In this episode, Brett sits down with Zeke Smith, a 26-year-old photographer and web designer, to discuss what it means to be a man. Zeke talks about his journey to becoming a man, how he became a man and what it takes to be one.
00:02:42.220But I think marriage certainly brings out a lot of qualities in a person that really translate into you discovering what it means to be a man.
00:02:51.740You really become much more aware of things outside of yourself than you ever have been before.
00:02:57.000You sort of become aware of the fact that you might be a little bit selfish as a person or different things like that,
00:03:03.880and really make you start to reach out and think about things beyond just your own sphere of influence.
00:03:08.900And so I really think that just the worlds that open up when you get married is really a lot of what it means to be a man
00:03:17.760and start to become conscious of taking care of other people besides yourself and being kind and how you act
00:04:05.620I mean, I think probably the way that I define manliness the most is the godly man.
00:04:11.800And I know I probably elicited a lot of eye rolls from listeners and that kind of thing with that comment.
00:04:17.760And I don't necessarily mean the religious man, the guy who pounds on his chest and says, like, I know what God wants for me.
00:04:25.740And it's to keep the woman in the kitchen barefoot and making me pies.
00:04:29.100But I actually mean, you know, I think that manliness is really defined by a lot of the figures in the Bible.
00:04:37.680I am actually a Christian, and, you know, I hope that doesn't make listeners uncomfortable or anything like that.
00:04:44.380But I think that there are a lot of really cool visions of manliness that come out of biblical stories.
00:04:50.160You know, there are guys who are well aware of their flaws, have really big problems, but they, you know, overcome them through faith and perseverance and things like that.
00:05:01.080And that's really a definition of a man to me is a man who realizes that he has flaws, but cares for the people around him and really looks to something beyond himself, sort of the greater purpose, if you will.
00:05:16.120Yeah. So this kind of leads on to our next question.
00:05:18.860What men in your life, living, dead or, you know, fictional or from history, have influenced your views of manliness?
00:05:25.720Sure. Yeah. And I think to that point, certainly biblical figures have influenced my my view.
00:05:34.080But I mean, it's not really enough to say that those are the only people who have influenced my view on manliness.
00:05:39.700My dad, obviously, is probably the the number one influence, as I can.
00:05:44.740I'm sure that a lot of readers and listeners can say the same.
00:05:50.100And then beyond that, I would say probably the two other biggest influences are the guy who was my pastor for the last number of years in Durham,
00:06:00.460whose name is J.D. Greer and is is really intent on making the church a place where guys are totally comfortable.
00:06:09.140He's always said he wants a church for dudes and and has run this program called Men's Fraternity,
00:06:16.520which sounds way lamer than it actually is, where guys all kind of got together at a manly time of six in the morning every Friday and sort of haggled with these issues that are really difficult for men to talk about.
00:06:30.480It's like, hey, why are we the way we are and why do we have trouble with things like this?
00:06:35.040And I actually thought that was really cool to to run a program like that where a lot of guys want to have those conversations with other guys,
00:06:42.400but don't know how to actually start them up or find an environment where they can have those conversations.
00:07:02.380And then the other ones are probably the other seven guys that I lived with my senior year in college where we were called the Overlook Boys.
00:07:13.080We lived in this place called the Overlook.
00:07:14.980And and I think that they, you know, all of us together have really sort of helped define what each of us think a man is because all of us are so different.
00:07:25.500It's a sort of a group of friends that I think every guy would love to have.
00:07:33.340It's a bunch of guys who have all gone on to different life occupations, have all come from different places in life and even places in the country and things like that.
00:07:44.440And so we've brought different perspectives and we all get together, you know, at least once a year to just see each other again.
00:07:51.100And beyond that, we just talk on the phone all the time and that kind of thing.
00:07:54.200And so I think every man should really have a group like that of other guys who help, you know, keep him sharp, keep him accountable and that kind of thing about what he's what what's going on in his life and what he's up to and just checking in with each other.
00:08:10.760So I think that group of guys, the Overlook Boys, have done a really great job of helping me progress into manhood because we all share like our experiences with each other and learn from them.
00:08:23.280That's great. That's great. You have a group of friends like that.
00:08:25.200I know a lot of men these days aren't fortunate enough to have that.
00:08:29.600We're so isolated these days. That's great. You have that. You've had that support.
00:08:33.240Yeah, I think it's funny. I mean, one of the movies that we watched actually when we were on the plane over here, my wife and I was I Love You, Man, which I thought was a hilarious and be totally apropos for the times.
00:08:47.700These these these days where it's really difficult for dudes to meet other dudes once you're like out of college.
00:08:53.920Yeah. And and I'm even finding that to be true here in England.
00:08:57.580And, you know, it's it's one of the first times that I've ever moved somewhere in my life.
00:09:01.960I'm actually an army brat. So we've we've moved around all as a kid.
00:09:05.640But this is kind of my first time as an adult moving to a place that's totally new.
00:09:09.660And so going out and trying to make adult friends is really awkward, you know, going up to another guy and be like, hey, I see you like basketball.
00:09:18.280I like basketball, too. You want to get together sometime and play basketball?
00:09:22.480It just feels awkward. It feels awkward.
00:09:24.680So what I mean, going on that, I mean, what have you done since you've been in Manchester to try to make new new male friends?
00:09:30.820Well, fortunately, there's this interconnected series of tubes that has all kinds of information about getting together with groups.
00:09:38.660And so I'm really fortunate that the Internet is here because I've just been looking up different groups of digital creatives, you know, people who do the same kind of work that I do.
00:09:47.320So I have that in common with different groups that are sort of on the same wavelength in terms of my wife and I finding a church and like finding activities and things like that.
00:09:58.000And then guys who play like pick up soccer and basketball and that kind of thing.
00:10:02.960So it's sort of been the thing where I guess you pick a common interest and you try to roll with that and try to find other people who are into the same things.
00:10:11.080And then you progress from there. But, yeah, it's it is a little bit awkward just to start off.
00:10:18.860So, Zeke, you mentioned that your father had an influence on your view of manliness.
00:10:23.240And how exactly did your father influence your conception of masculinity or manliness?
00:10:28.900Sure. I think he really influenced it a lot in terms of that I wanted to be a well-rounded man and very much in the way that he is.
00:10:40.660He is he is so much he has so much depth to him and that's something that I've always admired about my dad.
00:10:47.220He has just an extreme body of knowledge and a respect for all things that I think is awesome.
00:10:55.240You know, he was a military man, but he's not really a stereotypical military guy.
00:11:00.360He was also, you know, in veterinary school before he decided to join the army and serve his country in Vietnam.
00:11:08.320And he was almost a poet and actor and he has a lot of different facets to his life.
00:11:15.900But I think he also, you know, influenced me in some negative ways, as every dad probably does.
00:11:23.100I'm I'm definitely afraid of that when I have kids someday that I'm sure some of my flaws are going to come out.
00:11:28.380But I think because he had some issues growing up and that kind of thing, that he was a little bit of an absent father.
00:11:35.400My parents kind of split up when I was young.
00:11:37.900So I think he obviously showed me what it was to be a man and to really put your family first and that kind of thing.
00:11:44.680Even though my parents split up, he moved across the country just to be near to me when I was in junior high and high school and really prioritized spending time with me and that kind of thing.
00:11:56.560And, you know, took trips with me across the country.
00:11:59.380And we had a lot of those conversations about what it is to be a man and that sort of thing.
00:12:04.360But I think that also it was weird because he is such a smart guy and such a patient and gentle guy sometimes.
00:12:12.660But then he'll just like explode on somebody in traffic or somebody who's like serving us at a restaurant or something.
00:12:20.300I'm sure everybody has that relationship with their dad where you learned a lot of things that you really want to emulate and say, that's my dad.
00:12:50.320And one of the things we talk about on the side quite a bit is that a lot of men, particularly our age, I'm 26 too, we kind of missed out on all these kind of manly skills that our dads or grandfathers can do.
00:13:02.080Is there something that your dad can do that you can't do?
00:13:05.760Yeah, I think the number one is probably navigation.
00:13:09.780I definitely inherited my mother's sense of direction.
00:13:13.260She can go somewhere 100 times and then go there for the 101st time and still get lost.
00:13:18.980And unfortunately, that is the same way with me.
00:13:22.780And my dad, it really gets him frustrated as anything because he was a pilot.
00:13:28.420So he has this incredibly innate sense of direction where he knows, oh, we're going south, southeast right now.
00:13:35.020We need to go about 50 paces in order to hit, you know, this certain highway or something like that.
00:13:42.300And most of the time when I was a kid, even when we drove around the country and things like that, I had my nose in a book.
00:13:48.840So I really did not inherit any navigational skills.
00:13:53.000And it's only made worse by the fact that I can just take out my iPhone and use Google Maps now to get anywhere.
00:13:58.420So I certainly wish that I could do that because I, you know, there's always the thing in the back of my mind where I would get stranded in the middle of the woods during a camping trip.
00:14:07.280And basically just cling to a tree because I would have no idea where to go.
00:14:11.380But I think that's certainly an awesome skill that he has that I wish I had.
00:14:15.020Yeah, iPhones don't work out in the middle of the woods sometimes.
00:14:28.440You know, I think probably the hardest thing that I've ever had to do is tell my now wife, Wendy, that I didn't want to be in a relationship with her.
00:14:41.300And this was actually, it's kind of like a long story with our relationship.
00:14:44.760She was dating another guy and broke up with him the first summer that I had met her.
00:14:52.140And the guy that she was dating was really good friends with a lot of my friends.
00:14:57.040You know, we kind of shared mutual friends.
00:14:58.840And towards the end of the summer, after it had been a while, she came to me and said, hey, you know, I really like you a lot.
00:15:09.540And I really had a mutual feeling about her that, you know, I felt something really strong.
00:15:16.180But I think because some of my friends had scared me off and maybe because I was scared of something going wrong, I said, no, I really don't want to be in a relationship.
00:15:26.820And I don't think we can talk or see each other or anything like that.
00:15:32.380And that was a really hard thing to do.
00:15:37.360I it's hard to explain now in retrospect, and I'm still trying to explain it to her this day because I ended up seeing her a year later and realizing that, you know, I really thought I felt something strongly for her because I couldn't get her out of my head the whole year that we were apart.
00:15:56.580But but I think that was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
00:15:59.600It really put off put into motion a sort of period of just weird emotional turmoil in my life where I couldn't decide what was going on and why I had made that decision.
00:16:10.380So fortunately, everything still worked out.
00:16:13.340Fate intervened and we were married today.