Talking points: mythology, masculinity, trauma

Myth isn’t just old story. It’s also a powerful way to frame the workings of the world, the mind, and everything in between. The story of Perseus is just one example of this, with insights on boyhood vs manhood, facing risk, and much more. Dig in.

(00:00:00) – Intro and the first lesson of the Perseus’ story

(00:06:09) – The second lesson

(00:09:36) – Lessons behind Perseus and Medusa

(00:16:09) – How the role of a mother and the initiation into manhood interact

Transcript

How do you become a man and how do you know when you’ve become one? This is one of the biggest things that I hear from men all the time. I’m 55 and I still feel like a kid, I still feel like a young man, I don’t know if I ever really crossed the threshold. Well, today we’re going to be talking about how do you actually step from boyhood into manhood and I’m not going to be giving you my personal advice or what I think you should do.

I’m actually going to be going through three lessons from the story of Perseus from one of the, I mean, I don’t know if there’s a most important character by any means necessary, but in terms of masculine development, in terms of stories that embody development from boyhood into manhood, Perseus certainly and his story and his life as a fictional character is one of the most important because there’s something unique about him, which is that he grew up without a father present in his life. And this is the case for a lot of you watching this. Now, maybe you had a father in your life.

There’s still going to be some very important lessons going to lay out in here. But the story of Perseus is certainly one that is helpful for the coming of age, the stepping into manhood for a young man or for a man who especially did not have a father in his life. So let’s just get straight into it.

Perseus’s mother was sequestered away by her father, by Perseus’s grandfather, because Perseus’s grandfather was given a kind of fortune of the future that told him that his grandson would kill him. And so he decided, the king decided that he would lock his daughter away where no man could get her. But that doesn’t mean that no god could get her.

So Zeus found her and her name is Danaeus and Zeus found her and love this idea, you know, there’s something about the sort of sequestered away virgin that shouldn’t be touched, that no man can have access to, that is sort of very appealing, especially to the gods. And so Zeus swoops down and goes to where no man can go. And he impregnates Danaeus and that creates Perseus.

And through a whole series of events, obviously, Danaeus’s father, Perseus’s grandfather, finds out that Perseus, you know, is in his mom’s belly and he schemes a way to get rid of Danaeus, to kill her essentially, to kill his own daughter, to try and sort of save his own life, which, spoiler alert, doesn’t happen through a series of events. I won’t give away what happens. But, you know, when you test fate, obviously you can’t really outsmart fate.

That’s sort of the thing, you know, that is repeated over and over again within myth. But he basically locks her in the trunk, not him personally, he gets somebody else to lock her in a trunk and basically throw her in the ocean. And anyway, she survives, Perseus is born and he is raised by a man named Dictys.

So Danaeus and Perseus, Perseus and his mother, end up sort of wandering through. There’s some gaps in the story and they come across a man named Dictys who is an older man that takes him under his ward. So first lesson here, OK, first lesson here, Perseus is born into masculine betrayal.

Perseus is born into masculine betrayal. He’s born into automatic masculine pain. His grandfather betrays him and tries to murder him.

His own real father, Zeus, doesn’t really have a part in his life. Even though his mother tells him who his father is, he obviously doesn’t believe that the god of all gods is his dad. I mean, that’s not something that most kids are going to believe.

So he’s born into a kind of masculine pain already. There’s betrayal that has happened already. And this is the case for many men.

Maybe your father was angry. Maybe he was distant. Maybe he had his own trauma and abuse from his own family system and structure that he never dealt with.

But most men are born into some type of masculine pain. And so I want you to think about what’s the masculine pain or what’s the pain generationally that is being passed down into me or that was passed down into me. There’s a great quote that I put in my book, Men’s Work, which if you haven’t grabbed a copy, you should definitely grab one.

It’s one of the most recommended books by men in the personal development space. But in the book, I put a quote from Nietzsche where he said, what is hidden in the father is revealed in the son. What is hidden in the father is revealed in the son.

There’s many different layers to that quote. And one of the layers is that the hidden pain that the father does not deal with is revealed in the son. Right.

So if your father never dealt with his own anger, very likely that that’s revealed in you. His short temper is yours to contend with. Or maybe his anger was completely hidden and he had no spine and he was sort of weak and meek.

And, you know, he let people walk all over him. Well, that will be revealed in you for you to contend with. And so the first lesson here of Perseus’ story, even before he’s born, is that he is going to have to contend with the generational pain of the men that have come before him, with the betrayal of the men that have been in his life.

And he’s going to have to choose whether he walks a similar path of betrayal, of not living with certain values, or whether he is going to take a different path of righteousness and nobility and values and honor and self-respect and, you know, familiar respect, etc. So contend with the masculine pain that you’ve been given. Contend with the pain that is in the male lineage of your life.

The next piece, and I’m going to skip around here through Perseus’ story, but the next big piece is that there is a king that is trying to court Perseus’ mother because Perseus’ mother is not with Dictys. They’re not together. Dictys is just a guy that they happen to live with.

And, you know, Dictys supports Perseus, which is very important. There’s a lesson in there that you should learn from the men who are just and good, who are good and just to you and your kin for no good reason. Right? The coaches in your life, the teachers in your life, the men in your life that are good to you and your family, you should learn valuable lessons from them.

They’re usually indirect, but do not feel the need to become them. This is very important. Perseus does not become like Dictys.

He takes some of the traits from Dictys, but he does not embody that man. And this is very common for a lot of men when their father figure is not present in their life, the father figure that is present in their life, a stepdad, a coach, etc., they glom on to that individual’s identity because of the vacancy of their own father, whether their father is just sort of absent minded. He’s not emotionally connected.

He’s not very loving. Or maybe he’s just gone altogether. He’s not present in any way, shape or form. Or their father is very violent or whatever. It’s very common for a young man who doesn’t have a proper father figure in his life to consolidate his identity too much around the man that is good to him. And that can be sort of pervasive and affect his life.

So learn from the men who are good and just to you and your kin, you and your family. But do not strive to just solely become like them. They are a part of your becoming, a part of your identity creation.

So look back at your past and kind of get a sense of who influenced me, who were men that were in my life growing up that had a positive influence on my life. Likely there is something very important that you need to have learned from them, that you need to discard from them in order to step more fully into your own sense of manhood. So there’s a king pursuing Perseus’s mother.

And this king only seems to come around when Dictys is not around. And Perseus is still a teenager. And for whatever reason, whether Perseus knows it or not, he is always interfering with this king’s ability to mack on his mom.

He’s like cock blocking the king in a big way. And so what ends up happening is that the king devises a plan to get Perseus away from his mother because Perseus loves sports and running. And, you know, he’s very athletic.

And so the king holds these games. And the intention of the game is to draw Perseus out and sort of trap him or to sort of draw him out and then go and pursue and court his mother while he’s busy. Perseus partakes in the games and after the games gets very drunk, the king gets him very, very drunk and through a series of events challenges Perseus to go and claim the head of Medusa.

Now, there’s something very important about this because, and there’s going to be two main lessons here that I’m going to close off with for this that I think are very important in terms of becoming your own man, stepping into manhood, stepping into mature masculinity and crossing the threshold between boyhood and manhood and having a more definite certainty that you have crossed into that territory. So a couple of things that are very important. Number one, the king not only tricks Perseus into claiming the head of Medusa, but Perseus doesn’t know what he’s signed up for.

He doesn’t know who or what Medusa is. He doesn’t know how dangerous that she is. He has simply heeded the call to an adventure that is incredibly risky.

And here’s the really important part. If he knew the risk, he likely wouldn’t have taken it. So this is the kind of naivete of a young man’s spirit, right? Of an adolescent masculinity.

Adolescent masculinity has a kind of bravado and boldness and naivete that they would take on something without even saying. Because in the story, Perseus is very cocky, right? He’s like, any challenge you give me, you put it before me and I’ll basically make it happen. And the king thinks about it for a moment and then obviously says, go and claim the head of Medusa.

And Perseus says, done. I have no idea what he signed up for. So here’s the first lesson, and I’m going to give you the second one, which is also very important.

The first lesson is use the trials that other men set before you as stepping stones to sharpen your own manhood and masculinity. Use the trials that other men set before you as a call to adventure, right? An initiation. And this is an initiation call, right? The very first step of any boy, any young man’s journey into adult manhood, into mature masculinity or mature manhood.

The very first step is a call to an initiation, a call to the unknown, a call into a territory and a terrain that he knows nothing about. And it’s usually terrifying and frightening. Or, you know, the young man is very sort of naive and has no idea what he’s setting himself up for.

But it’s oftentimes the trials that other men put before us. And that might be a business mentor. That might be a professor at a university.

It might even be a trial from a stepfather, you know, challenging you. I remember when I was a young man, I just graduated high school. And this is a good example of this.

I had no trajectory in life whatsoever. I had no clear path for myself whatsoever. I was completely lost. I was shit academically. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And my stepdad put a trial in front of me and basically said, you know, if you can’t find a job anywhere else, I will get you work.

With the caveat and the big asterisk, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. He said, I’ll get you a job in construction. Now, what I didn’t know was that that would take me into some of the hardest laboring jobs that I could possibly acquire.

So my very first few weeks were night shifts from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. in central Alberta. And it was the middle of February and it was minus 45 outside. And that set me on a path of really questioning.

So here was my stepdad, obviously being supportive, but really putting a trial before me. Right. And that trial was something that was brutal and hard and made me question what I was doing with my life.

I don’t think he meant any of those things. I think he was just like, I’m going to get you a job and it’s going to be a bit of a hopefully it’s going to be a bit of a wake up call. So look at the trials that other men are putting before you.

Oftentimes there are grains of breadcrumbs. There are sort of breadcrumbs left along the way that other men are inviting you into that are meant to challenge you and push you and sharpen your edge, whether you know it or not. And so sometimes what you have to do is you have to lean in to the invitations that other men are putting before you that feel confronting and frightening.

They might even be disguised as opportunities, right? Like this challenge that the king puts before Perseus, it seems like an opportunity for him. He’s like, I’m going to prove myself. Here we go.

So there might even be an element of that, that there’s a challenge in your life right now that is meant to push you beyond the boundaries and the limits of how you see yourself as a man currently. OK, this is the last piece I’m going to give you. And then we’re to wrap up.

The last piece is that Perseus gets home to his mother and he tells his mother what has transpired. And he does it in an inadvertent way. He kind of says, you know, mom, what’s like, do you know what Medusa is? And she says, yeah, I know who Medusa is.

And he’s like, OK, well, who’s a Medusa? What’s a Medusa? And she explains what Medusa is and everything that’s involved in it and kind of lays out the challenge, right? She knows about the journey that could lie ahead, right? The danger that could lie ahead. And he says, oh, OK. And she says, why do you ask? And he says, because I’m going to go and take the head of Medusa.

And she, as any good mother would, knowing the danger and knowing that the likelihood of her son dying is astronomically high, she loses her mind. And she basically begs and pleads Perseus not to go. And she tries to convince Dictys to talk to him, to convince him not to go.

And she considers going to speak to the king, all those types of things. And Perseus stays sound and resolute in his decision to heed the call. Into this initiation journey that he’s about to embark on.

And he stays true to what he what he knows he needs to do in order to become his own man. And that is a very important part. In Iron John, Robert Bly talks about the boy stealing the key from under his mother’s pillow.

The main crux of this and the whole point of that is that in order to let out the wild man, you have to go steal the key from under your mother’s pillow. So the point here, the last and final lesson, and especially for those of you that grew up in a household with just your mom, right, doesn’t mean that she was a bad mom. She was probably exceptional.

Maybe she was great. There are lots and lots of phenomenal single mothers out there. And it’s a question of a woman cannot teach a boy how to become a man.

There are certain adventures, risks, journeys, challenges, trials that you actually need to go through on your own in order to internally understand that you’ve stepped into that place and that terrain of manhood, mature manhood and masculinity. So Perseus refuses to listen to his mom and decides that he’s going to go on his journey anyway. And in doing so, what he’s really doing is claiming his own sense of inner authority.

In doing so, he’s claiming his own sense of authority. He’s saying, my life is mine. My life is mine to decide.

My life is mine to direct. And I am going to create separation between myself and you. Now, this is very important because especially for a lot of men, they don’t create psychological separation between themselves and their mother.

Maybe that happens because their relationship is not good, which doesn’t necessarily create psychological separation. It might just be physical separation of, I’m not going to talk to you, mom. And so you might not talk to your mother.

But a lot of men don’t create psychological separation from their mother. And that psychological separation happens when you as a man make a decision to embark on something that is specifically for you to do that your mother likely disapproves of. You know, I’ve had clients that are like, you know, they’re very successful in their career, but they take up a DJing career.

Or they’re very successful in their career in real estate, but they, you know, on the side, they decide to like paint or race cars, you know, or do really dangerous rock climbing, right? Like free soloing rock climbing. And their mothers, you know, who are obviously worried for them and nurturing and always going to be that mom, protest. They protest against that.

And it’s the job of you as a son to not ignore the protest, right, to be compassionate of the protest, but to do what you know you need to do as a man regardless of the protesting. And that is a claiming of a part, taking a step more closely into or more deeply into your own manhood and your own masculine core. So leave your thoughts below.

Share your thoughts. I’d love to hear what you took away from this, how you’re going to integrate this into your own life. And what I would really encourage you to do is think about where in your life have these events taken place? And if not, what do you need to do now in order to take action on one of these events? Is there a trial being placed in front of you by a man in your life? Do you need to create psychological separation from your mother because there’s still too much closeness and enmeshment between the two of you? So start to look at which one of these are you needing to embrace and to embark on in order to take the next step in your own masculine maturity.

See you next time.