A Mason's Work

[00:00] Last week, we talked about something maybe a little bit uncomfortable.
[00:06] We looked at the ledger, the invisible account that your body runs every calibration, every
[00:12] adjustment, every time you perform for the people in your life as opposed to live your
[00:20] real self.
[00:21] We talked about the friction of normal and this idea that we're comparing ourselves
[00:27] against a fantasy of a concept of a person who, frankly, doesn't exist.
[00:34] And we talked about the difference between discernment and suppression.
[00:38] And if you did that work, even just a little bit, you probably found something.
[00:41] Maybe it was small.
[00:43] Maybe it was bigger than you expected.
[00:44] Either way, you now have something you didn't have before.
[00:48] A name for a thing that was just a feeling you couldn't quite put your finger on.
[00:53] This week, we follow that thing to where it lives.
[00:56] Loneliness.
[00:57] In your relationships.
[01:00] Because the cost of the masking isn't just internal.
[01:04] It shapes every interaction you have.
[01:08] Every room you walk into, every relationship you're in, every role you take on.
[01:14] And for a significant number of men, it produces something that they wouldn't use this word for,
[01:20] but that this word describes exactly.
[01:25] Loneliness.
[01:26] Loneliness.
[01:27] Loneliness.
[01:28] Loneliness.
[01:29] Most of the men that listen to this show are not alone.
[01:34] They have families and colleagues and friends that's known for decades.
[01:37] Maybe the calendar is full and the phone has contacts in it.
[01:41] And by every sort of external measure, their social life is functional.
[01:45] And sometimes it's even good.
[01:46] And yet there's a specific experience that happens in the middle of all that.
[01:52] In the meeting at the dinner table or the party where you know everyone in the room.
[01:57] Something goes quiet inside you and you realize that nobody here actually knows what's going on with you.
[02:05] Not because they don't care.
[02:07] It's because you never told them.
[02:10] Because you were busy playing the role of who you are designed to fit in that room as opposed to being your real self.
[02:20] And that experience is outrageously common among people who appear from the outside to be doing just fine.
[02:30] Here's the mechanism.
[02:34] The normal fiction we dismantled last week doesn't just cost you energy.
[02:37] It functions as a clamp.
[02:39] It tells you that what you're actually experiencing is probably not what other people experience.
[02:49] Which means it's probably not appropriate to bring it to the surface.
[02:52] Which means the safest move is to keep it managed and secret.
[02:58] And keep moving.
[03:00] You repeat that sequence across enough interactions, a long enough timeline over years and years and years.
[03:06] And you end up with a life full of relationships that are functional, cordial, sometimes even warm.
[03:11] But completely unable to carry the weight of who you really are.
[03:18] There is a little bit of good news, bad news here.
[03:21] The clamp on your behavior is self-installed.
[03:27] Nobody's keeping you isolated.
[03:30] That fiction of normal that you're working against is running in your own head.
[03:34] Measuring your interior experience against that imaginary standard.
[03:38] Finding it wanting and then routing it away from your everyday face before it ever gets to the conversation.
[03:46] The isolation is self-generated.
[03:49] And it's uncomfortable to hear.
[03:50] But the good news is the barrier is lower than it looks.
[03:53] Because you built it.
[03:56] You can take it apart.
[03:57] Last week we learned.
[03:59] If you give something a name, even privately on the car, on the way home.
[04:03] Even just that moment where you can unmask briefly.
[04:06] You can begin the process.
[04:09] Of taking it apart.
[04:12] A little bit.
[04:14] Around the edges.
[04:15] You can see what you're dealing with.
[04:17] You can start to have opinions.
[04:21] You can start to express yourself.
[04:22] And that's where we're going this week.
[04:25] It's not to some sort of grand disclosure where you're super vulnerable to everyone you ever meet.
[04:30] Although, by all means.
[04:33] Right?
[04:35] This is not an instant patch or some sort of magical grand fix.
[04:42] It is a little bit of being true to yourself.
[04:47] And by proxy, being true to other people.
[04:49] When you do that, you can build a relationship.
[04:53] That relationship you can then turn into a way to grow.
[04:58] A way to share.
[05:00] A way to lighten your load.
[05:01] A way to feel a little bit less alone.
[05:03] In a world that you don't have to put on a face for.
[05:09] We'll get into some of that language tomorrow.
[05:11] And we'll start working on specific operations that will help work through this.
[05:15] But you can't be a member of a lodge or a participant in a group if you're only playing the part of who you think they like.
[05:28] Oh...
[05:29] ...