Is this Brother’s LIFE Council deal really all about loneliness? Is loneliness that big of a problem or is it just my sad attempt to let the world know that I have felt lonely here and there with hopes to get more hits on social media so I can feel less lonely?
No. To both of those questions, the answer is no.
I do think loneliness among men of all ages in the United States is a real problem with real consequences. As I wrote in one of the first LIFE Council pieces, “we all have experiences that make us feel alone and those around us, try as they might, just can’t sneak through the cracks to enter it with us.” It’s not hard to find blogs, research studies, or books focused on loneliness. Dr. Warren Farrell put together a great book titled, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. What I appreciate about his book so is the data-based recognition that we often fail to raise our boys with abilities to handle emotions, face failure, and learn their place in the world. These shortfalls turn into high suicide rates, increasing mental health issues, a rising opioid crisis, absent fathers, and more when these boys become men.
The Brother’s LIFE Council is intended to help work toward solutions for all those problems but it’s more than that. It is a curation of ideas and strategies to operate with love, maintain integrity, champion fellowship, and pursue excellence. Sure, champion fellowship is pretty much a straight shot at the issues of loneliness. But you don’t have to face devastating loneliness to find value in the work of the Council and in creating your own. You also must realize that maybe it isn’t about you. You might not feel lonely or isolated but maybe your friend or coworker does.
One thing Corona Virus has taught many of us is that we can’t take for granted the time we get with the people closest to us. Before, it was easy to be “too busy” to make a 30-minute drive for dinner with a friend. After all this, it will be hard to not make that same drive. This is the value of the LIFE Council – even before “social distancing” was added to our vocabulary a few months ago, we took a stand against the excuses to remain in isolation. We could feel then what has now been confirmed – life isn’t as good when we try to do it alone.
The holistic LIFE principles also highlight that loneliness is not the only game in town for the Council. To have a life defined by love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence means a constant pursuit of who you can be when you live with intention. A by-product is that people will gravitate toward you and take a step out of loneliness. We all know that person who everyone just seems to love. We wonder, “dang, what do they have that I don’t?” Well, first they might just be nicer than you so check your attitude but it’s more likely that they take intentional action to be squared away in life. That’s what the Council is really all about. Intentional action to be the best men possible for everyone we interact with but we add the unique feature of admitting that we are better at those actions when we have a strong group of others to hold us accountable and walk through it with us when we need it.
And to be frank, knowing that today you are one day closer to the end of your life than you were yesterday should remind you that life is too damn short to isolate yourself and sit on the sidelines. The world has too much to offer you and you have too much to offer it.
So, if the LIFE Council isn’t only about loneliness, what do we do with that? We do our best to live by the principles everyday and watch loneliness fade. A secondary goal of the Council has always been to help men live life on purpose instead of being more closely related to the walking dead. This requires principals to check your decisions and actions again. We have LIFE and I think you can find that they can impact you too.
Weekend Challenge
This weekend, I want to challenge you to choose one of the LIFE principles and try it on for size in your daily life. Pick one – love, integrity, fellowship, or excellence – and filter any decisions you make this weekend through that lens.
For example, if you choose love you will certainly face a bunch of moments where it comes into play:
- Dinner decisions: when you and your spouse are deciding what to eat for dinner, it would mean being willing to decide (no one like the “whatever you want, babe” guy) but also not making stupid facial expressions when she offers up an idea.
- Helping out: when you notice the dog hair in the house is all operating with love means you pick up that damn vacuum and get to work instead of laying on the couch watching last years golf tournament.
- The important project: when you have an important project to work on but your kids are running around the house, it means that you talk to them in a neutral tone and offer ideas for them instead of raising your voice and simply saying “no”
If you choose integrity, fellowship, or excellence it’s the same idea. Apply it to your life throughout the weekend. I’d place a good bet that you have a better weekend this way.
Happy weekend. Choose intention. Enact LIFE.
Oh, and yea, I changed the name of these from “Friday Challenge” to “Weekend Challenge” because that’s really what they are. If you care about such a thing, we probably won’t be friends anyway so I’m not going to worry about it