08/09/2023
The Long Road:
Men are invisible until they become successful and so the path to success is a lonely one, filled with setbacks and suffering he learns to thrive alone.
This is why when a man finally arrives, and the world suddenly decides it wants to know him, because now and only now does he merit consideration - you can understand why he’d be cynical. And he’s right to be. Because the only people that can ever truly mean something to a man are the ones who will stick by him when he has nothing, not the ones who appeared when he became something. For most men like him that means a fairly solitary life, but he’s comfortable with that. You never wanted him, and now he doesn’t need you - he learned to thrive alone. When he needed you, you didn’t want him, but now you want him, he doesn’t need you.
Some of you reading this will think I’m projecting or speaking for myself, but I’m not. I’m speaking for all the silent unheard men who had to struggle alone for years on end in the rain and in the heat, in the dark and in the cold, on gloomy days and on stressful ones, without encouragement, recognition or even as much as a compliment - the men who were ignored, passed over, berated and neglected but soldiered on anyway in their refusal to let a cold and unforgiving world that pretends to be more loving than it is beat them down, but instead cultivated an enduring spirit of good humour and aspiration that knows better than to expect something for nothing from anyone - care and compassion especially.
So forgive those self-made successful men if they seem a little detached, a little ruthless, a little neglectful - but you haven’t made the journey they’ve made, and so suddenly showering them with the care and concern they were always denied because you finally see them as people isn’t going to make them forget. They’ve been conditioned not to need you, and so your noisy compassion is a luxury at best, at worst, an irritation.
Never let it be said then that a man is not a success object, because that’s all he is.