So far in my posts, I have talked of the Masculine and Feminine duality within all men, be it hidden or overt. I have touched on the things that we all perceive of as masculine but concentrated on how so many men deny their feminine aspects.
    For those of you "macho" men brave enough to read and try and process the message I have been giving, I am sure you are thinking, who is this guy? He is sure in touch with his feminine side but what about his masculine? What makes him an authority on this subject?
    Well, in answer to that, I am not an authority, only a guy who has learned certain lessons about himself through the experiences he has been through. I guess it is time to cut through the pretty words and get to the point.
    As I have said on many occasions, I am quite capable of crying at the end of Ole Yeller (if any of you remember that movie) or during the scene in I am Legend with Will Smith and his dog (you know the scene if you have seen the movie), but I am also capable of standing toe to toe with any of you tough guys in a boxing ring, no holds barred.
    Obviously, like all of us who have evolved as we have matured, I was not always as far on the path to enlightenment  as I am now (I still have leagues to go too). I grew up in a public school system and a relatively low rent district; a small boy with a strange name who did well in school. It was a perfect recipe for geekhood and I will freely admit that was what I was...a comic loving geek. Every new school I went to, I was a target for bullies.

    That never lasted long though...

    An older brother of mine told me that most bullies were actually cowards with inferiority complexes and that one must stand up to them. Coached in wrestling and other martial techniques at an early age, including judo and later some boxing and a smattering of aikido, I steeled my nerve and followed my sibling and mentor's advice. He also taught me that it was all physics and how to use leverage. That it wasn't all about size and strength or even speed, it was about intelligence and wisdom as well.
    It wasn't long before I began to gain the respect of my peers and even though I didn't always win my battles, I gained a reputation for being a geek who could use his fists (and other parts of his body as well). I ended up moving in my senior years of public school and having to go through the whole process of physically earning respect all over again, and then in High School as well.
    I was proud of my martial skills and was told once by an expert in multiple martial arts that what made me a dangerous opponent was the smattering of teachings I had turned into my own style. He explained that someone who concentrated on only one style of fighting often only developed techniques for countering that particular style while, in my case, I had a variety of attacks from various styles to draw upon.
    By the end of Grade 9, there wasn't many people who still tried to pick on me but I had found a new cause by then. I began standing up for the geeks and freaks that wouldn't stand up for themselves and while that was something that needed to be done, I realized it wasn't as altruistic as I painted it to be to myself and others. To my later shame, , I had developed a liking for fisticuffs and had chosen to get in altercations the way I did to justify it.
    Some of this carried on into my early pub crawling years and while I still never picked a fight, I was more than willing to throw down the gauntlet to anyone who threatened others. After losing a tooth but not the fight a second time (a difference that no longer matters but did at the time), I began to realize that it was as much the adrenalin rush as the sense of righteousness driving me. I began to regret the way I had been and it wasn't until years later that I was able to look at this troubled time in a positive light as a crucible in which my later character began to be forged.
    By the time, I entered into the security industry years later and once again found myself occasionally involved in physical encounters, I had matured to the point where my pugilistic skills were tempered with common sense and confidence knowing that while I would try and deter any violence first, that if it came down to it, I could still protect myself, and more importantly, others, whose welfare I was responsible for. What was most vital about the lessons I had learned though, was that, those physical skills were for a last resort only.
    So, I do understand the urges within us fueled by our testosterone and instincts developed during our days millions of years ago as hunter/gatherers and then later as civilization emerged, as protectors of our clan and culture. I do understand the rush of adrenalin and how it can be like a drug. The desire and drive to excel with athletic prowess is in most of us men but it is the reasons we use it that make us true men. It is the Whole Man who can divert those urges to protect those and that which we love and not to let those violent tendencies instead hurt those and that which we love. It is the Warrior of the Heart that uses these weapons for the greater good, not the Soldier of the Mind that rationalized these tendencies and justifies conflict without compassion and it is the Warrior of the Heart that supercedes the primitive beast that dwells within all men.

    To be a Whole Man, we must first accept all the factors that make up who we are; physically, emotionally and mentally. There is an over-riding factor that affects all those attributes, two actually; genetics and environment. Both of those factors can shape us into who we are and both of those factors can be curtailed consciously to affect our attitudes and behaviour. In the end, however, by trying to deny these things, we do not allow ourselves to achieve our true potential. We must accept both the hereditary and experiential components that make us who we are. That is not to say that we should let our genetic pre-dispositions and the events of our past be excuses for poor behaviour though. The negative aspects should be used as warnings and signposts on how to better act and react to situations in the future.
   
    These pre-dispositions are fuel for another blog in the future however.

    At this time, what I want to talk about is those genetic components within us that form the balance of our emotional make up; the X and the Y chromosomes.
    This goes back again to the Real Man versus the Whole Man. A Real Man will often try to deny the existence of the X chromosome. He will grasp onto and ride the wild stallion that is his testosterone and try and quell the other powerful hormone that still resides within him. In so doing, he creates an imbalance inside. Although estrogen (that other hormone) may live in lesser levels within him, it still has a home there. When it's existence is ignored, the emotional imbalance can result in pent up frustration and anger within a man and often reveal itself in the form of physical rage and violence. There is the capability of violence in a man for a reason, the protection of those he loves from other violent forces and the survival of oneself so that he can continue to protect those he loves. When that potential for violence is released, it should always be for those two reasons and none other.
    The existence of estrogen within a man is there: because we are born of Man...and Woman, and so must both exist within us; and because we need to accept and embrace the softer emotions we are capable of so that the harder ones born of testosterone do not destroy us or those we love when it is not needed for those same reasons.
    Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a television show on called Alien Nation. Briefly, it was about an alien slave race that had overthrown the yokes of their masters and crash-landed in California where, after a period of time, they were accepted (somewhat) and assimilated into human cultures. Many of them took on Earth names and occupations. The show was mainly about two police officers, one human, one alien, and their interaction with each other and their coming to understand each others' cultures and ways over time.
    It was a fun show and did not dwell deeply on the philosophical differences between the two peoples but it did touch on them on a weekly basis. One episode stands out starkly in my memories. George, the alien cop, had a wife who was pregnant. It turned out that, in his species, during the second trimester of pregnancy that it was the male's turn to carry the baby inside himself for a time. This led, of course, to some rather comical scenes where George demonstrated the quirks and set backs of being pregnant, including back pain, and most importantly, uncontrolled emotional outbursts caused by the imbalance of hormones that can occur at this time.
    It was this situation, after one such sudden incident in which George inexplicably bursts into tears, that revealed to me a profound revelation about life. His detective partner, Matthew, becomes increasingly irritated with George's issues, and comments on it. Matthew's character has been the epitome of the "Real" man through out the series but has slowly been growing into more of a Whole Man during his association with George. His exasperation shows that he still has a ways to go though. It is George who then reveals the universal truth I had never really considered before then.
    He responds to Matthew's frustration with a short and simple comment, "I do not understand you human males. You are only part of what you can be. You make fun of me and get annoyed when I show my "feminine" side. Yet there is both within us, male and female, X and Y chromosomes. By denying that side of yourself, unlike the males of my species, you are denying a part of yourself. How can you life a half-life like that?"
    The words have been paraphrased, my memory is not that good, but their meaning has never been forgotten; a "Real" man embraces the Masculine within while denying the Feminine.
    A Whole Man embraces both, and in so doing, can become more.....