On Raising A Boy

There is a little monster inside men. It rages and hungers for violence, in a constant pitched battle with those other elements inside who speak clarion calls for righteousness and protection and peace.

That rage is evident from the first screams out of mother’s womb. Will it molest my boy, my son? Will he be consumed by the monster inherent within each of our kind, given over to vice and frustration and the death sentence that silence truly is? Stoicism, they used to call it. In reality it is loneliness, cruel and isolating. Today, in the avarice of our culture, we are busy enough to make glib excuses for boys who become men who act like boys. He’s a playboy. Man-child (a comedy!). Finding his way. But inner demons is more to the mark.

My job, so far as I can fathom, as a father, is to temper the beast within my son. Not to crush or eliminate it … no, he will need to call upon that devil deep down from time to time, open the vault a crack and let some of that ill, sulfuric vapor to waft out, when infernal things must be done. In defense. In justice. In war. But it cannot leech into his heart or embed its barbed claws in the otherwise tranquil and fertile grounds of his soul, that eternal mirror of conscience. The boy, and hopefully I, must reserve that basin to be filled with love, humility, and empathy. His soul is his reserve from which to draw on as a human being who builds and carries, one with less striking but more listening. It is the well he must dwell into in times of crises and doubt, and I want that reflection staring back at him to be one of…