Semper Virilis

Your wife and children live on . . .

Somehow, they get through the grief of your passing.

In time, without intending to, your wife catches the eye of another man.

Whether you think he suits her nor not . . .

Whatever his similarity or differences with you . . .

Whatever his worthiness . . .

He resolves to love her.

The thought of becoming the man she most esteems . . .

Perhaps even the man she marries . . . it fills and frames his every waking thought.

He, like most men, finds himself suddenly capable of unprecedented feats of service, energy, courage, charm, and wit.

As he looks at himself in the mirror, he understands . . .

“This is the woman who brings out the best in me… the one who frees me to be my true, noble self.”

The the loss of you blew a hole through her life, your wife feels a growing appreciation for this male help, this attention . . .

She is grateful for this validation of her appeal . . .

Your loss has made her quietly desperate for practical help and support.

This man is able and utterly willing to ceaselessly, recklessly pour: he gives, and gives, and gives again:

He fixed the rotted fence you left unpainted one season too long . . .

He repaired the gutters you left stuffed with leaves until the weight pulled it out at the nails . . .

He drywalled the disregarded hole from the pellet gun your son fired in the house . . .

In short, he does the work you were no longer inspired to do . . . the work you had no energy to do.

He picks up the thread of wonder that had unraveled for you years ago.

Even he is amazed at his plentitude: the more he gives, the more he WANTS to give . . .

He finds himself intoxicated by the wild, self-feeding illogic of male service.

And yet, this woman, the wife you left behind is the same: the catalyst is unchanged . . .

She is no different.

She is for him as she was for you: beautiful yet, of course, imperfect . . .

Loving, yet of course, impatient, and prone to anger…

All her maddening quirks and appalling blind spots are still there, exactly as they were before, for you.

The difference only is in his eyes.

For, unlike you, he’s not yet gone numb to the wonder.

In time, his reckless giving will likely fade.

Soon, he too will walk past the fence, the gutters, and the drywall, oblivious and morose . . .

The deadly sheen of normalcy blinding him, too, to the beauty of the life his former ardor had brought him.

—-

Of all the billions of species you could have been . . .

Of all the invertebrate, brainless, worm-bodied existences you could have known . . .

You were born a human being: the most advanced species in the known world.

Of all the places you could have been born . . .

Of all the squalid shanty towns and excrement-soaked favelas . . .

You were born into a country of opportunity.

Of all the sad couplings you could have known . . .

Of all the loveless marriages-of-convenience you could have been saddled with . . .

You married a woman who loved you, and who you loved in return.

Your life, in short, is a work of staggering magic.

And yet, despite all this . . .

Despite the improbability . . .

It STILL becomes lost on you.

We slowly become numb to the wonder . . .

THAT is the peculiar curse.

The GREATEST challenge to us as men is to relentlessly RE-SENSITIZE ourselves to the wonder and magic of our own lives.

To see, every day, that your woman, your children, and your work are incalculable gifts . . .

To scrape the slow-settling pond scum from your eyes that blurs your vision . . .

To shock yourself back into life.

—-

Lash yourself to the wonder.

By whatever shifts of perspective is required . . .

By whatever resetting climbs . . .

Rip away the blind ingratitude, the appalling forgetting from your life.

Lift your eyes Heaven-word and see, as for the first time, your the angelic beauty of your wife . .

See, again, how she loves you.

Stagger, and fall your knee at the gift of her heart, her body, her time, her faith, her years and the divine nurturing transformation she provides for you.

Lift your eyes and see, as if it were for the first time, your children . . .

See how they love you, and crave your adulation and your adventure.

See your life and all its wonder with the eyes of the other man.