Grow Into Being

An Unscientific Essay on What Is Really Missing Originally published at the Good Man Project The myth about boys raised by single moms having a higher chance of turning delinquents is crumbling, as studies show. Still, the question remains: how much do boys need a father figure? I have been exploring masculinity for the past two years. (Okay, to be fair, I’ve been exploring it much longer, but not systematically.) So far, I have interviewed close to seventy men and…

Can you fake competence? Not really. You may ‘fake’ your way through a job interview if the panel does not ask the right questions. Once you’re in, though, incompetence will show up very quickly. How quickly will depend on the area of your (non-)expertise. Unfortunately for many employees, leaders usually have a lot more time to ‘prove’ their incompetence in leading teams than, say, a fake Java programmer in a high-performing team. At least to the top management. The bigger…

So, I hear that positive thinking has fallen from grace. It has “brainwashed [us] into thinking that that confidence will eventually cause competence,’ as Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. The result is over-confidence, people who think they can do everything, when they don’t have the competence to do anything. (Reminds you of one or the other manager?) Worse still, ‘positive thinking’ has the potential to terrorize people into believing that any pain or dark…

When I was about eleven years old, my little brother, then six, slipped me a note to invite me to his room. Those days, as probably many big siblings can relate to, I wasn’t so excited about playing with the younger brother. I wanted to go to my room instead and lock myself up. His room was next to mine and as I approached my door, I changed my mind and decided to honor his invitation. I knocked on his…

  Once again, I don’t find the time to meditate. Instead, today I’ll ride blindly. Today I want to ride differently. Keeping my eyes open doesn’t help me in any way. Even though I can’t do anything about the ride, I always feel the urge to squeeze my knees in or lift my feet as if I could avoid hitting something. You see, usually I drive my car to work. It’s the only safe way in Kampala. But today I…

  Did you know that the primary definition of purging — before involving your bowels or getting rid of stuff — is this: a : to clear of guilt b : to free from moral or ceremonial defilement (Merriam-Webster) I’m often not very good at self-care. The one thing I am good at, though, is purging. The fact that I move my family from continent to continent every three or so years helps reduce our clutter frequently to two suitcases each. Even in between, I need…

  It is not the pain that is fearful. It is the fear that is painful.