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IT WAS JUST PHYSICS
I don’t know if I could have made my old relationship
work, even with what I know now. If I think I could,
it might be just simple hubris. And, another reason
to beat myself up, giving into shame, 
paralysing me with fear and loathing.

My totem animal is the rooster. The Celtic and Norse apparently considered the animal a creature of the underworld, serving as a messenger of the hereafter, screeching out warnings of danger and calling out to the fallen souls on the battlefield the following morning after a fight. Its attributes are many and among them are pride, honesty, courage, vigilance, arrogance, strength, watchfulness and flamboyance.

It’s that last one that piques my interest in this story. I chose the rooster as my totem when it came time to set the differences accorded me by the Chief Herald of Canada when my father was awarded his coat of arms. The shield center of his arms is gold, and each of his nine kids have a symbol in its place, as differences.

It was not until my fifties that I made this choice, but it came to me immediately. My father had kicked me out of the home when I was fifteen as he descended into madness, saying, “there is room for only one rooster under a roof and since this is my house, you’ll have to go.”

But I’d also learned over the years to be a pretty snappy dresser. My dad was too, and in later years called me “the dude,” when I visited wearing something cool. His closet was like my own, shirts lined up from end to end. I’ve counted a hundred shirts alone hanging up in mine, his was the same. I got rid of some lately, to make room for missus who cannot share a closet with me. I tell her it’s because I’ve been around longer. I hoard, she sheds.

Dad and I often talked about the simple pleasure of looking good. I gave him a fleece vest with a Wallace badge on it and it can be found folded over his chair in his room of the locked ward at the old age home he was forced into because of dementia. Even with his mind wandering, clothes are still important to him.

In the 1970s, I was doing time for one thing or another. Oh yeah, I’d shot a guy, in a strip joint of all places. Then, there was a prison strike and the army had to come in to man the correctional posts. Anyone with an application to get out on day parole saw it granted to help clear the place out.

A Sally Ann house on Slater Street in Ottawa took me in as long as I had work. My girlfriend had finagled her boss at a men’s clothing store on Rideau Street to give me a job. Mr Moustache was the name of the place and there, thanks to her, I learned how to dress. And, soon after, sold heroin out of the upstairs back room every day in between serving customers. Eventually, I gave up the heroin but never lost the touch when it came to dressing well.

Many years later, when I was about 40, I learned to service my own cars. Bought a mechanic’s tool set which I still have, the top one from Sears Craftsman. It was 2500 pieces or something, plus the cabinet. Or maybe it’s 670 pieces and cost 2500 hundred, I can’t remember.

Me and two other guys rented a shop in Surrey BC and fixed our cars and vans and boats, and I learned to weld. We were all growing pot at the time, and as a builder, I soon had five houses and a warehouse on the go. It meant I was a glorified maintenance man, carrying tools wherever I went from one job to another.

I noticed when I stopped for gas and engaged in my usual banter with the gal at the cash, I didn’t get much attention in return. When I went into the Home Depot or a restaurant, same thing. People stopped smiling as much, didn’t laugh at my jokes, and generally engaged with me as little as possible. The usual friendliness and easy-going nature of my interactions with people disappeared. It was all business, no contact.

My old shame feelings rose to the surface. I had this idea I was a piece of shit since my early days out  on the street and had carried it forward into my middle age. The shame I’d internalized as a little boy under my parents’ roof, with its abandonment threats and isolation and violence, was still there lurking, influencing my life beneath awareness.

Over the years, I couldn’t work for anyone else lest the criticism necessary to learn crush me. I remember that defensiveness clearly in my early years. And, the pain I felt inside stayed hot just beneath the surface of my emotions and could boil over if I was not careful. As a younger man, it did, and I earned a rep as a hothead. Later that reputation was focused further as a bad ass gangster type. Unbeknownst to me, I was using fear as a shield.

Later I went to college and university and worked on my issues, seeking to understand the psychology behind my past. I’d done a pile of work on myself since I’d decided to stand up and be a father to my little boy, but the rejection I felt when I dressed down and went about my day on the west coast in the 1990s signaled I had more to do.

I experimented and would see how people treated me when I dressed well versus when I dressed in work clothes. It was all too predictable. My sensitivity, driven by my internal shame, meant I could feel the ostracism and it hurt.

At one point, I read about how researchers had conducted a study by having a confederate stand on a busy street during the morning rush hour and stare across the street at the opposite building, as if spotting something of interest. The insider would croon his neck and shield his eyes from the morning light all the while staring at some unknown thing a few floors up and opposite his sidewalk.

Others would soon gather around and look to see what the confederate was seeing, curiously following and mimicking his lead. Some proclaimed they could see what the researcher could see, pointing out a spot at a window, a certain number of floors up and at just a point.

The game was to see if what the confederate wore attracted more lookers. Sure enough, the better dressed the more lookers stopped and stared along. The best dress of them all was a man in a three-piece suit and tie.

You can imagine what authority is bestowed on someone by their dress. Think of a judge’s robes, or the white lab coat worn by your doctor. Clothing make the man because it’s part of the package of social proofs we use to meet our expectations. Imagine how off it would be to go do Friday confession to a priest without his white collar. A man in a suit and tie is presumed to be of some authority, especially in context where authority can influence.

Whenever you meet someone, you are being judged. We live emotionally and rationalize things afterwards. Our feelings about something happen a split second, faster than we can think, and for good reason. That first emotional impression sets and seeds what follows. Once someone sees you, their impression is instantaneously formed, and you are then either overcoming a prejudice or confirming a bias. Which would you rather be doing? What’s to your advantage?

The clothes we wear, and our personal sense of style is something a man ought to spend a little time thinking about. It’s worthwhile knowing what the essentials of a gentleman’s wardrobe ought to be, given his station in life and activities, and the enjoyment he derives from how he presents in public.

In Canada, where we have four seasons, closets can become unruly. I once had counted 150 t-shirts I’d accumulated when I kept places in two or three cities.

Three suits will do the trick for most people. One black or dark charcoal, one navy blue, and one gray. One thinly patterned light summer sport jacket and one navy sport jacket you can wear with jeans is a good mix. You can’t beat a white shirt with a tie. Be careful of too much patterning in your shirts, those are better worn casually with jeans. Remember what is in style now might be long gone in a few years so unless you plan on replacing your clothing regularly (most guys don’t), opt for classics.  A pair each of brown and black brogues. Match your belts to your shoes.

Sandals for summer, and a lighter shoe optionally. A couple or three good sweaters, the kind you can wear under a suit instead of a vest, and one at least of heavier materials for colder weather. Some shorts and summer golf shirts are an important part of your wardrobe, as is a spring and fall jacket, one dressier and one more casual. You probably don’t need 30 pair of running shoes. Most people dispense with cuff links and tie clips these days.

If you dress well regularly, allow room for personal style. I used to have forty pairs of leather shoes but now use about five. One is a pair of caramel coloured Giorgio Armani shoes I got on sale in Vegas for about $450. I save those babies for special dates with missus or when I want to look my best. Also, nothing looks worse on a man than to try to dress like he’s M&M or Fiddy or some other mutha like Tupac in a god damned rap video. Smarten up (said with affection),lest you look like a boy.

Certain designers have become reliable standards for me, like the Armani shoes, but Hugo Boss is also one I like too. Robert Graham shirts were a favourite at one point. I used to reward myself with a shirt if I hit a certain goal. At a couple of hundred each, I have a few so I switched to something else. I shop from Harry Rosen’s Men’s stores to Mark’s Work Warehouse, looking for classic designs and superior workmanship. I got a couple of pair of winter socks for Christmas from missus last year that came from a mill in the US, and they are the best winter socks I’ve ever worn. Same with underwear, the good stuff lasts.

Quality counts a lot more than anything to me. For example, I still have my Italian leather roper cowboy boots bought in 1995 when I headed west. Any Texan will appreciate that, just as they do a good hat. Style is regional.

Lastly, I still dress down on occasion, heck I live on acreage in the country so rubber boots are at my back door waiting for me at any moment. But, I’m not put off by people’s reactions anymore. The internalized shame of my youth, and even those years not so long ago, hasn’t left me but I’ve reconciled with its forces on my life. I know my worth, more so now, and confidently for the first time in my life.

Can you imagine? I’m 61 years old and it took me until I was in my fifties to really get this (don’t do that).

Now, I dress in my style because I’m used to it, honouring the flamboyance of the rooster without hiding shame under it all. My clothing is functional but also an expression of my overall well-being, not a cover up for internal strife and feelings of inadequacy. Through that painful journey, I learned how to dress, probably better than most.

Rather than a shield against judgment, dressing well is now part of my power.

Think about that as you assemble a wardrobe which meets your sense of style.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

Chris Wallace
Advisor to Men

©CKWallace 2019, all rights reserved

reach me at [email protected]

At my offices in an
RW & Co button dress shirt
Robert Graham jeans with braided belt
Hugo Boss leather shoes

No doubt you’ve heard or read about the Red Pill movement. It’s a phenomenon on YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and elsewhere.  Red Pill gurus are rushing to get their message out in books, its de facto leader Rollo Tomassi on his fourth. Roosh and Roissy are two other prominent names in the manosphere who espouse the ideology.

Red Pill itself comes from a scene in the science fiction movie The Matrix, where rebel leader Morpheus played by Laurence Fishburne, offers Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, the choice of swallowing a blue pill which allows one to believe what they want to believe, or the red pill which offers truth. Neo takes red.

This truth is what the red pill leaders say is what is required to navigate the relationships between men and women. Tomassi uses the term “hypergamy” to describe a woman’s prerogative to choose a partner of higher status. Of course, that choosing in the first place is a woman’s prerogative is not questioned. Of course women choose, I say. She is the more precious carrier of eggs and maker of life.  Should she choose a weak partner? How would that serve her pact with the universe, especially if she intends to have children one day?

I like Tomassi and I like Donovan and the rest of the guys who used to appear on YouTube’s 21 Studio each week to discuss Red Pill practicalities. These guys have sliced and diced the subject to deep levels… with no end in sight.

However there’s an elephant in the room: In fact, it’s this obsession with women which makes me think the approach overall is weak. It’s why I listen or read or even tolerate Red Pill sparingly at best. Not at all if I can avoid it. This is just my personal view, but I think our Red Pill brothers leave the masculine and visit the feminine too frequently for my tastes as they obsess about women’s “feral nature,” among other things. To me that is just contempt.

Solipsism, the view that the self is all that can be known to exist, and which I agree is very much a feminine energy trait, is often an overriding feature in Red Pill discussions.

It says, “I think it therefore… it is.”

It’s the incredible ability of the overthinking woman to believe her own bullshit. Men need watch for that in themselves occasionally, for they are far from immune, especially if they are gathered around drinking coffee discussing the opposite sex on a YouTube channel for money.

Note too, the coffee date is typically something women do, not something men find themselves habitually involved in at any level. We are more shoulder to shoulder over a task types than… coffee daters. It is not lost on me that under the guise of helping men get “valuable truths,” these men are sitting around bitching about women.

That’s not to say there isn’t some truth to Red Pill. And, to many guys it’s a Godsend of information. In the context, Blue Pill is real, and every man needs that wake-up call. It’s easy for a man to go into relationships with blinders on, with family of origin programming and unmet needs dictating his expectations.

Before I left a marriage just shy of 25 years in the early 2000s, I was devastated. Nothing I’d tried worked and I was facing complete failure. My parents were married sixty-two years (before my mother died some time ago). Like many men, marriage was forever for me, and I couldn’t broker it any other way.

In the end, I knew if I stayed it would kill me, while leaving made me feel like dying.

You may recognize the bind.

Some days back then, I’d have flashes of crashing my van at top speed in a train overpass or just letting it fly off a bridge as my thoughts turned to self-harm in frustration and despair. Oft, I’d have to take a knee to recover a moment from the pain I was carrying.

That’s when one of our managers mentioned he listened to Tom Leykis’ radio show every day. I began to do the same. It exposed a whole other side of women my blinders prevented me from seeing. I don’t need to thank Tom for his show, I’m sure he was paid well. Blow Me Up Tom made a difference in my life at that time, if only to knock the gender off the pedestal I had them on. I later figured out that pedestal derived from a projection of my need for my own mother’s love, and that pursuit would keep me in weaknesses forever. It would keep me immature.

Once, a female caller announced on his show she had gotten drunk when out with the girls and fucked some guy, who happened to be black, in a car in the parking lot of a club. She was Hispanic, and so was her husband. She was about to give birth and she suspected the baby was conceived the night of her low class debauchery.

Tom implored her to tell him, and to spare the man the indignity of having his relatives see his shame in the hospital as a little black baby arrived instead of his own.

She refused, and Tom immediately asked his listeners to help. “She said he works at a casino in the Pacific North-West, if you know a guy in the gambling business expecting a baby, LET HIM KNOW IT MAY NOT BE HIS.”

As shocking as this was, I knew it was reality. I know women cheat, just as I know men cheat in the right circumstances.

People do horrible and underhanded things to each other sometimes. I am not naïve. I lived as a gangster. I know what power imbalances, intimidation, cruelty and retribution are all about. Red pill seeks to skew women as especially endowed with an antisocial and vindictive side which has themselves as the center of their universe, and to which you as a man are but an expendable force to be used and discarded. The problem is anyone who becomes your enemy becomes expendable to you. That’s what survival calls for. How about some equality here…

That period of my life launched me into a search for greater truths about men and women. My mind was opened by Tom and his alternate views. I got even more interested in sex differences, doubling down on my review of the literature, taking an about turn intellectually at the height of social constructionist influence. Although I’d retreated from it a decade or more before during the “Everybody Loves Raymond” period of television, eventually I turned my back completely on feminism.

The “women are wonderful effect” was coined in 1994 by sociological researchers Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic, who found that both men and women tend to assign more positive traits to women, with women showing a far greater propensity to do it than do men. The sisterhood is real, we should be aware of this.

I don’t listen to Tom anymore—one season was enough… and since those days, never did again. And, while I drop in on Rollo and his cohorts on YouTube every once in a while to see if there is anything new, I don’t listen or read them as a matter of course either. I have found my own balance of truths between the genders and it works for me and for the men I am privileged to share my message with.

I have a new family with two wonderful kids and a gal I’ve been with for 13 years. She won’t marry me: says if we never get married, we’ll never get divorced. I can’t argue with her, and it’s a moot point because I know what makes her tick. I know what my role is and I take to it with my eyes open and full enthusiasm. A man’s relationships should come from his power as a man and never be his power. That’s my rule.

If I had to criticize the Red Pill movement or Tom Leykis’s approach, I’d say it is far too negative of women in general. Some of it is deserved but based on inklings of truth (that’s the way things like this go, there’s always some truth to it). It’s just that listening to too it fails to impart balance, for women have some pretty darn good aspects to them too (as do men).

I heard Rollo say he can’t advise for marriage now because of the risks to men.  Fair enough, but a little sad too. Instead Tomassi suggest men “spin plates,” a version of two-timing which to me is callous and antisocial. It is unlikely we will flourish as a culture under polyamory. Deceit in general is dishonourable.

The disconnect for me is men complaining about The American Psychological Association’s recent guidelines, or the subject of rape culture, or discussions around “toxic masculinity,” or the Gillette commercial, but yet, allowing for a full dive into Red Pill philosophy and it’s inherent contempt for women.

Doesn’t anyone else see the problem with that?

Men sometimes do terrible things to women, and women sometimes do terrible things to men. Men tend to compete overtly, while women tend to maneuver covertly. Men smash you in the face, women get everyone around you turned against you so that eventually someone smashes you in the face.

Simplistic? Sure. Of course, it is. It’s always an oversimplification. The problem with generalities is they all fail on the backs of exceptions. Talk and tease out the possibilities just the same. Exceptions don’t always disprove the rule.

The reasons I’m no longer a feminist and aligned with those well-intentioned but misguided idealists, is that I’ve lived out the course of its resurgence these past fifty years. I did that as a man who has depended on good women as allies, coming as I do from a family where I had a mother and four good sisters (as well as four brothers, and a troubled father). Feminism is a weak agenda, offering as it does a one-sided dissection of problems but little in the way of realistic solutions or an accounting of the existing healthy symbiosis of masculine and feminine energies.

It’s my view equality of opportunity is fine to an extent, but that equality in general between the sexes is a wrong-headed metric because we are generally too different to be equal. I also think, in context, a full accounting of strengths and weaknesses from each side of gender would go a long way to reconciling one with the other.

If men and women have always banded together to meet the challenges of time, the environment and each other’s natures as they go about creating a life, don’t you think it’s worth knowing the plus and minus variables of each? Red pill leaves out the good stuff, just as discussions of toxic masculinity does the same.

To use a sports analogy, wouldn’t you want to know who can run with the ball? Who can catch the ball with two defenders on them? Who can kick an accurate field goal? Who is better left on the line to block and tackle? Who possesses the skill to orchestrate play under duress? Or who can pinch-hit or run in what situations? Who is a starter and who can come off the bench and bat clean up?

I ask that we have those discussions because that’s what men and women do when they are left to their own devices while  they find ways to live and work and raise kids and love each other. We figure out what each is good at and operate as a team toward common goals.  Not Team Male or Female, rather Team Human.

It’s not enough to throw dirt at an entire gender and then complain your dates don’t go as planned. This to me is wrong-headed.

Or, that your life isn’t unfolding as you desire with your partner so it must be something about her “feral nature” which leaves you disadvantaged. You poor thing.

I think that’s weak-ass bullshit and I’ll tell you why. We need compassion for each other and the greater compassion we have for others the greater compassion we have for ourselves. That’s how it works.

All of us have an inner self, a Divine Child within we’ve perhaps stuffed over the early years as we sought to conform with the adults around while adhering to our interpretation of their rules and expectations.

How can we ever hear our own essential voice if we don’t listen for the voices of others?

Our eyes see out, and the easiest way to train yourself to hear the good in you is to attune yourself to the good in others. Not blindly, not as a nice guy sacrificing your needs for others while holding secret anger; but compassionately, with a sense of being part of humanity’s meaningful whole.

Find it early, find it late, we must all find love.

Where’s the love in finding the extreme faults in an entire gender? Where is the love in calling women bitches and sluts and cunts as a matter of course as they do on the 21 Studios red pill segments? Where is the love in finding fault with half the world’s population, and enacting rules to safeguard yourself from their worst aspects without an appreciation for the incredible good in their capacity to love and share a life?

From what I can tell, Red Pill is a lot like feminism in that it focuses almost exclusively on delineating the excesses of women’s pragmatic side and encourages a defensive and almost paranoid stance in men who are still interested in women.

If you need a good term to reference the young gals teasingly, call them wenches. It means young lady in old English my father told me. It raises eyebrows but no one gets mad at you. I’d say to my gals over the years, “wench, more ale for me and my friends!” and they all thought it was cute. Missus has a growling stomach, I call her my borborygmus wench. I think she’s impressed that I even know the word (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Fact is, most men will marry and most of them will have children.

Here’s what typically happens: a woman bets on a man when he has nothing, not a pot to piss in, and hopes like hell he turns into something. Hypergamy is just not reality or whichever woman you landed would likely never ever have chosen you. Isn’t it better to help men and women negotiate that dynamics between them with an appreciation for each other’s needs and desires without falling into weakness?

Not only that, men should learn to not take it so personally. A woman with children will put ANYBODY to work for her on her mission to keep her children alive and well. This is consistent in the literature the world over and likely is your experience if you think about it. Parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbours, governments, girlfriends, friends, neighbours, churches, husbands and anyone else she knows is either an ally or competition. She cuts competition loose fast and only has time for allies.

Women mature faster emotionally than do men. Ask any sixteen year old girl what she wants in life and she will lay out a plan. Guys? Ha!

Women self-assess at a young age by measuring themselves up against peers. When they are ready, they take that self-assessment and look for a partner who matches well-enough or is slightly above the value she places in herself. Then, she usually orchestrates things, often with the collusion of her sisterhood, so that her choice of possible suitor notices her. If she catches his eye, she will then encourage him in so many ways using body language, laughter, smiles and gaze. Thus interested, he chases her until she catches him. But it is she who is betting on him given her much shorter fertility potential and much greater risk.

Should a man face that his woman is not his mother? Yes! It’s one of women’s greatest complaints. “I’m not his mother!” Additionally, to expect unconditional love from his partner is a leftover trait from his family of origin? Yes, he should abandon this immediately.

Should he realize his wish for unconditional love is projected upon his partner and is a burden she can never, ever meet? You’re damn straight he should do all these things… or remain a boy forever.

A man should also realize his gal’s archetype for love is her father, or the masculine energy around her, and that this means she requires a powerful man in her life.

It also means she knows the difference between a man and a boy.

Women are pragmatic souls, bent on survival. The female is far more precious in nature, you have only to look a window at bird feeder. Most of the colourful birds are males, while the females are camouflaged and discreet. If a Sparrow Hawk arrives on the scene, it’s the male Grosbeak or Cardinal who dies first.

It’s not so different in humans, where she carries the eggs which permit life. Her best fertility lasts two decades whereas a man’s is triple that period or more.

She is attracted to a man for his power and tolerates his vulnerability in service of her care-giving because it signals that he has the sensitivity to be kind and not harm her children. 

Hypergamy is a negative and dishonest term which saddles a man with self-pity and an idealized over-estimation of his worth. That’s pain that can be exploited to sell books and run traffic to YouTube channels.

As a man, you are attracted to looks—a certain hip to waist ratio—and you stay for loyalty. A man with a loyal woman by his side has the wind at his back—but you better God-damned well stay out in front of her to feel it.

You betcha.

That’s not blue pill for fuck’s sake, it’s how nature put us together to survive.

Men lead, women command. Men build cultures, women stress-test them.

Rather than focusing on the divisions inherent in Feminism on one side, or Red Pill, MGTOW and Incels on the men’s side, my advice is to focus on the essential truths: Power and Loyalty.

Women can’t stand weak men as partners. Men can’t stand disloyal women as partners. It’s that simple. Hence, women do well with a powerful man; men do well with a loyal woman.

How can you make yourself powerful to earn her loyalty? How can she show you loyalty, so you’ll want to be her powerful man? This where all the fun is. We train the people around us in life. We get what we accept.

You get the life you believe you deserve…

Red Pill has been around for a dozen years. Feminism for a hundred. Nature has been here forever.  Humans are smart at coming up with answers even when we don’t fully understand something. It’s our rational brain, living emotionally and then explaining things after the fact. You want to be careful about frustrated male marketers exploiting your confusion to sell books and monetize internet views. I’ll bet on nature.

What we need to do is see the much bigger picture. Men and women were made to live and work together to create life. Don’t let all the talk detract from this essential truth about our existence together.

Anything other than a Team Human approach is doomed to fail and cause suffering…

Stay powerful, never give up

Christopher K Wallace
©June, 2019, all rights reserved

Advisor to Men
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MYTH MAKERS

How does one find their purpose? I think in many cases it’s an accidental calling, a serendipitous landing somewhere in what my old psych teacher used to call “finding your place in the sun.” Some folks seem to know early on what they were destined for, others stumble upon it. And, regrettably, some never find it at all.

But what if this was your duty? Would it make a difference?

Could you see it as part of your pact with the universe? What if you were to live according to Horace Mann’s entreaty: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for mankind?” Would that help finding your purpose with reverence and resolve? No pressure.

Here are three approaches which helped me as I explored what to do with my life, and how to best use the time I have left. Though, while mindful of purpose, I think we always leave room for change, for a sudden veering from one direction to another as life summons our attention. What fun.

DREAM JOURNAL
The mythologist Joseph Campbell tells the story of Carl Jung having a crisis of meaning at a point early in his career, and deciding finding his personal myth was critically important.

Jung remembered as a child he like to build little play cities out of stones. So now, as an adult, he realized he could play with big stones. He purchased a property on the shores of a lake across from Zurich. There, he built a place at Ascona. A visiting Campbell said it was a house built out of the ground, an organic edifice, reflecting Jung’s local roots.

Jung recorded his dreams for inspiration, keeping a dream journal. This gave him ideas and even more meaning in the way he built his place and lived his life. Campbell’s advice is to ignore dreams about your daily life and look for big themes to emerge, paying special attention to doorways, entrances and pathways.

Remembering dreams takes practice, but not much. Just telling yourself before you sleep that you will recall and write down your dreams when you wake up works well enough. I cursed just how effective this is when I had PTSD dreams for a decade after leaving the street. I’ve since settled down and it’s a habit I’ve taken up again.

If you have a partner, sharing your dreams upon awakening is a delightful way to discharge disturbing images that linger, but also to share erotic shadow sides to each other. Show me a couple who talk openly about their dreams and I’ll show you two people who have a good sex life.

BOOK OF ME
In my opinion, if the question of finding your bliss has eluded you thus far, it’s worth assembling a book of self-evaluations. At least you’ll be doing something in the meantime.

None of these is likely to reveal your path, but what it does is answer long-held questions about how you operate in the world. It may also trigger helpful memories and long-dormant preferences. It’s an introspective set of exercises which trains you to listen to your inner self. Our eyes see out and life’s demands often leave little room for this kind of examination.

Start by doing the Gallup Strengthfinders test to rank your talents. Nothing reveals more about your capabilities than an objective scale like this one. Not only can it tell you what you might be good at, more importantly, it might explain why you don’t show much interest in other things. It’s both a confirm and encourage exercise, and an eliminator.

Take the Big 5 Personality test. It’s been soundly tested and is probably one of the most replicable psychometric tests.

While you’re at it, take one of the Locus of Control tests available online.

If you have the time, you could delve into your history by doing Peterson’s Self-Authoring Suite to record something of your past, present and future. The Peterson Suites have good science: students who complete them are more successful at school.

Do a Values Elicitation and rank your current top values 1 to 10. Most coaches do them as part of their practice. A shorter version is the Hartman Value Profile. Besides that, values conflicts are often at the root of much of our indecision, so having a clear picture of what matters to you helps.

Do Stephen Reiss’s Desire Profile: you can get a PDF version online which includes the full scale. This desire profile is a much more reliable measure than assessing needs. It’s about desire, thus passions.

You can skip the Briggs-Meyer’s test. Based on Jungian archetypes, just realize it doesn’t replicate well. Your letters may change as your life does so I don’t bother with this one despite its popularity.

Some people tell me the DISC profile helped them see themselves more clearly. Taking an aptitude test is sometimes worthwhile. Just don’t try to game the obvious questions. I skip IQ tests. Beyond just above average, discipline is a greater predictor of success anyway. We all know plenty of intelligent losers and this is about finding bliss, not who is smartest.

If you have access to family history, put up your genealogy on Ancestry to see who came before you. Examine your medical records and those of your forebears if possible. Where are you from? What kind of work did those who came before you do? Even if you only know one of your parents, sometimes this information helps to bolster identify. Ideas about life and living can come from the oddest places.

NEW EXPERIENCE
Camping trips, meditative retreats and spiritual practices can help find purpose for the way in which they allow us to slow down, listen and observe our inner selves. Long walks engage both hemispheres of the brain as you alternate right and left sides of the body. Twenty minutes per day in nature can do the spirit wonders, thereby freeing up the mind.

Travel can shake a person’s world up. How often does one hear of someone returning from somewhere with a grand plan of some sort hatched while far away? You can see the light on their faces and the fire in their eyes as they report their new-found direction.

Geographical changes have this effect because travel puts us into a heightened state of awareness and readiness while exposing us to new environments and people. Environments matter.

It is the epigenetically derived methyl groups of your ancestors influencing your present genetics, coupled with the databank of your emotional states since birth, contrasted against the collective unconscious (common instincts and archetypes present in any species) which comprises your soul in my take. It’s worth looking at it all to discover more about you.

Closer to home, what if you decided to say yes instead of no when you were invited along somewhere? Say no too often and soon, the invitations stop coming. If that’s you, what can you do to get out into the world and try something different? You may find your purpose with alone time or while your memories are triggered by others. Leave no stone unturned, I say.

If you are a drinker or a cannabis addict, you live in a partial state of fear as your homeostasis is continually off-kilter. This costs you because of the sensory input/confidence continuum. Instead, you may like to replace regular substance use with dance lessons, a martial art, or by joining your local Toastmasters to learn public speaking. Confidence is the stuff which takes thoughts and turns them into actions. How important is that then?

The point is by doing new things, the old creaky mind we’ve come to rely upon, with its predictable thoughts and feelings and behaviours, can always use a remodel. “Change or die,” someone once said. How’s that for motivation? Here’s a secret: feelings are based on experiences; therefore, the only way to create new feelings is to experience new things.

AWE AND MYSTERY
Campbell observed Maslow’s hierarchy gave five values: survival, security, personal relationships, prestige and self-development. These seemed strange to him until he realized these are the exact values the mythologically inspired person does not live for.

“Mythology begins where madness starts,” he says, “Maslow’s five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for.”

So often what is required to find a pathway to your bliss is an awakening of awe. That’s when something becomes greater than you, reminding of your smallness. It’s what makes and keeps us humble. You are hoping to be seized and pulled along by something, the same way you may remember feeling obsessed with play as a child.

Often I like to talk about flow states. That’s when we engage our strengths, passions and supreme concentration in an endeavor of increasing complexity. It’s the only thing I know which seems to stop time while we do it. It’s also when we feel most powerful as human beings.

What we are talking about here is quest which has as its heart a mystery. There will be something which entrains your mind and being, inexplicably occupying your thoughts and feelings. What it does is it captures you, and it’s this awakening of awareness and transcendence of needs which points your way forward.

THREE PARTS OF YOU
For a moment, clear your mind of everything. Give yourself a blank slate.

If a husband and father, these are normal parts of a man’s life. Your adaptability is great enough to handle that role anywhere under any circumstances excepting perhaps war. They are a consideration but less a determining factor.

Now, think of your being in three parts.

First is your true self, represented by Jungians as The Divine Child within you. It reflects all your potentials and possibilities, the very gifts you were born with and which were still intact for a while as a child. This is the repressed part of you usually compromised for the sake of conformity.

Then, secondly, your ego, that part of you with the shoulds and musts you have accumulated from a lifetime of listening to others. It’s all those rules you live by, passed along to you from your teachers and parents, friends and culture. Morality is ego-based.

Lastly, your personae, the masks you wear as student, husband, worker, academic, friend, etc. Each of these will be different from the other, some markedly so, their contrasts a clue to their worth as truths.

Now, imagine 20 years, or even 30 years have gone by. Looking back, which of those three would you want to make sure has been served?

Which of those three is your priority? Which one needs honouring? Which one answers the calling when the universe decided, in its infinite wisdom, to choose you for life? Let me explain:

There was something like 40 to 200 million sperm in the ejaculate from which you came, yet, it was you who got to the egg. You could have been a girl or had all kinds of challenges beyond your own.

But no. The same force behind a trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy chose you. A trillion stars, it’s worth repeating. And, from that fantastic force underlying everything known and unknown, it was upon you that life was bestowed. How could this be? How could it be it was you who was chosen?

The universe doesn’t make mistakes. So, how could it not be you?

The question is: what will you do with your prize? What will you do with this life you were awarded by the infinite forces which created the stars?

What shall be your myth?

Stay powerful, never give up,

Chris Wallace
© May, 2019 all rights reserved
Advisor to Men

“A man who can harness his power in service of himself and those around him finds meaning. This is what sets him free.” CKWALLACE, advisor to men

DISTANCE = SEX

Young fella in a group is getting married in the spring. Posts his intentions and asks for advice. I give him the quick version to which he and others respond gratefully. I’m struck by how important these things are to couples, to men, to children.

I told him this:

“She’s marrying you for your power and will then spend the next twenty years wondering if she chose correctly. Don’t disappoint her, stay powerful. Women can’t abide weak men, not easily.

Oh, and she’s not your mother. Don’t expect unconditional love. If you are powerful and kind, chances are she’ll be loyal—sexually and in spirit.

If not, if she senses you are weak, expect her to rub salt in the wounds of your weakness and/or, hold you in silent contempt.

She’ll stop fucking you then too. Women are pragmatic souls. Men are the poets and romantics.

Good luck. Let me know if you need help.”

But what else could I have told him? To be sure: plenty.

Because, if he’s like most men, he will knock that woman up and become a father. We often think women become our partners because of some endearing quality of ours which makes us irresistible. She dovetails with my life because she can’t live without me. Ahem. No. Not quite.

Perhaps it is more she is interested in a man as a partner, because two people fighting for existence against the chaos of life is better than one? True.

And, just as a man marries what he can tolerate, so does a woman but with key differences. He tolerates her and expects her to stay more or less the same, especially sexually. She, on the other hand, see his potential, her vision for the future more acute in same-aged couples.

At sixteen, most gals know already what kind of man they want as a husband, what kind of house they’d like to live in, and how many children they would like to have. That last one is key. Guys, not much vision at all at sixteen.

Women mostly marry to have children. That has not changed, though there are plenty of exceptions. I know couples who decided not to have children and live a rewarding life of fulfillment derived otherwise though activities, community, work and friends.

But most of us will become fathers. I could write a book about facets men should consider and one day I will. But for a young guy getting married now, the beginning of this post is the short version.

And sex. That’s the subject most guys can’t see clearly. They go from getting it regularly at the start of a marriage to much less over time.

We are told this is normal. I think that’s bullshit. I think it’s just that we don’t understand our women as well as we could.

Women are sexual human beings first. Not mothers. Not friends. Not workers. Not wives. And, forgive me if I mention: not firstly, “soulmates,” though in time they can become indispensable intimates. There’s danger in that too.

It was her body, her sexual power, her surrender to you which gained your devotion. Why should that change?

Truth is, sexual intimacy wanes with better communication. It is distance which creates want.

The more familiar you and your missus are with each other, the more comfortable, the less sex.

Comfort kills lust. That’s the facts.

It does so because there is no danger to it. There’s little unknown. When we first start sleeping with someone, we never really know what their reaction is to seeing us naked, to exploring each other’s bodies, to living out our sexual sides. There is this huge risk in trust disrobing in front of someone.

You take that away and you may only have obligation, not the stuff of exciting sexual distance. This is why I seize upon power in a relationship, not as a way to manipulate or dominate. No. Not at all.

It’s just that women need a man’s power to live out the part of her which needs to surrender to an entity greater than herself. It grounds her by permitting loss of control in her otherwise and usually conscientious existence.

The rest of her life she can have her shit together. But with her man, she must lose it. For, it’s only by providing an outlet for her darker side that she can flourish as the goodly wife.

Men would do well to remember this. We all have a shadow side we need to integrate. Sexual intimacy with a partner can be thought of an integration of each other’s shadow lives. At least, temporarily.

It’s an acceptance of shame and abandonment and control and agency and many more, all in the name of intimacy.

Distance is what creates polarity in a couple. Not a life of no secrets and shared emotions. As her man, you must remain dangerous lest she lose faith in your ability to protect her, but also to thrill her.

You put lust first, love will take care of itself.

Stay powerful, never give up.
Wally

© CKWallace, 2019, all rights reserved

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ON MEN AND WOMEN

Something to think about is this: women choose men for power (in whatever form that might be) and they come by it honestly. (I ignore red-pill hypergamy as whining).

It’s how nature made them, and for good reasons. She needs a powerful man who can eschew his tribe or peer group and come start a new one with her. Mostly, she does the choosing. Right or wrong, that’s how it is.

Men, on the other hand, are attracted to women for looks (+ a certain hip to waist ratio) and stay with them for loyalty. LOYALTY

POWER+LOOKS/LOYALTY

Her looks fade but this matters little to a man with a loyal woman. Because in time, she becomes his standard. When he thinks woman, it is she he sees in his mind’s eye. Naked to him means her.

A man with a loyal woman by his side has the wind at his back… even, the wind beneath his wings. To feel her wind at his back…  he best stay out in front of her. You better believe it.

And, a man cannot easily abide disloyalty, among his friends, family and those he works with. To tolerate disloyalty in his own home, in his castle, is an attempt to overthrow the King.

This happens usually because the King is weak. If allowed to continue, his hold on his realm is in doubt. He will be deposed eventually, for the kingdom requires a powerful leader who can bring order, fertility and blessings to the land and its people.

Men are adaptable. we can learn to love just about anyone.

If happiness is a decision, for the most part then, so is love.

ADVANTAGE MALE

What a man loses in the mating game in his early years, he gains back ten-fold as he ages. TEN-FOLD.

She has maybe, MAYBE, 20 good years of fertility (also her best years for attracting a mate). Between the ages of 15 and 35 or so before her childbearing risks go up. That’s generally it.

Men often just begin to amass personal power and get started by the time they are 35. COME ON.

I know a man who is over 60, still does 50 push-ups, with two children under ten. RARE A WOMAN CAN DO THAT. And, if she did it would be in the newspapers.

It’s not the same.

Women are far more precious. More precious BY FAR.

If only for their shorter fertility period. Scarcity is a measure of value.

And, they should be acknowledged for this. Help them. Show them compassion.

You can start over, it’s rare she can.

This light shining briefly in a woman’s life makes the pressure on her ENORMOUS. For most women, she has an EXISTENTIAL PACT with the universe: to choose the right partner.

Get this: she thinks with both hemispheres; and runs information through her emotional centers first. She has greater empathy (and will abuse it if pushed).

— She often has greater verbal ability (why she can talk circles around you) and can read emotions on a man’s face more readily (pay a man to read emotions on people’s faces he can do as well but she is “always on”).

— Her enteric intuitions are finely honed, likely because she has a uterus and menstruates. She knows people and sees and feels things you cannot even fathom. It can be spooky (in a wonderful way).

She is pragmatic and resolved. She doesn’t have time to fuck around in her quest to bring life into the world. Though, she will and usually invests in a promising mate, her gamble is way higher than yours.

She has the Caregiver Archetype in her, a spiritual instinct to look after people.

Nature has endowed her with this, part of which is to BRING LIFE into the world.

There is a cost to her gifts: on occasion she may become depleted. In this case, she may turn to her powerful man and lean on him for a time to recharge her subdued spirit.

Can you be such a powerful man?

COMPLEMENTARY

She can spot her man’s weakness a mile away. From way OVER THERE! When she does, she might tell you.

I call that kind of rare gal a UNICORN.

Don’t expect to be so lucky. She may just as easily think you don’t care.

More likely, she will RUB SALT in the wounds of your weakness… or hold you in silent contempt. Remember, abuse of empathy is her birthright. Either way, she stops fucking you. She has to… because you are failing her.

Often/sometimes, her powers lead her to overthink. The feminine holds her in its chaotic grip. That’s where you step in and bring her back from the brink of her insanity with your masculinity. That’s your job (one of them).

So, you must step up and lead your partner. It’s the yin and yang of men and women. She is wonderful chaos, you are powerful order.  Men lead; women command. This is nature’s magnetism. Lead or be bossed.

You must be her powerful man, so she may rely on you to temper her gifts just as you rely on her for her breadth and depth. Men and women have banded together since the beginning to take advantage of each other’s strengths and shore up each other’s weaknesses. It’s a symbiosis, dual nature creating life. If you are the sun, the stars, the fire and the light, she is the deep of space, the vastness of the oceans, the power of the wind.

Her primary male influence is her father, often the only person she knows who could stand up to an all-powerful mother. Your archetype of influence is your mom, who enticed you with promises of unconditional love.

It could be that’s why men are romantics. While you can become a powerful man to match and go beyond her father’s male energy, she can never love you unconditionally the way you might have wished your mother would.

That’s an unrealistic expectation all men must abandon. In this case, the boy must die so the man can live.

Like the fable Iron John, the boy’s quest is to leave his mother’s castle and find his own way in the world. The key to his freedom lies under her pillow. He must steal the key and make his escape, in the middle of the night if needed.

If you have a woman, be her powerful man. Don’t let that woman down; don’t put her in that position; don’t make her question herself under the chaos of her overthinking. That would be cruel.

Most of all, make yourselves powerful gentleman. If women are nearby, she will come and find you. It’s nature’s way.

Stay powerful, never give up,

© 2019 Christopher K Wallace
Advisor to Men

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I never gave much thought to mornings the first half of my life, the demands of life dictated my start to the day. If I had to get to work, I tended to leave just enough time to make it, or even be a few minutes late. If I had to be somewhere to do something for my business, then that’s what determined how and even why I got up. For many years, I got up because others depended on me, where others could not do their work until I showed up. That’s a pretty good motivator: 20 people waiting for you.

Over time, I’ve thought to impose some order on this part of how I live. This is more true now that I am no longer and afternoon and evening worker as I was for most of my adult life, and often have to get up in the mornings to go out to appointments.

My children often wake me in the morning. Or, missus will have an alarm go off an hour earlier than it was supposed to. This is almost always a leftover from last week sometime when she needed up, but then, forgot to reset her alarm.

We marry what we can tolerate. I remind myself of this at 5 am and go back to sleep.

Whichever way I wake up at other times, its usually not by alarm. In fact, I rarely use one. From decades of calculating my sleep needs, necessary tactics I used to combat insomnia in my early life, I manage sleep with a priority that works for me.

The first thing I do upon waking is grab my woman’s ass. I think touching her lets her know I’m happy to wake up beside her. Touch is the best way to show she’s appreciated. If she’s already out of bed, I stretch, grateful I got to be one of the lucky ones alive after the dark of night. This is the first thought in my head, and over the years I’ve trained myself to say this silently to myself: “I get to get up today.”

Then, I take the pillows and place them on top of our other ones. I straighten the comforter and sheet and voila! the bed is mostly made before I’m even out of it, needing only slight adjustments afterwards as I roll out and stand up.

I have a carpet under my bed which extend around its periphery. This is where I keep my slippers. But first, I flood light into my eyes suddenly when I whip open the curtain next to my side of the bed. While looking outside at whatever scene is there, I recite the same prayer I’ve said for over 30 years:

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It’s from Psalms, 118:24. My rabbi friend says to source something this way is to offer redemption to the world, something his Talmudic teachers taught him. Lately, when I say this silent prayer, I think of this wider frame and accord myself a little redemption, quietly stealing a little personal forgiveness before moving through my day.  Who doesn’t want redemption? Now it’s psalm 118:24 and I redeem myself.

I hang the curtain so it remains open, do the same to the matching window a few feet to the left, dress in morning clothes (housecoat if jumping in the shower, leisurely stuff if I’m working at home) and head downstairs. I stretch high when I do this because I usually wake up a little sore.

I currently head to the kitchen window and drink two big glasses of cold filtered well-water while looking out at my bird feeder. Banter with the missus and kids ensues, especially now that I have imposed order on their morning. No toys at the table, eggs, toast with peanut butter, fruit and goat milk before they get their gummy vitamins as reward.

As I gaze out the windows above the sink, I like to take a moment to notice nature, to let my eyes take in the expanse of scrub brush and trails out back of my house. And the various chickadees, juncos, jays, cardinals, woodpeckers and other feathered visitors who dive in from the cedars to feed on oiled sunflower seeds. I often think of my mother when I do this. Fleetingly, it sets my spirit a little.

Currently, six red squirrels live above in the cedars beside my utility shed out back. My first summer here I never saw them, though we heard them scold us loudly the odd time, first thinking it was tree frog. We have lots of those, and in spring and summer their chorus will fill the evening with such song you must remain silent, unable to compete. This also sets my spirit as I remember what it’s like here in summer.

The bird-feeders I put up last year drew the squirrels out of their trees. I read recently reds can occupy a tree and set stores in its every nook and cranny, then pass the storehouse of food on to the next generation, often for up to 30 years. They don’t hibernate in winter like the Northern Gray squirrels, a solitary black individual I’ve seen only once or twice scampering in from the edge of the woods. Just this week I saw the black version of the Norther Gray, said to happen in Canada’s cold, hurriedly checking below the feeders unmolested. Sure enough, out of nowhere, a red came dashing at him and the chase was on, the black squirrel making it for the safety of the woods a hundred feet away. Those reds don’t like sharing and keep interlopers at bay.

When I was a boy, my two older brothers were Irish Twins and did everything together. In fact, they are the same age right now for another few days, the 3 and 13th of March being their birthdays. Ma had ten pregnancies in twelve years but lost the one before me. This meant a longer gap separated me from the two of them. I felt it deeply when they went to high school and left me still in primary. I felt cast adrift, abandoned.

Ma gave me a set of binoculars as encouragement. This was a rare treat in our family, to be so honoured with such an adult piece of equipment, and a  guidebook to boot. It was all so… professional. I’ve been fascinated by birds ever since. I’m not dogmatic about it, I don’t have a list of birds I have to see. Not anymore. I tried that and it lessened my enjoyment. If I saw an Evening Grosbeak way back and then forgot about it, finding one again is like finding it for the first time. A list would be a way of reminding me how stupid I was to have forgotten. So, no list,  I just like them. The white throated sparrow song is probably my favourite evening song in summer. Often at dusk one will perch at the very top of a nearby tree and let loose its song. It sets my spirit.

My original binoculars are long gone, but ma gave me her pair a few years before she died at age 86. Now her Bausch and Lomb’s are in the cupboard over the fridge, for me to use anytime. I used them an evening a few days ago when a bright red cardinal and his buff coloured mate were seen picking up leftover seeds off the snow beneath the feeders, right where the chickadees and woodpeckers would have scattered them earlier today.

It’s rare to see a mated pair in the backyard this time of year, and usually only one of the pair makes it to the feeder at a time. I like the way the female and male cooperate for survival, something I think provides lessons for humans. The male is bright red and attracts all the attention. If a Sparrow Hawk attacks, chances are he’ll get it first. The female is buff coloured with red accents, beautiful in her own way, easily camouflaged against the forest. And when she is sitting on the nest, it is he who is out hunting and returning with food, spelling her later in the day so she can come to the feeder alone and take her fill. It’s a model for much of life between the sexes.

Both were there, both on the ground, and as it was dusk, I needed the glasses to see their colour because everything looks black and white at twilight. Early March and here before me a mated pair of colourful cardinals. These moments set my spirit.

I still have the book ma gave me, though I have no idea how I managed to keep a copy of Peterson’s How to Know the Birds after all these years. My father’s handwriting is still there where he printed my name in full block letters on the inside front cover in pen almost 50 years ago. In this context, watching the morning birds gives me perspective, a sense of time, of lifespan. The book’s edition was out in 1957, the year of my birth.

My missus loves a coffee in the morning. Never a dedicated coffee drinker most of my life, preferring Red Rose tea like ma, at times I would drink coffee for ten years then leave it alone for another ten. Now, my gal has converted me. Studies which show drinking a couple of cups per day is likely to prolong life by a few years encourages me too. I need every edge I can get. I used to have a wonderful filtered coffee and carafe setup, now we percolate.

I get the beans from Ottawa Roasters, a middle eastern store down on Kilborn Ave, not far off Bank Street. It’s right behind St. Thomas D’Aquin, the French Roman Catholic church I used to attend and where I also served as an altar boy. It’s a little weird to see places like that all these years later, after I’d lived elsewhere until just under three years ago. I moved back to be near my father after ma passed away.

Flashes of remembrances hit me each time I pick up coffee at Roasters: walking through that parking lot; helping with the bottle drive for charity and filling that little garage behind the church with our take; the fence between the church and adjacent school now gone, but remembering attending my first day of school there and being dropped off just over there, in that spot, to face the kids in the yard.

It’s funny how those memories are there though we never think of them. In 1986, I began attending college in Cornwall and enrolled my son in daycare. That first day, I dropped him off and watched as he tentatively approached the yard where the other kids were playing, and it brought back a flood of memories that grabbed me by the throat. Suddenly, I was six and walking into L’Ecole Primaire St Thomas D’Aquin, an English kid at a French school, alone.

You can get Brazilian or Columbian dark in whole beans for 9 bucks a pound at Roasters. And Marie, the server with decades behind her counter, smiles easily. They roast everything, nuts too. I dare you to find better just slightly salted roasted cashews anywhere. Visiting places like this in my old neighbourhood remind me I am from somewhere. That’s an important thing to me. It’s another thing which sets my spirit.

With my coffee in hand, a dash of goat milk to neutralize its bitterness, I head into my office. There, another ritual ensues. You see, I read or recite the poem Invictus every morning. In fact, I recently added the Goal Tracker app on my phone to see how long a streak I can go on. This morning routine is one of them and I check it off once I’m done.

I tried to recite Invictus while doing deep knee bends or walking like a bear on all fours across my carpet so that I may stretch and absorb its tenactiy into my very bones. Mostly I just read it and then do something physical. I want to be sure my will and my body are in sync. I often think of the context in which Henley wrote his famous work: contemplating having his leg cut off, when he’d already lost one earlier. Fucker was a steely-eyed embodiment of masculinity in the situation and his words were his affirmation, a determination to live. It is men’s stuff this poetry, and it sets my spirit.

Now, I take my phone and review my goals. I used to carry all of these in a DayTimer binder but the digital world is messing with my system. I’m in a state of flux, ready to adopt or abandon a tactic at a moment’s notice.

I’m not the kind of guy who can just leave my life to chance and hope things work out. Distractibility is the curse of my curousity. I must schedule my time and my activities. If I don’t, I can be led astray. I’m also not perfect at it.

What I look for each day are two things: Resistance and Zone.

If I can identify my resistance and assess its merit in a situation, usually I find I can overcome it on the spot. Sometimes, I experience reluctance for good reason, of course, stepping out into traffic is not the goal of suppressing resistance. But, feeling resistance signals me to examine and assess, learning to become aware of bodily cues and subsequent thoughts which may be preventing me from living my best.  By focusing on this one narrow aspect of my daily existence, I experience more regular wins. And each time I win here, my spirit strengthens and makes me just that much more powerful going forward.

Men tend to build systems.  Mine helps me get here, to this place: when I enjoy a confluence of my passions and strengths–what I like to do with what I tend to be good at–and add in an intense focus while engaging in something of increasing complexity, I get so absorbed I feel alive at a level I don’t get anywhere else. This is when I experience my zone, and the more I get into it, the more I want.

I have not been able to narrow my thinking to the extent I can live in a zone all day long. I’m much too distracted for that. However, I do hit it regularly. In those moments, I’m on point, and I feel strongest. Not power in the sense of power over anyone else. No. It’s a self-mastery power, like I’m really steering the ship. It’s the purest form of agency I know.

At these moments, time flies by imperceptibly, like I can stop time. At other times, an hour feels like minutes, or an afternoon feel like my entire life because I’m so engrossed in whatever is before me. Stopping time like this is what sets my spirit.

I’m not always successful but this is what I strive for.

I believe the ancestral epigenetic effects on my methyl groups influencing my DNA combined with my databank of emotional states recorded in my body since I came into existence are what constitute my soul.  It is this which I attempt to nourish each day. It is to these greater forces I submit my will and drive my actions.

Stay powerful: never give up

Christopher K Wallace
© 2019, all rights reserved

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Men’s mastermind

Know any shit-disturbers? Not mild stuff. Not the kind of stuff men are normally involved in, though that’s probably part of it. No, I mean those people who, no matter the situation or state of affairs governing their lives, always find the storm.

And if they can’t find the storm, they create one. They find something, a small thing or a big thing, and zero in on its possibility and push, prod and call out until things blow up.

It could be with people, with systems, hierarchies, but it’s usually with people. They are often closet conspiracy-theorists, sometimes openly suspicious of… everything.

And too often they have a history of addiction. Not always, certainly, then again not everyone is religious or atheist. Shit-disturbing is not foreign to women by any means either. Hell no.

When humans don’t have an answer for something, we often make one up. It’s the nature of the beast. This serves our evolutionary need to come up with something… anything. Our eyes see out after all, so we look for answers in the environment. This works… until it doesn’t.

If a kid is left to cry it out in the crib as a baby, it may cry for hours until it finally falls asleep with exhaustion. The baby wakes up the next day and has survived. Crying (fear) worked for it in this instance. Those elevated hormones came through.

This easy to understand example plays out in countless forms for many of us, all the way into adulthood as we grapple with sickness, tragedy, war.

How many of us are programmed to seek fear in our lives? I know I was. I am. I met fear at an entirely diffrerent level than those around me. Still do. I am drawn towards the shit storms, strangely attracted to them. Where others move away, I advance, sometimes dangerously.

I have to watch this carefully. So I do.

When I first solved the riddle of addiction, these words you see in the graphic lept off the page at me. I’d read Mate’s book about addiction, Hungry Ghost, but he doesn;t menton this. Ghost is a good book and makes excellent observations, especially around trauma as a precursor to addiction.

It was when I read another of his books, When the Body Says No (2012), that I saw this quote. I’d written my understanding of addiction to that point in my first book, Drinker’s Riddle. The idea of paradoxically seeking fear figures prominently in that work, because I had realized its force over me after 40 years of using drugs and alcohol.

I knew I used drugs and alcohol to hijack my sympathetic system to fill an internal need.

Seemed to me Mate had the same answers but didn’t make the connection. In Ghost, he thought addiction was about trauma. I’ve heard him say, “every addict has trauma but not every person with trauma becomes an addict.” Lots of truth to this and more right than wrong. But to me, that makes it a weaker contention, an incomplete theory.

I searched for the Hans Selye quote as he mentions it, meticulously reading two of Selye’s books. That’s when I realized he’d written so many I’d be at it forever, and still might miss the damn quote. I was trying to source it so I could credit it properly.

So, I wrote Mate congratulating him for his work, expressing my gratitude for the light he shines on addiction. I asked him about the quote. Nothing.

Then, I contacted the Selye folks, those who continue his legacy in stress management. They were really helpful, loved my theory. The quote? Nothing, they had no idea how Mate came up with it.

Finally,  I told Mate by email it was an important quote and Selye’s people can’t find it. He wrote back admitting he’d put it together from what he’d read of Selye’s writing–someone whose work forms the basis of his understanding about stress (and now mine).

I thought that was pretty decent of him. I didn’t know anything about how you’re supposed to assign source credit for stuff you write about so it was a good lesson. And it was a lesson in responsibility too. Rather than bullshit me, he straight up told me it was his impression.

And it’s understandable. Even if Selye didn’t say these words directly, to not quote him would have been borrowing or leaning too heavily on his work without a mention. I learned something about that distinction from this quote.

More importanly,  it’s enough for all of us to understand we can be programmed from our early years to seek stress. We may not like to admit it, but shit happens, and at some point fear may have been seared upon our soul. Branded this way at a physiological level, we may go searching for it.

There’s a price to pay for this, in relationships, health, longevity, happiness. And what of spirit? Spirit is handcuffed by this tangled mess of methyl groups acting epigenetically on DNA coupled with your databank of emotional experiences operating beneath the surface of awareness. The soul.

Yoga helps, so does heart rate variability training, as does committing to understanding the signals coming from your body in various circumstances so you can address underlying stress and breathe differently, taking control, and then thinking better. If your baseline stress level is “always on”, you can learn ways to shut it off. Or lessen it’s strength.

The pay off is less restlessness, more meaning, less boredom and a longer life. You may even feel more happiness.

That’s worth fighting for.

Stay powerful: never give up

Christopher K Wallace
© 2019, all rights reserved

REAL MEN — LIVE TRUE AND FREE

CHOOSING LOVE

Had a preference for blue-eyed blondes most of my life. All 8-10s I guess you’d say. Divorced the last one after almost 25 years, just shy of it. Knew I could not stand up at the quarter century and say it had been great. In fact, though we had some fun times and raised a fine boy (we’re tight), it was often a nightmare. My fault as much as hers.

Maybe it had to do with the girl who lived behind us in Halifax. I remember reading how our first sexual experiences are lasting. I was about 5 when she invited me into the woods and found a sunny spot for just the two of us. I guess she had to be about 10, or maybe 12, but I’m not sure. There, she pulled her pants down and lay down in the daisies and had me sprinkle petals on her naked vagina. She was a blue-eyed blond. In my mind’s eye, I can still see her laying there touching herself.

Then a gal chose me, because from what I can tell, that’s how it works. She is much younger. Soon she was highlighting her hair to look more blonde, and her eyes are green. I remember that saying as a kid, “never trust a woman with green eyes,” so.. yeah. Great ass, though. I became an ass man. Just happened. Motivation I guess.

After a few years, she stopped dieing her hair. Then she wanted my child. I told her I’d get her a dog. She looked a little hurt. I told her if she did well with the dog, I’d let her have my baby. Because, well, who wouldn’t want my kid, right?

So for her birthday, middle of buttfuck nowhere Alberta in a Febuary snowstorm, I get her this dog. The woman wants 1500 for this little black bitch, Bichon Frise. She’s the runt and goes straight for my gal. Apparently, it’s a Cuban breed sub-type and I’d learned Cuban Salsa after my divorce. Even spent a few weeks in La Habana learning from a top teacher. I give her 750.

That dog, first time I threw a toy it brought it back to my feet. Missus had Ceasar Milan on all day and night. She became a dog-whisperer herself. We move to Toronto. She starts a dog walking and training business. She is really good at it. I know I’m fucked, but I’m amazed.

I take her to see Caesar Milan at the Molson Theater or some place like that downtown. There’s 3K women screaming and me checking my emails. Dog gets sick. Missus gets pregnant. Loses one in the middle of the night. I actually feel for her and I don’t fuck it up. I’m decent. She buries the miscarried fetus in a bean plant in my kitchen the next morning.

Before long, she’s pregnant again. She knew right away this one was good. How could I deny her? A few months after that, a perfect baby girl. Women have told me I needed a daughter to better understand them. I’d scoff. But, they were right. My little girl has taught me plenty about love.

Two years later, a boy arrives. He spends the first few months at Sick Kids. The dog, Maggie May (obviously, she let me name her) is really sick. These fucking vets are expensive and assholes about it when I ask them to put her down.

My gal asks me to take care of it while she’s at Ronald McDonald House, near the boy in Toronto, a hundred clicks from my place in Cobourg. So, I do it myself and bury her in the garden. It’s unpleasant.

My father had five sons. No one named a boy after him. I name the boy Howard, after my dad. He’s over the moon. Grandpa Howie and Baby Howie, now Little Howie.

It’s been 13 years I’m with this light brunette with the green eyes. My daughter is blue-eyed blond like I was as a kid. The boy is spitting image of his mom. He’s mama’s boy, in fact, but, he’s a boy.

I’m their hero. How often do we get to be someone’s hero? I’m her hero too, missus that is. She says, “you might be an old man, but you’re my old man.” I never heard sweeter words. Ever.

She won’t marry me. Maybe I needed that. Says, “if we never get married, we never get divorced.” I can’t argue with her. And, she’s taught me a lot. I want to do well for her, for the kids. One thing I learned is a man can learn to love anyone. He’s adaptable.

So it follows: If happiness is a decision, then so is love.

And everyone wants to feel like someone’s chosen.

Stay Powerful, never give up.
cw

©ckwallace, 2019, all rights reserved.

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NO FLOWERS FOR YOU

Around days like Valentine’s Day, I often hear men say the dumbest things. My favourite is this one:

“My wife doesn’t like cut flowers.”

Oh really?

What the fuck brother. Did you go ask her you dumbass?

Because that’s the wrong god-damned thing to do if you expect to keep getting laid long into the future.

If she doesn’t like cut fucking flowers: TOO FUCKING BAD

You’re giving them to her because that’s what YOU want to do.

And if you know she doens’t like cut flowers because she told you after you asked her, you need to be bitch-slapped like the pussy you are.

Or talked to earnestly, fatherly-like, and have things explained in the simplest of terms. Ok, that’s the tact I’m taking here.

It’s like my first girlfriend Sylvia taught me when I was 15 years old, something I shall never, ever forget: She said, “sometimes when a girl says no, she really means yes.”

Like what the fuck are you supposed to do with that information? How the fuck is that going to help you govern yourself accordinly, so that you somehow meet her demands and satisfy her needs?

Well, the thing is, the advice is GOLD.

Because it tells you do never mind what she wants and to go ahead and love her. LEAD that woman into your arms and bed. She’s begging for this from you. AND, she expects you to know this already.

Don’t be a jerk. Be the best version of yourself. Be kind, be fair, be there, be an immovable presence for good in her life. But you need to sweep that girl off her feet, DO IT.

What else is there? “Oh, hey, babe, I was wondering, would it be ok if I, you know, sort of, swept you off your feet? Just for a minute. I’ll put you right back down. I promise not to drop you!”

Is that going to be your pathetic approach?

Because I can tell you, you may keep a gal living in your home but you will soon be a sexless and frustrated piece of furniture she has to dust off like the rest of it.

Remember, familiartiy breeds contempt. Promixity breeds comfort and boredom.

DISTANCE CREATES SEX.

So don’t become predictable. When a woman tells a man she doesn’t like cut flowers, that’s a test. Send that wench a dozen dozen the very next day! To her work if you can! So all the other wenches will gather around her and want to touch her so some of her magic rubs off on them.

Doesn’t happen that way?

HA! Fool. Soon to be a sexless fool wed to Mrs Thumb and her four daughters…

I spend yesterday delivering flowers and I can tell you, the gals rush her in worship of her love and your devotion.

AND everyone of them, from the 18-year-old clerk in a warehouse to the 70-year-old school secretary practically swoons at the very idea one of them is being adulated so.

It’s the sisterhood you see. They fucking cry for each other.

Men lead; women command. Never forget it. Didn’t get her flowers yesterday? Do it today. Tell her she deserves a special day just for her–that’s how amazing she is.

Your comments? Ideas? Impressions?

Stay powerful: never give up.
cw

ps, I came home with this stuff for her and the kids. Sure enough, it’s all over her wall this morning. She’s making sure her gal pals know she’s loved and appreciated.

I’m happy to oblige her. Left her weak. Trust me.

CHRIS WALLACE
©Feb, 2019 all rights reserved

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