Artisans and

Craftsmen look away now, for I am about to butcher the definitions of your Art, but please know my intentions are good… if a little ignorant.

A mold predetermines the shape, size and substance of something. Before the process of actually creating what comes out of the mold, the decisions have been made; the outcome is known.

Sculpting on the other hand is not a science. The outcome is gradually revealed through the choices of the sculptor, using his instinct, experience and vision to craft something he has in mind (if he has a plan or a subject).

Humans are a mix of both. Initially we have to be molded by our parents, “Don’t do that. Use your knife and fork. Look both ways. Put your coat on.” But then gradually, the balance shifts in favour of sculpting, as we begin to try things. Maybe the football team dad enrolled you in isn’t for you anymore, you’re more of a comic book kind of guy… maybe you chose to go vegetarian… listen to Pantera… study French not German.

There is a queue of brands and institutions ready to take over the molding process from your parents. And unlike mummy and daddy, they don’t have your best interests at heart. The adolescent anxieties over ‘fitting in’ is the plumpest cash cow in the yard and marketers will milk it dry daily.

It’s therefor vital to your authenticity as an individual and the potency of your balls that you remain a sculptor. And in order to sculpt, you need a vision, even just a vague, abstract direction. Having something to aim for helps you make the decisions now, in sculpting terms, to make the right imprints here, and the slight shaving there.

To use a cliché, imagine an astronaut. They didn’t just get popped out from a mold and

rolled into a rocket. That person had to make decisions, years (maybe decades) in advance that would ultimately lead them to today.

If you think of yourself as a sculptor, then every decision, from what you eat, to what you do with your time this evening forms part of a bigger picture (sculpture?). No one is expecting you to have made your mind up about who you plan to become, and even if you have, it will likely change along the way. But if you don’t make the decisions, someone else will.

Bosses will happily take the malleable you and put you to work for them, girlfriends love a guy they can shape into the perfect boyfriend, and which father wouldn’t want, ‘a chip of the old block’.

Men don’t let outside forces determine who they become. They maintain the fight to control their size, shape and substance.

I can hardly credit it, but in the very same week two of my mates have both been ditched by their girlfriends. Dare I believe they were a rotten shag, or what?

Sometimes I wonder if women these days have forgotten 1. how important they are to us, and 2. how pathetic we are at thanking them for it ….. and no thanks to the male ego for getting way out of line during the fourth 7-year cycle beginning around age 21, methinks.

Why are women so important? Forget the shagging, I reckon it’s because they help us to become what we’re capable of becoming. As the wise man pointed out, ‘a man’s reach has to exceed his grasp’, and the fact that sometimes we reach it and hold on to it is the result of having that special female alongside.

Prior to the outbreak of ‘women’s lib’ in the 1970’s, thanks to writers like Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer (with her amazing ‘The Female Eunuch’), an unwillingness to commit to a relationship – one which in all probability would lead to marriage – was perceived as a male issue. Guys newly released from the strictures of parental control were reluctant to get ‘tied down’ with what for most of them meant mortgages, monogamous sex and the subsequent ‘patter of tiny feet’.

This fear remains in the early twenties, but what’s changed is that when the fifth 7-year cycle begins around age 28, and guys begin to see life from a different perspective, they’re now not as firmly in the driving seat as in the past. We seem to have reached a stage when the male gender is ready to commit but the females are having second thoughts.

In fact for some of them – those who married early in their late teens or early twenties – they’re now looking for a divorce and a re-think of what commitment to a male is all about.

And maybe this unwillingness to commit reflects a deeper human problem; our growing inability to handle time. Perhaps the effect of ‘women’s lib’ as a source of social change has now run its course and technology and genetics are now ‘calling the shots’ on how to live.

Most people for either gender seem to bemoan the current pace of life and the impotence they feel to ‘slow it down’. But what does this complaint actually reflect? That we’re attempting to achieve too much? That we’re afraid we’re ‘missing out’ on what we suspect might be going-on on the other side of the hill? That we don’t have the time to ‘dig deep’, at least enough to find out how others really tick below the surface? Does commitment imply taking up too much of our precious time?

And if so … where on earth do we think that we’re heading?

I’ve had a bout of worry that I’m not getting enough.

In what you might call a very general way, this has been in my head off and on for as long as I can remember, but it’s been a constant this past month.

That’s since the drink I had with my mate Dave, who’s really, really worried he’s not getting enough.

Conversely, Jimmy (the guy he works with) – who Dave reckons is the big “swinging dick” in their office – claims that if he has to cope with getting any more than he’s already getting he’ll have a heart attack.

Apparently when they were discussing this (that’s Dave and Jimmy) Jimmy began to laugh, presumably about coping with all that he was getting. Dave said that he began to laugh as well, at least for the first ten seconds, but this then came to a halt when he realized 1) he didn’t know what was so funny and 2) he suddenly realized that unlike Jimmy, he wasn’t getting enough. At least, he didn’t think he was.

When I asked Dave why, when, where and how he’d suddenly reached the conclusion he wasn’t getting enough, he suddenly clammed up like he didn’t want to talk about it.

I was a bit pissed off at his reaction; after all, he was the one who first brought up the subject when he told me about having a drink with a Jimmy. What had prompted their discussion about whether each of them was getting enough he didn’t explain, nor why Jimmy had started to laugh.

According to Dave, Jimmy was laughing almost uncontrollably for two or three minutes. I hadn’t realized how much this whole subject had been lurking in my mind until last week when I stopped for a drink with Phil, one of my work colleagues. As we walked into the bar we use occasionally, I was aware of a couple of guys laughing their heads off. Quick as a flash, I wondered if they laughing because they were getting more than they could handle.

However, having raised the issue two days ago with my cousin Lionel

(who’s a doctor), I’ve come to the conclusion that whether you’re getting too little or too much isn’t a medical condition, but a male curse rooted less in your erotic itching than in your state of mind.

When I told Lionel about my current worries, all seven years at medical school could offer was “join the club.”

There’s really no escaping the horror of discovering your first grey pubic hair.

Man, you’re getting old-er

Okay, it’s not as serious as your left ball falling off. That’s just a short term issue.

My big issue with that first faded fucker is that it brings with it a daily reminder that finding yourself in a state of rest is now only reasonable if you’re either at a point of total exhaustion or enjoying a moment of self-indulgence.

There’s a reminder in the What Men Do Guide of Willy Loman, the hero of Arthur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman,” who, in seeking to explain the importance of purpose as a fundamental drive in a man’s life, says “a man can’t go out the way he came in; a man has to add up to something.”

A brilliant line revealing a poignant truth, particularly depressing when you’re holding that first grey little fucker between your thumb and forefinger.

That’s why I speak of your “lost ball” as a short-term issue. You get used to it and make the other one work doubly hard.

But you don’t need me to remind you of the once-a-day scenario following the discovery that there’s another one lurking in your bush.

A new constant has entered your life and it ain’t gonna go away. It’s like the memory of that first embarrassing shag when you lost not only your underwear (hey, it happens) but also your self-respect. Well, fleetingly. In passing, it’s okay for these erudite philosophers to preach the virtues to be gained from life experience, the heightened perceptions we will ultimately enjoy from having the

courage to expose our weaknesses, but we’re the ones left with the sweaty wake-ups, and the realization that one more day has simply “vamooshed,” seemingly without much purpose.

But you’re right-I’m being very negative about this. The daily discovery could be interpreted as yet another hairy treasure that just happened to have lost its original colour, come to remind you that time is ever fleeting-especially yours-and if you have any fancy ideas about leaving what they call these days, a “lasting legacy,” you’d better placate any tensions prompted by your nether regions and shift your ass.