The Shame in the Journey
EDITOR’S NOTE: Please help me in welcoming the newest Assistant Editor for the ManKind Project Journal. WELCOME GONZALO! Thank you for your service! ~ Boysen Hodgson, MKP USA Communications & Marketing Director
by Gonzalo Salinas
Before my sister Mariola came to the world, we were three siblings: Victor, Fernando and I.
Victor became an officer of the Peruvian Navy. Fernando became an officer of the Peruvian Air Force. When it came my time to decide, and about to finish high school in Lima, my father asked me:
“What are you going to do with your life?”
“I want to be a writer,” I replied timidly.
He gave me a dry look, and said, “Do you want to be poor?” and then continued,
“If you like books you better be an attorney.”
Then he left the room.
At that moment, I covered my vocation with shame.
Carrying shame about being who we really are is a defect of our culture, a cultural shadow, that leads us to lifes we don’t want to live. If the world around you doesn’t accept who you really are, a normal reaction would be to move away from those people. But what happens when the people who don’t accept you are close friends or even family? Even worse, what happens when you are so young that a message you hear leads you to think something is deeply wrong with you?
We start covering our lives with shame. This is what happened to me.
Shame is a very real imaginary illness, which once encysted on your subconscious mind, it will affect every part of your self-image, and without a doubt will have repercussions in your life. According to Dr. Robert Glover (author of the great book No More Mr. Nice Guy) if you don’t work on the little issues that are holding you back on your inner self, then you won’t pass to the next level on your development, no matter how small they are.
Robert Bly, on his book Seven Sources of Shame, explains that we can “practice” living with shame, and at certain point we just tolerate shame in our lives: the consequences will be that we’ll believe that we are not adequate to the society, and our interpretation is that our shames ARE ourselves, and not circumstances that we can let go out of our lives at any time.
Living our lives with shame is not life.
After a few years since my father rejected my confession of wanting to become a writer, this is the panorama: He’s now 67 and I’m 33. I know he loves me and I love him. And after a lot of men’s work, I’ve build a routine like this:
Depending on the day I wake up, go to yoga or for a run in South Beach, FL. Then I open a book for my reading of the day, and right after I start my writing time, and then continue with my day. I love everything related to the writing life: to write, to read, to research, going to conferences, to take notes, book presentations, literary magazines, etc. Even ordering books on Amazon is a big pleasure.
And all of those activities are the activities of a writer.
That kid who covered his writing vocation in shame is dissolving, and after years of acceptance, working many jobs, learning many lessons and having done serious men’s work. I’m excited that I’ll be writing for the MKP Journal every week. And happily, I celebrate that I’m a writer.
Gonzalo Salinas is the MKP Journal assistant Editor for the ManKind Project USA, a nonprofit mentoring and training organization that offers powerful opportunities for men’s personal growth at any stage of life. Salinas studied Literature in Lima, Peru at San Marcos University, and has been living in the United States since 2003. He lives in Miami, FL, and is committed to his development with the organization and the dissemination of the message of the Mankind Project.
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
