I was talking to a friend of mine this week about masculinity. He’s studying for his doctrine and was discussing his views on the topic. As I sat there and listened to him speak he told me a story that really moved me. Like me he’s also a basketball coach. We met coaching against each other about eight years ago. I immediately liked him, which was rare for me at the time because I  didn’t particularly  like any coaches I coached against. (young coach didn’t know any better)

We both coached at junior colleges, which are two year schools. At these schools you get a lot of second chance and sometimes third chance kids. My six years there was a lot  like the  movie Coach Carter, minus some of the heavier stuff. A lot of the kids that came through my program were rough around the edges, and my job was to smooth those edges out so they didn’t cut anyone. My friend had the same type of teams, we are both intense, we’re both passionate, and more importantly we both understand that coaching is about more than just basketball.

So as I sat in his office he told me a story about a team meeting he had. He’s now coaching at a high school and wrote one question on the board for the topic of conversation, What is Masculinity? Now he coaches boys and every week or two they sit down as a team and discuss a wide range of topics. The fact that he got a group of boys to sit down every week and discuss something other than basketball and girls was impressive enough, but then he told me about a particular classroom session he had during the season that blew me away.

He has an eight year old son that he brings to all these classroom sessions. During one of them my friend started crying and apologized to his son in front of his team. Before I proceed any further think about this. Here’s a 6ft 5 260lb man crying in front of his team. He’s doing what men aren’t supposed to do, which is show emotion, and he’s doing it in front of a group of young men that look to him for leadership. That alone impressed me but then he told me what he apologized for.

He apologized to his son for how he taught him to ride a bike. His son kept falling and he kept telling his son to get up and do it again. He wouldn’t let his son quit no matter how hard he fell or cried. As he told me this story I saw the pain in his face. He said to me that his son will always remember that moment and there was nothing he could do to get it back.I started thinking about my son that is going to come into this world in less than two months and got chills. I was moved by his story to the point where if I was a little more evolved I would have shed a tear or twelve.

A mans life is already scripted before he comes out he womb. He must be strong, he must be the provider, he cannot show any signs of weakness, he has to take what he wants, and he must out compete any other men that get in the way of his conquest. It almost sounds like I’m talking about about the animal  kingdom. I was taught not to cry by life,not by my family. Do you remember Rambo breaking down and crying in the movies before he killed two hundred bad guys? How about John Wayne crying right after he shot someone? Boys don’t cry period, end of discussion.

Men stop evolving after a certain age. Women would say that age is twenty one but I’d  like to give us a little more credit. I’d say twenty five. A lot of us stop trying to grow. We’re content with how we are and have no interest in how we could be. We teach our sons that emotion is bad, and then they end up teaching it to their sons. That’s not saying you want your kids crying every five seconds, it’s saying if they do cry over something it’s not the end of the world.

I have friends that don’t read. It not like they can’t (maybe some) but they don’t. How do you learn anything new by not opening  your mind up to other things? Cornell from 2004 wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the conversation I had with my friend, but the Cornell now is wise enough to not only appreciate it but apply it to his life. When you stop growing you stop living.