Understandings...

As I have continued in my search to understand masculinity, I've come to realize that people who come to have natural control don't need to create it artificially.  To those who have natural control, control isn't an objective.  It's just a part of life, like the color blue is part of a beautiful tapestry.  They don't have to look for people or things to control, they influence people, things, and the environment without really making it a conscious effort.

Control and influence are a part of man's nature.  Men who haven't discovered natural control crave the control they don't have.  Some men have found that creating artificial control appeals to that craving.  That artificial control becomes a conscious objective for them because they crave it and don't have it.

So if you find a man who is consciously pursuing control, chances are he doesn't have it.  The man who has natural control doesn't need to pursue it; it flows to him because it is natural for him.

Looking for someone who will obey you is an effort to create artificial control.  Discovering that someone is obeying you is natural control.

I just saw the film Twelve Thirty.  It was a very weird film—it didn't follow the Hollywood formula at all, and I didn't really understand where the movie was going... until I heard the song playing during the credits (Shape Shifter by Keri Noble—play here: Shape Shifter ).  It's a film about how different real women (who are complex) are from the unnaturally ideal woman (who is simple) sought by some men.  The characters in the film were portrayed so complex that the complexity became their only character trait, and so the characters became shallow, but that's part of the creator's effort to make the point.  Unfortunately, when women try to become the unnaturally ideal woman, they stop being real, and they stop being themselves.

So these men that are looking for someone to artificially control, the only ones they find who are willing to submit to them are the ones that don't have a healthy sense of self, who are willing to become what someone else wants them to be, rather realizing the incredible value that is already within them.

So the non-control (and therefore unrealized) men find the unhealthy (and therefore unrealized) women.  They both try to become something they are not.  They become Shape Shifters.  What kind of fulfillment does that relationship create?

The song describes a man seeking artificial control.

The way for these men and women to find fulfillment?  To realize that who they are is not who they think they are, and to start discovering who they really are.  You can't find what really fulfills you until you find out who you really are, until you really understand yourself.

For the man who does not know natural control, simple women are easy.  Complex women are scary.  Just ask Jeff.