“Put up your feet and dream or you will die.”
Clarence was an older man when I was a younger man. Every Friday he drove to a lonely place to dream about what could be — to think about possibilities.
Clarence was a mentor of sorts. I admired the way he held a guy’s personal growth above professional success. To Clarence, personal growth meant taking risk. It meant going where you’ve not been before. It meant turning my head to face my reticence to risk regular change in my life.
Though I was stalled, I wasn’t ready to risk my position to launch a new dream.
A professional crisis took my risk for me. My career exploded in my face, upset my values, exposed my emotion and put me at odds with dozens of people who would never understand.
Clarence phoned one evening. His annoying habit of marginalizing pain and hardship confused me. He thought my storm a mere squall. More important to Clarence were the possibilities of my future and taking steps to grow as a man than a little inconvenience of humiliation and destruction of my professional manhood.
How dare he?
That mere squall became my buddy and confidant. It ripped away the modesty of my fear and laid bare the intimate places of my life where risk was waiting for me. It took my seemingly indispensable obstacles out of my way so that I could unveil my dreams and actually touch them.
I felt exposed. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my crisis of career uncovered countless stunted areas of life which would soon bud and grow — among them my sexuality. And sexual growth would require considerable risk.
Some guys are natural risk takers especially in sports and adventure. Others put their finances at risk — a calculated risk expecting a return or an entrepreneurial pursuit.
However, when it comes to risk opening the shutters of intimate places of our lives, guys tend to play the safe game. It’s frightening to imagine that others might see what you really fear, or really think, or worse, what you really want sexually.
Most of us have a narrow view of sexuality because of our miniscule exposure to sexual ideas at the time of our value development. Sexual curiosity or experimentation may have brought us new experiences, but these are often concealed and followed by guilt. And that stunts growth. Risk stimulates it.
Almost every growth opportunity in life is accompanied by risk — risk of failure, disappointment or loss. The flip side is also accompanied by risk — risk of overwhelming success and a possibility of a richer life yet accompanied by a terrifying demand for a shift in values and behavior which begs to be known by others in our lives.
Just like Clarence telling me I’ll die if I don’t dream, our male soul warns us that our sexuality is a vital artery to a thriving life. If we don’t pay attention to it, we’ll shrivel and die. There is no passive sexuality. You have to go after it. If you’re in a sexual crisis, remember that it’s a mere squall. What’s more important is that you grow and thrive. Your soul tells you what you need to do to recover. You just need to take the risk and do it.
Sean Christopher
Bio:
Sean Christopher writes OrgasmicGuy.com, a web site geared to sexual recovery and sexual growth for guys of all varieties.
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