Most men know the scene-stopping movie line, “Go ahead; make my day.” We know the actor, the character, the movie… and many of us know the adrenaline rush of thinking we could be the consummate tough guy, Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan, replete with a .44 Magnum in hand. To heck with superiors, playing by the rules, or playing it safe; tough guys play to win. Period.
What we cannot picture, however, is Clint Eastwood returning to his room later that night, hanging up his holster, grabbing some cold pizza, clicking on the T.V., and exclaiming, “Man, am I lonely.” Tough guys, we believe, are not supposed to be lonely.
But there is an obvious dilemma here: we have all been lonely. Whether it was not getting picked for the team, being left off of a party invitation list or being rejected by a girl we wanted to date; we have all felt the sting of rejection. It made us feel very alone. Even worse, we also felt something even more powerful —we felt ashamed. Somebody knew us and then rejected us. For most men, the result of such experiences was anything but being more open and emotionally vulnerable to other people.
But is hiding from others to avoid more pain the answer? To understand this struggle, we must go back to the “Creation Ordinance,” how things were when God created the world, before sin had entered the picture. Adam was in the Garden; he was sinless and had open communication with God in paradise. Yet there was a problem: He was lonely. Think about that. Adam was perfect, and yet Adam was lonely.
What does that tell us? First, that loneliness was created by God. As such, loneliness in and of itself is not wrong. It is not just for weak people. Tough guys get lonely, too. But God did not leave Adam that way, and He did not tell him he just needed to pray harder, go to church more, and get into a small group. God’s answer was an authentic relationship with another human being.
It is here that we begin to understand a great truth: God created us with an innate desire to know and be known, and to love and be loved. We are created to be fully known by God and to know God—and to be fully loved by Him in spite of His knowledge of our failures. As God answered Adam’s condition of loneliness outside Himself, He put on our hearts that same compulsion to be known and loved by other people.
If we are honest with ourselves, we will hear that cry to know and be known and to love and be loved. We long for authenticity, but we hide. We hide behind masks, pretending to be people we are not, presenting the image of a person that someone will like. We overwork because we can control that outcome. We immerse ourselves in sports, addictions, casual relationships, anything to escape the pain.
Even the modern pornography epidemic is fueled by our loneliness. Men believe the person they are staring at is doing it “all for them,” revealing their most private acts to them. The only result is feeling even more lonely, more ashamed of who they are, and more frightened of being known.
Many men have so insulated themselves from the longing of their hearts that they now only experience pseudo-authenticity. Nobody really loves them, because nobody really knows them. Men may have friends to “hang out” with, watch a ballgame, go fishing, or talk business with, but they do not have anyone who loves them authentically. They do not have genuine friends who know everything about them and love them anyway. Therefore, it has been said that most men have six friends who will carry their casket, but very few men have one friend who they can call at 3:00 in the morning.
But there is always hope, as God does not want us to be lonely. C.S. Lewis stated, “The seriousness and importance of friendship is masked for some people by a characteristic which is really its glory: it is unnecessary. It is arbitrary, a thing of choice.”1 Authentic relationships are a choice, but so is our loneliness. Just like in the Creation Ordinance; we need other people. In spite of the risk, men must choose to reach out to others, to risk being known and rejected because it is the only way they will discover being known and loved.
One of the great ironies of this modern age is that men are surrounded by other men, all of whom have the same desires to know and be known, love and be loved, and yet they are all so lonely. Who is going to risk going first? Who is going to risk reaching out to another who is now only an acquaintance, but who, like you and me, truly needs a friend?
At the end of JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” two of the central characters, the Hobbit’s Frodo and Sam, are walking through the forest, pressing on in their journey to destroy the ring. Sam muses, “I wonder if we’ll ever be put into songs or tales.”
“What?” Frodo asks. “I wonder if people will ever say, ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring.’ And they’ll say, ‘Yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn’t he, dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the most famous of Hobbits. And that’s saying a lot.’” Frodo responds, “You left out one of the chief characters—Sam-wise the Brave. I want to hear more about Sam.”
Frodo turns to look at Sam and says, “Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam.” “Now, Mr. Frodo, you shouldn’t make fun. I was being serious,” Sam replies. “So was I,” says Frodo.
All of us need a “Sam” in our lives. We all need someone who “has our backs,” who is with us through thick and thin, cheering for us, encouraging us—someone who knows us and loves us enough to always be there no matter what—even at 3:00 a.m.
We need to choose to find and make those types of friends, because those friends are the real heroes, the real tough guys in the world.
Tim Alan Gardner, LMHC, is a speaker, teacher, counselor, and the author of The Naked Soul: God’s Amazing, Everyday Solution to Loneliness and Sacred Sex: A Spiritual Celebration of Oneness in Marriage. He serves as the director of the Marriage Institute, a research, education and consulting company working to strengthen marriage and family relationships and is a senior consultant with Chorus, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in leadership development.
Endnotes
1 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, audio recording (Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1994).
