Don’t Get Good at the Wrong Things

Men are addicted to being slaves.

I’ve written about this before. Many times in fact. But I just saw one of the most pathetic videos I’ve ever seen come across my feed. Watch this.

Truly pathetic. Imagine paying someone to tell you how to be a man.

It’s pure slavery. And I’m not talking about oppression. I mean they are literally addicted to the sensation of being beneath something. They crave the “grind.” The struggle. The feeling of not having earned rest yet. As if life hasn't really begun. Like they're in the part of the story where they're still weak, fumbling their lines, waiting for the transformation.

And they really think this will lead them to who they think they should be.

They are masochists who love the punishment. They love the voices online, in their heads, on podcasts, telling them they aren’t enough. That they need to wake up earlier. Work harder. Get jacked. Level up. Because right now, as they are, they’re not worthy.

That belief is the foundation of modern masculinity. It masquerades as ambition when really it’s just insecurity repackaged as “discipline. It is a belief system built around the idea that the real you must be rejected, reformed, and eventually replaced.

This need to hustle and prove and build and earn, goes against everything I believe in. You already are who you need to be. You're not some shapeless piece of clay. You're not a character you get to rewrite. You’re a continuation of blood, memory, instinct, and experience. You are everything that came before you. No guru can change that. No gym can sculpt over it. No system can overwrite it. And that’s not a bad thing.

Men are drawn to the illusion of transformation because it feels noble. The idea that with enough discipline, they can become someone better. That there’s a higher self waiting on the other side of pain. But that’s just not how life works. That way of thinking implies there’s something wrong with your essence. That the real you isn’t enough. When in reality, there’s nothing you need to become. There’s only remembering who you already are. There’s only getting out of the way of your own nature.

And if that’s uncomfortable for you to do, it’s probably because you’ve forgotten what that nature feels like.

What’s funny is that the very advice men mock when it’s given to women is far closer to the truth. The self-acceptance. The “you are enough” slogans. The insistence that your worth isn’t conditional. Men laugh at that because it sounds weak. But it’s actually the only path that leads anywhere real. The masculine script, with all its talk of conquest and transformation, is ultimately, hollow. It’s pure avoidance. Avoidance of the present moment. Avoidance of emotional honesty. Avoidance of self.

Life isn’t lived through willpower. It isn’t lived through discipline or forcing yourself to do things you hate. It’s lived through spirit. Through the parts of you that can’t be measured or gamified. Spirit is the only thing you’re born with, and the only thing you leave with.

This is why so many men feel off. Bitter. Misaligned. They’ve been taught to live in third person. To watch themselves instead of being themselves. They seek identity in aesthetics and routines, hoping that somewhere in the repetition, they'll become real. They are stuck trying to look like the man they think they should be, instead of being the man they already are.

It’s not sustainable. Ignore your nature long enough and you’ll go hollow. You’ll start resenting everything and everyone because deep down, you know you’re not being yourself. You’ve spent so long constructing a role, you don’t remember how to take it off.

Don’t get good at the wrong things. Don’t climb a ladder only to find it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Achieving everything you thought mattered and realizing none of it touches your heart. That’s how you end up killing yourself at 45.

The best part about being a man is that you’re always one move away from being whole again. There’s no timeline. No schedule. You don’t need a coach or a course. You just need to stop pretending you’re broken. Stop acting like you need fixing.

The game you win is the one you don’t play to win. The one you enter because it feels right. That’s where your life bends toward something worth having. There’s no discipline needed there, you just follow what’s already in you.

Force will always fail. You might achieve something through it, but you’ll lose everything that matters in the process. Just live within the grain of who you are.

Because being a man isn’t something you need to earn, it’s something you already are.

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