It’s been a while since I have made a post. I have felt like I haven’t written anything that matters in a while. That was until I watched a TED talk by Justin Baldoni (Watch it here).
He talks about himself as an actor and what it is like portraying men on television. He talks about how the men he portrays are the men that we as people uphold. Men have to be strong, women have to be weak. He goes on to talk about how damaging that is to both men and women and how we need to stop being man enough and start using our hearts.
The one thing that got me the most was when he talked about his Instagram. He mostly posts things about loving his wife, about his kid, and about things that matter to him. He posts from the heart.
Then he started an experiment where he only posted gym pictures. More men started following him and started to take interest in his page. A sports magazine even reached out to him asking to honor him for being a game changer. Listening to this magazine, he didn’t even know what he was doing that was game changing.
It was right after he talks about this that I realized that I had to write about how I felt watching that and reading the comments that followed.
As a person who has been traumatized, I do feel that everyone deserves to talk about how they feel so that they can become emotionally stronger. This includes men.
I was watching the video in the first place because I wanted to learn how men feel about emotions and what I can do to help them to be better emotionally. He suggests that we celebrate men talking about their vulnerabilities and be patient with them as they become more vulnerable.
So here is what I am going to do to make sure that I am allowing the men in my life to feel like they can be more vulnerable.
Listen
First, I am going to listen more.
As I love talking and I love hearing myself talk, I tend to not let others engage with me in order to tell me something important.
If I am going to change the way I engage with men around me, as well as women, I am going to need to work on my listening skills.
A tip that I will recommend is to first notice when you are not listening as well as you could. This means thinking about what you are going to say before the other person is finished talking and making sure that you comprehend what they are saying.
Engage with Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion
The second thing I will do is engage empathetically, sympathetically, and with compassion in normal conversation.
Empathy means that you feel what a person is feeling.
Sympathy means you can understand what the person is feeling.
Compassion is the willingness to relieve the suffering of another.
Compassion It
These three things can help in any conversation to help when others are being vulnerable. When engaging empathetically, you don’t actually feel what another person is feeling, instead, you imagine what it must feel like to that person. You don’t actually know.
That’s where sympathy comes in. When you are engaging in sympathy, you are trying to understand what that person is feeling. You are asking questions and paraphrasing to better understand.
Then you engage in compassion. While you are imagining and understanding one’s emotions, you then act to relieve the suffering that they might be feeling.
Conclusion
Overcoming this idea that men are strong and women are weak isn’t easy. We are all human in our nature and that means that we mess up and we make mistakes. But when we hold ourselves accountable and let others open up and be vulnerable, we are able to create a society that is more free and honest with who they are and who they can be.
As for me, I am going to work harder to allow others and myself to be human and to have emotions and vulnerabilities. I know it won’t be easy but I know I want to make the world a better place. That means doing things that aren’t easy and being vulnerable.
The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly.
‘Abdu’l – Baha
