| The Manly Art of Dying Young |  |
Copyright2003 Stuart W. Rayburn
The symbols of manhood in America today include a cold beer, a steak
on the grill, and a recliner to catch the game. But do these sacred
symbols of manhood really have anything to do with being a real man?
What does it mean to be a man anyway? I offer the following as true
purpose of a real man:
• To provide for your family
• To be a leader in your home
• To raise your children to be good people and to contribute to
society
• To be an example of how to live
• To instill hope in the future so that your children can
realize their dreams
• To show young boys in your home and community how to be good
men
• To contribute to your community so that the world is a better
place because of you
I think that about covers most of it. It looks like quite a bit is
expected of us men. I would dare to say that many of us are not
stepping up. So how are you doing? The first item alone keeps most
of us so busy that we don't have the time we would like for the
others. As you can see these are not things you can put on your to
do list and cross them off one day. They occur over the course of
your life and although you can't do them in a day it is your
daily actions that determine whether you will successfully fulfill
your duties. Let's take a look at how your daily habits impact
your success as a man.
The life of the typical American man can be summed up pretty
quickly. You work 45 hours a week at a job that you don't really
enjoy. At 25 you start to put on some weight. Once you hit 30 your
at least 30 pounds overweight with a "healthy paunch". You
spend most of your waking hours behind a desk or the wheel of your
car. At forty you really slow down and have constant aches and
pains, you may already be on medication for high blood pressure or
high cholesterol. It is pretty much downhill from here. You spend
the next 25 years dealing with one ailment or another, worried when
prostate cancer or a heart attack will jump out and grab you. Then
finally you succumb to one of these killers at 45, 50, 60, or maybe
you'll make it 70 and spend the last 10 years going from your
urologist to your cardiologist before you finally leave your family
and friends.
So how did it get to be like this? You need look no further than
your daily routine. Every day you wake up grab a cup of coffee and a
donut that you eat as you drive 30 minutes to work. Then you sit in
your office for 9 hours. During the day, you might run out for a
burger, fries, and coke for lunch and perhaps snack on a candy bar to
break you out of your mid afternoon slump. On the way home, you pick
up a pizza because your wife has also been working all day and no one
feels like putting a meal together. After dinner you flop down in
your recliner, perhaps enjoy a cold one and spend the rest of night
in front of the television.
Do you think that this daily routine will get you closer to
fulfilling your duties as a man? How does your routine compare to
this? I think that if you re-examine the important duties of any
real man you will find that it is necessary to have a long healthy
life full of energy to be a success. You can't just pour your
energy into your business because your family will suffer. Although
they may be well off financially, without investing time and energy
in your family you will come up painfully short in all other measures
of manhood. It is not enough simply to provide for your family,
because it is all the other things that determine your real legacy in
life.
It is not necessary to be exhausted after 6:00. It is not necessary
to be overweight. It is not necessary to die before you have even
had a chance to retire and enjoy the fruits of your labors. It is
not necessary to tell your grandchildren that you can't chase
them around the yard. It is not necessary to have bypass surgery at
45 to postpone an inevitable heart attack. It is not necessary to
burn your life's savings on prescription drugs to hide the pain
over the last 20 years of your life. You can change all of these
things, but it will require changing what you think of as manly.
It is your daily habits that determine your future. Your decision to
have a donut for breakfast rather than a bowl of fresh fruit. Your
decision to have a burger and fries for lunch rather than a salad.
Your decision to sit on the couch rather than communicating with your
children or spouse. Your decision to sit around and down a six-pack
with the boys reminiscing of your past athletic glories, rather than
building an athletic body.
I get very tired of hearing people, mostly men say that they would
rather die 10 years sooner than give up meat or beer or any of the
other harmful products that have somehow become associated with
manhood. It has clearly been shown that avoiding meat, highly
processed foods, and alcohol will greatly reduce your chances of
cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure. In
fact adopting a truly healthy lifestyle can reverse nearly all of the
diseases that plague our nation today. Just for the record, you
aren't giving up 10 years for these indulgences, it is more like
20 or 30 years. Are you willing to tell your family that you would
trade 20-30 years with them so that you can continue to have your
burger and fries, your steak and cold beer?
I have a different vision of manhood. I think that a real man
strives to be as healthy as possible. He feeds his body what it
needs to be healthy, not what Madison Avenue tells him he needs to be
a man. He exercises to stay lean and strong. He knows that without
the health and energy to truly experience life he has truly fallen
short of his responsibilities as a man. He takes care of himself and
does not count on a man in a lab coming up with some pill that will
wipe away the years of abuse.
A real man does not accept that it is natural to put on 30 pounds
after marriage. A real man does not accept dying of a heart attack
at 60 years old leaving his wife to fend for herself and never really
knowing his grandchildren. A real man is bigger than the stereotypes
that have been around for generations and chooses his own path in
life.
I have a challenge for all the real men out there. Stop continuing
down a path that will certainly lead to a slow painful death at an
early age. Rather than missing out on the many great experiences
that life has to offer, take control of your life and take back your
health. Come to grips with what it really means to be a man and live
everyday to give more to yourself, your family, and your community.
You cannot succeed at any of this if you continue to indulge in the
symbols of manhood that have lead to the early deaths of many of our
grandfathers, father, brother, and friends. Be different, be a man.
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Stuart W. Rayburn is a Lifestyle Coach for Vitality Health and
Fitness. He has developed a program to shed weight easily and
quickly without being hungry. Go to
http://www.takebackyourhealth.org for more information and to sign up
for a free newsletter. Or mailto:stu@t...
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