Chime:

Welcome back. Let’s see what we have for this episode. 

Here’s the drill:

What you live with, you learn; what you learn, you practice; what you practice, you do and what you do has consequences.

I knew a man who was mean

who might perhaps 

not have such been

I’m Kevin Alan McGill, Storyteller Poet

(Theme music)

I watched a little girl recently playing joyfully on the park swings.

“Fly little girl!” I thought. “and hold onto that joyous feeling. Take it forward forever, to guard against the future.”

Because I know the terrors headed her way.

Like the situation of a young woman in our neighbourhood. Eventually, she just gives in. Gets it over with. There is safety after it’s over, an uneasy calm before the next storm. Doesn’t really say yes. Growing up in a house of wrongful secrets, doesn’t figure that ‘no’ is an option. So, she gets used by guys in the neighbourhood, sometimes several at a time. She is the consequence.

Those neighbourhood guys? Lived, learned, practiced and did … mean. Do onto others as was done onto you … all the while looking over their psychological shoulders checking their manhood in the mirror of other guys looking over their shoulders in a house filled with mirrors of mean.

Checking out that manhood! It’s the preoccupation of men who do mean.

Mean come from ridicule, shame, threats, episodes of humiliation so intense, so embarrassing that they trigger intense denial. The wrongful experience is so painful that it becomes re-defined as righteous. Machismo becomes a substitute for manly. 

Mean comes from emasculation, and it becomes ingrained into society, a dominant narrative. 

Just trying to make a man out of him. It takes a mean man to survive in a mean world. Don’t get mad, get even. Suck it up, buttercup! Survival of the fittest.

Even when the emasculation is admitted, the most common solution is … more mean. 

You get castrated young and spend the rest of your life trying to find your balls. 

Mean feeds mean. Being bullied creates a desire to bully. The abused become abusers.

Some say that’s the natural, inevitable state of humankind. A cycle – rinse and repeat.

Explanation? or excuse?

But not all men do mean. Some men follow an alternate narrative, that manliness is about the strength to stand up to mean. A real man confronts fear, doesn’t let it control him, fights the bullies not joins them.

Will men save that little girl from those terrors to come? Treat her like a person about whom someone cared?

I hope so.

It depends though on men breaking the cycle, no longer supporting, condoning and excusing mean, redefining what it means to be a man.

Learn, practice and do better.

(Chime)

Okay so, such are the words of a Storyteller Poet who has learned the value of a poem, the worth of a story. 

And hey, if you can’t find the transcripts for these episodes on your podcast platform, just head to kevinalanmcgill.com and click on the podcast transcript category or scroll down through the posts.

Thank you for listening. Let’s get together again to explore more “what it is”.

(Theme Music)