Somewhere along the lines of popular culture and movies, We Men have been convinced that being a lone wolf is somehow masculine and a sign of strength. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve actually mentioned this in my upcoming book.
I’ll admit it, I took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I convinced myself that IF I was a real man, I’d do everything by myself cause, that’s what men do right? Well, there is some truth to that, but not that much more than the obvious.
Men like to figure things out for ourselves. We are problem solvers. Sometimes we love to do things by ourselves. Still till this day, I still try to do everything on my own when I can. But there is a huge difference between attempting to do things by yourself and completely shutting yourselves out to the help, wisdom, and knowledge of other men.
We Men have been taught that reaching out to other men means we are dependent on them and thus we are weak. Unfortunately, I believed this until I almost had a mental breakdown from taking everything on all by myself.
Who told you that you have to do the lone wolf thing to be a real man? Didn’t our ancestors hunt and fish together? If the hunt didn’t go well for a certain hunter, didn’t they all sit around the camp fire talking about how to improve their hunting weapons and techniques the next time they went out? Of course they did.
So why should we as men look at it differently today? I’m a man that has struggled with friendship my entire life up until about 10 years ago. My downfall was my expectation of others. I put my maximum effort into the friendship and didn’t get much in return. Why? I’m a good friend to have, I’m dependable. The answer came over me suddenly. I wasn’t choosing GOOD friends. I wasn’t handing around successful men that could teach me anything.
So I went our of my lone wolf comfort zone, and slowly started to make friends with the right men. Men that won’t tell me “it’s OK” when I fail to work out or fail in my daily life and growth. Honestly, who needs those type of friends? I don’t.
Along the way of me getting out of my “Lone Wolf” persona, I made another mistake. I started to hang out with one type of guy. I hung out with the same type of guy I was. Athletic, loved sports, MMA, ect. I quickly realized that I was growing in only one way.
As a truck driver, I have a lot of time to contemplate on those long roads. So I asked myself one day, Why don’t you have any scholarly type of friends? Why don’t you have any IT type of friends? Why don’t you have fill in the blank type of friends? Hey, I caught it.
After that paradigm change, I set another goal to make different types of friends. Don’t laugh, but I began to think of it as a video game combat team. If any of you have played team games like Battlefield 4 or whatever, you know that you don’t go out into the video game battle with all snipers. Who would do that?
You have a medic, sniper, support, and rifleman right? And then you have a helicopter pilot that can fly really good so you have gun them from the sky and jump out at your strategic location. You laughed didn’t you? I applied that to real life. If I hang around a bunch of people like me, what new things can I learn? Not much.
What if I hung around good people that could teach me different things from what they have learned in life? Things that they specialize in their career’s? What would happen if i befriended someone in IT? Two things, I learn what he knows and he learns what I know. See how beneficial it could be? I suck at anything related to IT. But i won’t for long if I have a friend in IT. My IT friend sucks in the gym, but he wont for long if he’s around me. So it’s quite beneficial to be around a different set of friends. What do you get out of being a Lone Wolf? Not much. Why is it so hard for men to start and maintain friendships? Expectations and being around the wrong men. A friend that cares about you will care about your future and what you got going on in the present. Views of friendships among men have been hijacked by Hollywood.
Being a friend isn’t standing by your friend as he tumbles down the tunnel of inactivity and failure. A friend will check his friend in a good, yet firm way. Remember the hunters? What if a hunter made a mistake that caused his family to go hungry? Imagine if all the men knew his mistake and lack of technique, and told him, “It’s ok, you did fine, maybe next time”.
You have killed the friendship right there. If you have a solution, present it to your friend or brother. He may not want to hear it. It may be sharp to his heart or feelings, but it’s the right thing to do IF you are his friend
We as Muslim men have the entire world against us. We need to come together but we need to come together with purpose, intention, and a direction that comes from the Quran and the messenger of Allah ﷺ. What are you bringing to the friendship? What do you offer as a man? This is the reason why we are on a never ending quest to improve ourselves
