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Today I’m gonna talk about the difference between boys and men.
That is in preparation for discussing initiation rites to help boys make the transition from boyhood into manhood.
The first, most obvious difference between a boy and a man is physical. I sat down this morning with my oldest grandson and I said to him, “hey, you know what? In the next couple of years, you’re going to becoming a man.”
And he reacted in a very boyish way. He covered his eyes, put his head down and basically acted like he didn’t want to hear anymore. And that tells me he’s not really quite ready to start entering into the transition period.
I told him a little bit more about what’s gonna happen with him physically, and he was even more upset by that. So, the physical part of transforming from a boy into a man happens all by itself. The biology happens by itself.
But I’ve identified several other areas that mark the difference between a boy and a man and I’d like to talk about those with you.
Those differences are emotional, psychological, and sexual.
Emotionally, a boy is labile. A man should be stable.
Psychologically, a boy is focused on the moment and on the present. A man is focused on the future.
Sexually, a boy has no interest in girls. That isn’t particularly unique outside of it. He doesn’t think any more about girls than he does about any other being that’s not him.
A man – once a man makes that transition from a physical boy to physical man – the thoughts of women will, by and large, take over his thinking many times throughout his day. Throughout his life, the desire for physical closeness with a woman – in sexual connection with a woman – will be almost overwhelming.
There’s also another difference between a boy and a man, that is in the area of volition or will. And that expresses itself primarily through the desire for mastery.
Oh, a boy desires mass fun. He will he will work to master something, as long as it is fun. But the instant it stops being fun, he’ll go, “it’s not worth it.”
A man, on the other hand, will exercise his will – his volition – because he wants to do two things. One: he wants to find out where his own limits are, whether those are physical, mental, psychological, artistic, whatever.
He’s going to push himself to the very limits of his ability and that requires mastery. And that leads to…
Oftentimes, a boy’s relationship to pain is different from a man’s relationship to pain. This is for the same reasons that a boy’s relationship to mastery or volition is different from a man’s relationship.
A boy flees from pain because pain isn’t fun, and because a boy’s relationship with volition or mastery is all based on whether or not an activity is fun. It’s natural that he will leave run away from pain, because pain isn’t fun.
A man has a different relationship to pain. The desire to explore the very limits of his own ability and the desire to experience and exercise mastery in his world gives him that different relationship to pain. Because of that, a man will choose to endure pain as long as he sees that it gets him closer to exploring his own limits, and closer to exerting his will – his mastery – over his environment, whatever that chosen environment happens to be.
I think that that summarizes it. Those are the areas where a boy and a man are really different.
Now, there’s an awful lot of male-bodied boys running around who have made the physical transition from boy to man, but in every other way they are still boys, with the exception of the sexual way which is primarily a function of biology.
Emotionally they’re still labile. They’re not stable psychologically. They’re still entirely focused on the moment rather than focused on the future and what they can build.
In terms of volition, they only focus on things that are fun. The instant it gets hard, they quit. The instant it hurts, they quit. They are not interested in exploring their own limits whatever those may be, because exploring those limits requires pain. And pain is not fun and therefore they run away from it.
These are the reasons why we need to have initiation ceremonies or rituals to help boys enter into the full expression of manhood. Not just the physical and the sexual, but the psychological, the emotional, the volitional and our relationship to pain.
I hope tomorrow to go into some ideas for initiation rituals for boys.