son would one day emulate. She would then wander the woods alone and rehearse the valiant deeds of this exemplar to herself and her unborn child. These inspiring words, along with the peace and silence of the natural backdrop, were thought to exercise a strengthening influence on the baby-to-be.

As Eastman later recalled, after a boy was born, his family and tribe wasted no time in continuing this natal initiation into the role of man:

“Scarcely was the embyro warrior ushered into the world, when he was met by lullabies that speak of wonderful exploits in hunting and war. Those ideas which so fully occupied his mother’s mind before his birth are now put into words by all about the child, who is as yet quite unresponsive to their appeals to his honor and ambition. He is called the future defender of his people, whose lives may depend upon his courage and skill.”

During a Sioux boy’s younger years, he was largely raised by his mother. In Ohiyesa’s case, his wise grandmother Stands Sacred filled that role. As soon as he started crawling around, she began pointing out the names and features of different animals and plants in his environment, developing him into a true “prince of the wilderness.”

The 6 Virtues of Sioux Character Development

Stands Sacred also began Ohiyesa’s education in the character traits and virtues he would need in order to one day take his place in the tribe’s circle of men. “Silence, love, reverence — this is the trinity of first lessons; and to these she later adds generosity, courage, and chastity”:

Silence. The Sioux believed in avoiding trivialities and speaking only that which was important. The youth were not to speak to their elders at all unless specifically requested to. As Eastman explains, the virtue of silence was part of a larger standard of “Indian etiquette”:

“No one who is at all acquainted with the Indian in his home can deny that we are a polite people. As a rule, the warrior who inspired the greatest terror in the hearts of his enemies was a man of the most exemplary gentleness, and almost feminine refinement, among his family and friends. A soft, low voice was considered an excellent thing in man, as well as in woman! Indeed, the enforced intimacy of tent life would soon become intolerable, were it not for these instinctive reserves and delicacies, this unfailing respect for the established place and possessions of every other member of the family circle, this habitual quiet, order, and decorum.”

Love. The love of a male Sioux did not revolve around a romantic sentimentality, but was rather shown through adherence to service and duty:

“Every boy, from the very beginning of his training, is an embryo public servant. He puts into daily practice the lessons that in this way become part of himself. There are no salaries, no ‘tips,’ no prizes to work for. He takes his pay in the recognition of the community and the consciousness of unselfish service.”

The finest love a man could develop was for his fellow men; friendship was thought “to be the severest test of character”:

“It is easy, we think, to be loyal to family and clan, whose blood is in our own veins. Love between man and woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend, and to be true under any and all trials, is the mark of a man! The highest type of friendship is the relation of ‘brother-friend’ or ‘life-and-death friend.’ This bond is between man and man, is usually formed in early youth, and can only be broken by death. It is the essence of comradeship and fraternal love, without thought of pleasure or gain, but rather for moral support and inspiration. Each is vowed to die for the other, if need be, and nothing denied the brother-friend, but neither is anything required that is not in accord with the highest conceptions of the Indian mind.”

Reverence. “Religion was the basis of all Indian training,” and a Sioux’s spirituality was inextricably tied into an awareness of the natural world, which he believed was sacred. All living things were thought to have a soul — not of the same kind as man, but a spirit created by the Maker nonetheless. The Sioux man felt a kinship with both the land and the animals upon it, and was grateful for the clothing and food the natural world provided him. He retained an awe and wonder in this connection his whole life through:

“The splendor of life stands out preeminently, while beyond all, and in all, dwells the Great Mystery, unsolved and unsolvable, except in those things which it is good for his own spirit to know.”

Generosity. The Sioux believed that “the love of possessions [was] a weakness to be overcome.” Acquisitiveness was thought to weaken one’s manhood and hinder spiritual growth.

To overcome the attachment to possessions, and maintain a minimal lifestyle, public giving was a prominent part of weddings, births, and funerals, and any other occasion in which a member of the tribe was especially honored. During such ceremonies, the Sioux often gave “to the point of utter impoverishment”:

“The Indian in his simplicity literally gives away all that he has, to relatives, to guests of another tribe or clan, but above all to the poor and the aged, from whom he can hope for no return. Finally, the gift to the ‘Great Mystery,’ the religious offering, may be of little value in itself, but to the giver’s own thought it should carry the meaning and reward of true sacrifice.”

The skilled hunter would regularly invite the old men of the tribe to feast with him and his family; in return, the old men entertained and edified the household with their stories of days gone by. By showing himself to be a generous host, “his reputation is won as a hunter and a feast-maker, and almost as famous in his way as the great warrior is he who has a recognized name and standing as a ‘man of peace.’”

Courage. The importance of courage to a Sioux is encapsulated in Eastman’s recollection that he had “wished to be a brave man as much as a white boy desires to be a great lawyer or even President of the United States.”

Courage was predicated on the ability to forget oneself in the pursuit of duty and the desire to serve and protect others. As Eastman explained: “The Sioux conception of bravery makes of it a high moral virtue, for to him it consists not so much in aggressive self-assertion as in absolute self-control”:

“The truly brave man, we contend, yields neither to fear nor anger, desire nor agony; he is at all times master of himself; his courage rises to the heights of chivalry, patriotism, and real heroism. ‘Let neither cold, hunger, nor pain, nor the fear of them, neither the bristling teeth of danger nor the very jaws of death itself, prevent you from doing a good deed,’ said an old chief to a scout who was about to seek the buffalo in midwinter for the relief of a starving people.”

Chastity. Chastity was not only prized in a Sioux woman, but in a Sioux man as well. Certain feasts were held for the young men that only those boys who had never spoken to a girl in courtship could attend. Demonstrating one’s worth as a man was considered a prerequisite to making oneself eligible to be a suitor. “It was considered ridiculous to do so before attaining some honor as a warrior, and the novices prided themselves greatly upon their self-control.” The highest honor went to the man who had “won some distinction in war and the chase, and above all to have been invited to a seat in the council, before one had spoken to any girl save his own sister.”

Part of the salutatory effect of the vigorous physical training young men participated in was thought to be the way such sports and games served as an outlet for their sexual energy, so that they might maintain a courageous self-mastery in that area of their lives as well.

An Education in Manhood

“The ‘School of Savagery’ is no haphazard thing, but a system of education which has been long in the building, and which produces results. Ingenuity, faithfulness, and self-reliance will accomplish wonderful things in civilized life as well as in wild life, but, to my mind, individuality and initiative are more successfully developed in the out-of-door man.” –CAE

When a Sioux boy became a young man, his education was turned over to his father, or in Ohiyesa’s case, his uncle.

A boy was taught by the men in his tribe how to be a warrior and a hunter, and to understand the tribe’s code of honor. This education took several forms:

Catechism. A boy’s father would constantly ask him questions about natural phenomena, to see if he could identify certain plants, animal tracks, weather patterns, and so on. Eastman recalled his uncle’s regular drilling:

“When I left the teepee in the morning, he would say: ‘Hakadah, look closely to everything you see’; and at evening, on my return, he used often to catechize me for an hour or so.

‘On which side of the trees is the lighter-colored bark? On which side do they have most regular branches?’

It was his custom to let me name all the new birds that I had seen during the day. I would name them according to the color or the shape of the bill or their song or the appearance and locality of the nest — in fact, anything about the bird that impressed me as characteristic. I made many ridiculous errors, I must admit. He then usually informed me of the correct name. Occasionally I made a hit and this he would warmly commend.”

Storytelling. As an oral culture, Sioux knowledge and traditions were passed down through stories, which boys had to both listen to, and then be prepared to recite themselves. It was a highly effective method of “schooling,” as it strengthened a boy’s power of memorization, required him to exercise courage in facing the risk of public performance, sunk the tribe’s philosophy down into his marrow, and inspired him to live up to the heroes of the past:

“Very early, the Indian boy assumed the task of preserving and transmitting the legends of his ancestors and his race. Almost every evening a myth, or a true story of some deed done in the past, was narrated by one of the parents or grandparents, while the boy listened with parted lips and glistening eyes. On the following evening, he was usually required to repeat it. If he was not an apt scholar, he struggled long with his task; but, as a rule, the Indian boy is a good listener and has a good memory, so that the stories were tolerably well mastered. The household became his audience, by which he was alternately criticized and applauded.

This sort of teaching at once enlightens the boy’s mind and stimulates his ambition. His conception of his own future career becomes a vivid and irresistible force. Whatever there is for him to learn must be learned; whatever qualifications are necessary to a truly great man he must seek at any expense of danger and hardship. Such was the feeling of the imaginative and brave young Indian.”

Mentorship. The greatest method by which Indian boys learned came simply through closely observing and then emulating the other men in the tribe. Young men were constantly surrounded by mentors — a third family — who together helped raised him. These lessons in manliness came directly, but also by tagging along with father and uncles and apprenticing in the tasks of manhood.

A Culture of Honor

The Santee Sioux, like all ancient tribes, lived an honor culture, which included a few fundamental elements:

Competition. For the Sioux, achievement was a prerequisite to respect, influence, and marriage, and so status-seeking was not a frowned-upon practice; as they believed “that the world was full of natural rivalry,” competition was considered essential in inspiring young men to become their best selves and developing and maintaining a vital, virile manhood.

Contests were thus greatly encouraged, and were incorporated by boys into nearly everything they did. As Eastman remembers: “There was always keen competition among us. We felt very much as our fathers did in hunting and war — each one strove to excel all the others.” Sports and games — from running races to wrestling matches to attempting to get honey from a hive before being attacked by its producers — were a central and well-enjoyed part of every boy’s life. Even hunting became a competition for young men, who “kept strict account of [their] game, and thus learned who were the best shots among the boys.”

Warfare too was thought of as a kind of sporting competition; “founded upon the principle of manly rivalry,” it was seen as a chance for men to test themselves and gain honor:

“Warfare we regarded as an institution — an organized tournament or trial of courage and skill, with elaborate rules and ‘counts’ for the coveted honor of the eagle feather. It was held to develop the quality of manliness and its motive was chivalric or patriotic, but never the desire for territorial aggrandizement or the overthrow of a brother nation. It was common, in early times, for a battle or skirmish to last all day, with great display of daring and horsemanship with scarcely more killed and wounded than may be carried from the field during a university game of football.”

Recognition. What makes honor such an effective moral system for shaping behavior is the fact that both failures and successes in living the code bring public consequences — shame for the former and praise for the latter. Young men want to be recognized, and they crave the admiration found in a job well done. The fact that a Sioux boy was kept “ever before the public eye, from his birth onward” thus inspired him to perform well in his manly pursuits:

“His entrance into the world, especially in the case of the first-born, was often publicly announced by the herald, accompanied by a distribution of presents to the old and needy. The same thing occurred when he took his first step, when his ears were pierced, and when he shot his first game, so that his childish exploits and progress were known to the whole clan as to a larger family, and he grew into manhood with the saving sense of a reputation to sustain. The youth was encouraged to enlist early in the public service, and to develop a wholesome ambition for the honors of a leader and feast maker, which can never be his unless he is truthful and generous, as well as brave, and ever mindful of his personal chastity and honor.”

Skin in the game. Manly honor must be earned, and it can only be earned by those with skin in the game — those who take on risk to gain status. The Sioux offered warriors different degrees of honors for their valiant deeds — the highest being the eagle feather. While other feathers could be worn as decorative ornaments, eagle feathers could not be donned for style; the privilege of wearing these status markers went only to those who had performed deeds on the battlefield that others had clearly witnessed, and which were affirmed by the grand council of war chiefs. No man could claim he did something, or was entitled to any honor, without proof, and no man could “wear the honorable insignia of another.” Under this system, “No favoritism is possible and the highest degrees are conferred only upon men who have been tried again and again by every conceivable ordeal.”

The fact that honor goes only to those with skin the game was a lesson Ohiyesa learned well as a boy, when he asked his uncle for the claws of a bear he had hunted and killed:

“We dragged the huge carcass within our lodge. ‘O, what nice claws he has, uncle!’ I exclaimed eagerly. ‘Can I have them for my necklace?’

‘It is only the old medicine men who wear them regularly. The son of a great warrior who has killed a grizzly may wear them upon a public occasion,’ he explained.

‘And you are just like my father and are considered the best hunter among the Santees and Sissetons. You have killed many grizzlies so that no one can object to my bear’s-claws necklace,’ I said appealingly.

White Footprint smiled. ‘My boy, you shall have them,’ he said, ‘but it is always better to earn them yourself.’

Finding Manhood in Solitude

As Ohiyesa approached the age of 16, he had participated in all of his tribe’s activities “except that of war, and was nearly old enough to be initiated into the ritual of the war-path.” To prepare himself to finally attain the rank of warrior, Ohiyesa did what all the young men were encouraged to do: take to the woods alone. In solitude, the man-in-the-making contemplated the spirit of nature, invoked the blessing of the Great Mystery, and sought to let the boyhood lessons he’d received in virtue and honor sink deep into his bones.

During this time, Ohiyesa’s closest companions were his horse and dog and his “people saw very little of [him] during the day”:

“for in solitude I found the strength I needed. I groped about in the wilderness, and determined to assume my position as a man. My boyish ways were departing, and a sullen dignity and composure was taking their place. The thought of love did not hinder my ambitions. I had a vague dream of some day courting a pretty maiden, after I had made my reputation, and won the eagle feathers…

In this wild, rolling country I rapidly matured, and laid, as I supposed, the foundations of my life career, never dreaming of anything beyond this manful and honest, unhampered existence.”

From Deep Woods to Civilization

“Such are the beliefs in which I was reared — the secret ideals which have nourished in the American Indian a unique character among the peoples of the earth. Its simplicity, its reverence, its bravery and uprightness must be left to make their own appeal to the American of today, who is the inheritor of our homes, our names, and our traditions. Since there is nothing left us but remembrance, at least let that remembrance be just!” –CAE

Though Ohiyesa looked forward to becoming a warrior, and avenging the death of his father, the well-laid plans of his youth, and the entire life he had known for a decade and a half, were soon turned upside down.

In 1872, his father — alive and well — wandered back into his tribe’s camp. Many Lightnings had not been killed after all, but rather forced to flee to the Dakota Territory, where he had converted to Christianity, changed his name to Jacob Eastman, and established a homestead. Eastman had to come to believe that his fellow Indians needed to adapt to the fast-encroaching ways of civilization, and thus strongly desired that his son become educated and learn the culture of the white man.

As Eastman unfolded to his son the wondrous inventions of civilization and the tenets of his new faith, Ohiyesa was filled with both “admiration and indignation” and had to fight down a voice within him which cried, “A false life! A treacherous life!” Yet from a mixture of curiosity and filial obedience, he agreed to follow his father away from the Sioux village, away from the open plains and sky, away from the only life he had ever known, and onto a mysterious and wholly new path.

In the years to come, the young man experienced a bewildering clash of cultures. He cut his hair and changed his clothes. He converted to Christianity and changed his name for yet the third time to Charles Alexander Eastman. He learned to live indoors more often than out, and to spend much of that time within the four-walls of a classroom. Eastman’s education transformed from sitting at his elders’ knees, and learning the signs of nature and the symbols of his tribe, to sitting at a desk and learning the signs of arithmetic and the symbols of the English alphabet. Yet Eastman’s curiosity and intelligence won him success in this new and foreign endeavor, and after attending a series of preparatory schools, he earned his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and graduated from the medical school at Boston College — becoming one of the first American Indians certified as a European-style doctor.

Eastman went on to serve as a government-appointed physician at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (he tended to victims of the Wounded Knee massacre while there) and a tireless spokesman and advocate for the rights and autonomy of his people.

He also became a renowned author, writing many books about the culture of Plains Indians before the coming of the white man. Eastman was aggravated and dismayed that many of his contemporaries’ stereotypes of Indians — that his people were barbarous, drunken, dishonest, and immoral — were rooted in behaviors that had arisen after, and as a consequence of, the arrival of European settlers. He wished to educate the American people about Indian life as he had known it — the true ideals and ways of the Sioux — as he felt that the contact between the cultures needn’t be a one-way street; that whites had as much to learn from the native peoples as the natives had to learn from whites.

Eastman not only shared this message in his books and his lectures, but sought to put it into practice. He played an integral role in helping to develop and found Indian divisions of the YMCA, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Camp Fire Girls, as well as the summer camps of these organizations. He earnestly desired for Indian and non-Indian youth alike to experience the satisfaction of learning the art of woodcraft and the joy of immersing themselves in the spiritual power of nature — to receive, at least in part, the kind of “open-air education” he had gotten as a boy.

The fact that Eastman had grown up a Sioux, and then gone on to earn advanced degrees, made him a unique figure, and uniquely suited to acting as a bridge between the country’s native peoples and its new arrivals. He found much disheartening about white civilization, but much that was worthy as well, and he tried to wed the best of both of his worlds together. From this vantage point, he was able to powerfully convey the philosophy and traditions of the Sioux in a way in which non-Indians could readily feel their own lack of those ideals, and how their adaption into modern culture could greatly enhance their lives.

His words continue to have this power today. As such, in the coming weeks we’ll offer a series of edited collections of Eastman’s wisdom on three elements of American Indian wisdom that each deserve their own article. Here’s what’s coming up:

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Sources and Further Reading:

Indian Boyhood

The Soul of the Indian

The Indian Today

From the Deep Woods to Civilization

Indian Scout Talks