Knights

I'm reading the Keys to the Kingdom by Alison Armstrong. I wasn't sure that I'd like this book, but I've reached a place that has my attention. Knights…possessing the title of Sir; a place beyond childhood; a member of the brotherhood. I wrote today answering a man who is leaving behind the stage of his life of being a Knight. Knighthood is the phase of a man’s life that I am most familiar with. Knights…where nothing exists in the world but living in the here and now…how they follow their hearts with great tales of adventure to be had…a life before them brimming with fun and challenge.

I saw it this past summer when one of my lifeguards joined the reserves and how the miles of running and boot camp training were, as he said ‘so much fun’. The challenges he saw ahead of him were mere child’s play and what I might consider slightly detached from the reality of what was to befall him.

I saw it in J.’s boyfriend of two years who wasn’t ready to place an engagement ring on her finger. His plans included finishing college, joining the military, (having her follow him around the country—base to base) and waiting for some imaginary law enforcement job to appear ‘guaranteed’ because of his squire ‘training’.

She waited for him, spending weekends alone while he was off playing hockey. He told her it was his last season….then he asked her to wait again this winter while he had decided to travel the country playing hand ball. He asked her for the next number of untold years to wait. I suggested to her that she not. Patterned and predictably his life is about the quest of testing his manhood, exploration and amusement. Fervently driven to what he HAS to do.

I saw in L. when his greatest challenge was winning the heart of a woman who didn’t want him. It’s funny to me because until this moment I hadn’t realized that about him and yet I know that his favorite movie is Dark Knight. I felt the movie was awful and couldn’t find a place of an emotional attachment to it. And yet here he is, traveling the country for a living—his great adventures, training and fighting-- pursuits that he really has no business being a part of—and clear as day, he is nothing more than a knight trying to prove his worthiness to a woman he has sworn allegiance to like knights of old. He trains to capture the attention of a woman who he thinks values the fight.

I’ve seen it in my brothers who scuba—and are willing to give up a mating opportunity to do so, who dirt bike in the desert, who dream of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Whose ideal of a burial is a sky burial—continued adventures through living in the bodies of birds that have picked their carcasses clean of flesh. It bears witness to the knighthood that remains inside of them.

I’ve seen it in the men that rise up to challenge me on the site that I frequent. Earlier this week I had called them tin soldiers and I realize now why I had. I spoke to ‘Thor’ about this issue this morning. He told me that ’it amazed him that seemingly every girl from Atlantic City bar chicks to 19 year old Catholic virgins still deep down crave cockiness. It’s actually something I’ve actively worked to tone down in myself from the time I was in my teens. But I’m admittedly a white belt in this area of understanding females. The waiting game I think is always horrible for all involved. You can’t predict when and what stage of life you will meet certain people. And your ideal plans are often far from reality.’

Cockiness is definitely something that women like--and I wish you would have shown more of that on your date...but I believe it's also something that does get toned down in men as they mature more and become more comfortable in their own skin. It is a biological imperative for women. *IF *in caveman times, a man wasn't strong enough both emotionally to stand up to other men (cockiness equals a man’s first line of defense), their women were taken from them. If a man wasn't strong enough physically, they were either killed off by other men or animals. Women NEEDED this from men, for without their protection, both themselves and their offspring died.

As animals, we have not changed in tens of thousands of years. One hundred years of women in the workforce—being able to fend for themselves by providing their own food, clothing and shelter has not changed this. The liberation from not needing the protection of her father’s house giving her in caretaking protection to her husband’s house has not changed this. Birth control—meaning that a woman doesn’t need have a man provide for her having born his young, has NOT changed this inside of a woman. Our biological imperative--the imprinted urge that a woman has to find the strongest mate that she can attract--for her protection and survival, has not changed.

For the women that believe that it has, suffer in that loss of consciousness…they have essentially talked themselves out of what is, as women, their birthright. Their chasing men, by their ‘pickiness ‘ of waiting for the perfect mate at the perfect time leaves them most often single and questioning why. What nature, in its’ infinite wisdom instilled, a generation or two of ‘wrong thinking’ has left women at the end of the line of their progeny. For thousands of years of genetic material being carried forward without question, women of this generation have stopped nature in its tracks. The most painful way that I’ve ever heard this described was (collectively) ‘you had children and grandchildren that you didn’t ever get to meet’.