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Today we’re going to talk about a heroic vision for our boys.
One of my normal bedtime routines is to read something – generally light fiction – because it helps me to unwind on those nights when I don’t sleep well or when I have trouble getting to sleep.
I’ve had Lois L’Amour’s book Lonesome Gods by my bedside the last week or so. I can generally read anywhere from a half a chapter to a chapter and a half before I nod off to sleep for the night.
But last night, I got into the middle of the book. Louis L’Amour really hit his stride with this particular book. I stayed up until after 2:00 finishing the book and this morning I want to talk about why books like Louie L’Amour’s Lonesome Gods are important.
Our boys need role models.
We all know that. but in this day and age of political correctness, it’s more important than ever that a boy be given a very clear archetypical role model for what masculinity really looks like.
You won’t find better archetypes of the masculine hero and the masculine villain or – for that matter – the feminine heroine in the works of Louis L’Amour.
What is it that we want our boys to become when they grow up?
Well physically. we want them to be strong and disciplined. Emotionally we want them to be in control of their emotions. Psychologically we want them to be focused on creating a better future no matter what it may happen to cost them in the present.
We want them to have a relationship with pain where they do not run from it but rather embrace it for the sake of their future good and the good of those that they love.
We want them to be ambitious, to have a vision for their own future. to build and create something that that they perceive to be worthwhile.
We want them to be men with a powerful volition, with the will to forge out of the raw material of their own lives and the world at large the vision that they have, that exists only within their minds.
And finally, we want them to be in charge of their own appetites. Not just the appetite for air and food and water, but the appetite for sex and for power. We want them to be in control of that rather than be controlled by it.
You will not find better archetypes for men who embody those heroic qualities than in the stories of Louis L’Amour.
I can particularly recommend the book Jubal Sackett. Now, it’s a bit of a slog for a younger reader, but I’m going to turn my 11 year old grandson onto one of the Louis L’Amour novels pretty soon, Something smaller than Lonesome Gods, perhaps Jubal Sackett.
I want him to have a very clear, unambiguous vision of what it means to be a heroic, masculine man. Now I also want him to have a picture of what a feminine heroine looks like.
The women in Louis L’Amour’s novels are feminine archetypes. They are not weaklings, but they are definitely feminine. They want men who are masculine, heroic archetypes. And they know that in order to win that sort of man, they must be feminine heroine archetypes.
So prep your boys as they are becoming men with a vision of what it means to be a heroic male, a heroic masculine hero.
You need to embody that yourself. Pay attention to yourself men. Where do you lack? Fix it. And then give your boys the gift of great fiction, fiction that will give them a heroic vision for their own lives.
Louie L’amour is a good place to start