While I Am Not Afraid

While I Am Not Afraid

The book, While I Am Not Afraid, Secrets of a Man’s Heart, is a journey that the author took on his path to self -discovery. The path or the “Calling” to this epiphany is something that manifest itself in different ways, points, places and spaces in ones life, some come quickly, some come slowly, but it is destined to materialize if we work for it.

I was able to identify throughout the book with some of the challenges that the author faced, when he stated that “I’d had my own frustrations to deal with…There were times I felt trapped, lacking the courage and conviction to do the work I wanted to do, and times I felt spineless and castrated.” I have experienced this feeling and still do, which is one of my motivations for finishing up my degree, but the feeling of being engulfed in someone else’s drama of life and not being able to for fill my own dreams and pursuits; couple that with the feeling of reaching the glass ceiling at my job, not able to go any higher, and not having the confidence to strike out on my own or seriously look elsewhere and triple that with a boss that seemingly wants to take away my manhood, yes, it has been a very frustrating existence. I am not certain whether it was the intent of the author or professor to have one look within oneself as certain passages and statements reflected parts of my life at various points, not taking any particular chronological order, like when he stated “ I found myself threatened with unemployment, desperate with anxiety about money, and searching for the next job.” Well these feelings of insecurity came up for me when I was dating a young lady who was an investment banker; she had the house on the hill, the car, and seemingly was love with me. Yet, having these stereotypical ideations of manhood, I was to prideful to move in with her, felt threatened when she asked me to quit my job, and desperate to find a way to compete or position myself to take care of both her and my son. Tremendous anxiety I was experiencing and only now when I write this do I see the insanity of my thinking. I think of the way I raised and that the man should be the provider, not so much that I had to be the sole provider but definitely be able keep her in the lifestyle that she was accustom too, as the author refers to being “a real gentleman, almost a dying breed” especially one with “proper breeding” was/is how I looked at myself. Needless to say that the relationship did not last and again my feelings of hopelessness and despair surfaced.

What I realized, like the author was that the ease and comfort that I was seeking is something that comes from within, “The Calling”, learning to listen to that inner voice, and so this journey that the author took through the New Warriors retreats, would parallel my journey through a life of substance abuse as a young person. The uncovering, discovering and discarding of the true self, that revelation that to surrender is to win, which is not something that I was said from the neighborhood that I grew up in, to surrender means that you lose, that you are a punk, a sissy, so that in itself became a cornerstone in my recovery. Realizing that as long as resisted then whatever I was fighting would persist. Pride and ego are foolish things to hold on to when ones life is at stake, so it