The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 28 - What A Man Should Do For His Family

00:00:00.000 So I saw someone shared on Facebook an article, I don't remember where it was from, another article

00:00:07.120 about millennial men. And it was talking about the ways that millennial men have reinvented or

00:00:14.040 reshaped masculinity. And one of those ways is that we are apparently more emotionally vulnerable

00:00:20.540 and more open about our feelings. And you hear this a lot nowadays, that this is an improvement,

00:00:27.620 an improvement on the, on the male gender is that now, as we are more enlightened and more

00:00:35.700 progressive, younger men tend to be more open, eager to share our feelings and to talk about our

00:00:42.000 feelings. And I think that's generally true, that a lot of men these days do seem very open about

00:00:48.460 talking about their feelings, men and women, but it's always been the case for women, women probably

00:00:52.760 even more so now we're all kind of trending in this direction of sharing and oversharing and

00:00:57.320 constantly. And we love, you know, the thing we love to talk about men and women is we love talking

00:01:01.920 about our stress, how stressed we are, our anxiety. Oh my gosh, I have so much anxiety. I'm so stressed.

00:01:07.660 So much anxiety. I'm stressed. I'm busy. Look, listen to me. I'm so busy, everyone. You want to

00:01:13.300 hear about how busy I am? That's the thing I've noticed. People love talking about how busy they

00:01:17.440 are, how little sleep they got the night before, how stressed they are and about their anxiety.

00:01:24.360 That's just, we love talking about, and I think it's kind of a status symbol because if, well, I got,

00:01:29.600 you know, I didn't get a lot of sleep and I'm busy means I'm obviously an important person.

00:01:34.480 So I get the admiration of being an important person, but I also get a little bit of pity too.

00:01:40.360 So it's a nice little, it's admiration with this nice thick coating, this icing of pity on top of it.

00:01:46.640 And it just makes for one sweet cupcake, I guess, as far as, as far as we're concerned,

00:01:51.380 I'm going to differ a little bit with, um, with some people though, because although I recognize

00:01:57.980 that men are more emotional these days and more willing and anxious and eager to talk about

00:02:04.040 their feelings, I don't see it necessarily as an improvement. I think we're losing something of

00:02:11.840 what a man is supposed to be, especially in the home and in the context of a marriage or,

00:02:17.680 you know, as, as, as both a husband and a father. As I've been thinking about, as I've been thinking

00:02:22.540 about this, my mind went back to a story that I read in, um, a book called the Gulag Archipelago,

00:02:30.100 which is actually a three volume work written by Solzhen Easton. And it's a great classic,

00:02:36.680 um, series of books, not exactly pick me uppers. It's about, it's a history of the Soviet labor

00:02:43.160 camp system. So if I'm looking for lessons about marriage, obviously the first place I look,

00:02:49.300 if I'm looking for insights into marriage, I'm going to look at a book about the Soviet labor

00:02:53.660 camp system. That's because, you know, that's where, um, no, I just, I, I, I think it was in the

00:03:01.240 second volume. There's this quick anecdote that Solzhen Easton relays. He, he's, he's talking

00:03:07.520 about a, he gives a general history of the labor camp system. He also talks about his own experiences.

00:03:12.460 He spent several years in the Gulag himself and he kind of intersperses his own experiences within

00:03:18.940 the larger tale of the history of, uh, Soviet Russia, which not to spoil it for you, but if I had

00:03:27.160 to summarize the two volumes that I've read, if I had to summarize 2000 pages, I would say it all

00:03:32.560 boils down to this Soviet Russia, not a fun place. It turns out actually not, not a great place. If 0.89

00:03:41.140 you ever get in a time machine or trying to decide where to go, don't go to Soviet Russia because you

00:03:46.500 will end up at a Gulag and you're not going to enjoy it. I know it's kind of a shocker. So he, um,

00:03:52.640 he recounts one scene in the book that I thought was the most powerful illustration of married love

00:04:02.580 of, uh, of at least the most powerful illustration of a husband's love that I've read anywhere outside

00:04:08.400 of, um, the Bible. And it stands in direct contrast to this idea of the overly emotional,

00:04:18.960 open, constantly sharing and oversharing man. So this is the story, um, takes place in a prison camp

00:04:27.280 sometime in the 1920s, I believe a man named Osorgin who's been arrested on some trumped up

00:04:35.600 charge as was common in Soviet Russia. And he was scheduled to be executed by firing squad.

00:04:42.180 And on the day that he was scheduled to be executed, he was told he's going to be executed. It just so

00:04:47.380 happened that his wife had already boarded a boat and was on his, on her way to come visit him.

00:04:52.940 Of course, not knowing about any of this, he wanted to see his wife one more time. And he certainly

00:04:58.880 didn't want her to come all that way and then discover that he'd just been killed. And I'm sure

00:05:02.760 he was also worried that if she showed up and he'd just been executed or he was being executed,

00:05:08.040 that they may arrest her for knowing about it, because that's the way things worked in Soviet Russia

00:05:12.620 is that if your family member was arrested, whatever happened to them, whatever their fate was,

00:05:17.700 wherever they ended up, whether it was in a camp in Siberia or, um, six feet underground,

00:05:24.900 you weren't allowed to know. And so if she did find out that may put her in jeopardy.

00:05:30.260 Um, so he pleaded with the, with the guards and asked them to allow him to see his wife

00:05:37.900 one last time when she comes and, uh, just to spend some time with her. And he assured the guards

00:05:45.100 that once she leaves, he will offer himself up to be executed. And the guards agreed. But of course, 0.90

00:05:51.160 the condition is you can't tell your wife. You can't even hint at it. She cannot come to find out

00:05:58.500 or suspect that there's something bad about to be happening about to happen to you.

00:06:04.720 So not, he couldn't even let a facial expression cross his face that may tip her off. We spent two

00:06:11.060 or three days with her. They were together the whole time and he never hinted. He never let on

00:06:15.460 except for one brief moment when they were taking a walk by a lake and his wife looked over and caught

00:06:21.580 him for a moment, clutching, clutching his head in torment and agony, thinking about what he was about

00:06:27.960 to face. And she asked him what was wrong. And he quickly said nothing. And then finally, when her

00:06:33.220 visit was over, um, she got on the boat, the boat was pulling away. And as the boat was pulling away,

00:06:37.780 he was already undressing and preparing to be shot. Now I find this so powerful because it's an

00:06:47.240 example, the most extreme example I've encountered of a man shouldering a burden, caring a cross for his 0.99

00:06:54.860 family, being in emotional anguish and not sharing it, not talking about it, keeping it to himself,

00:07:04.720 carrying the load by himself. And this is what men, not quite to this extent, but hopefully most of us,

00:07:13.440 but this is basically what we are meant to do for our families. We are meant to shoulder burdens,

00:07:22.040 to carry a cross. We're told to love our wives like Christ loved the church. And we know that Christ died for the

00:07:29.660 church. He suffered and sacrificed. And he also didn't complain either. He did it with patience and grace and

00:07:41.180 love. There was only, there was just the one, the one moment, the one very human moment in the garden

00:07:49.080 at Gethsemane, where Jesus wanted some of the apostles there, um, in this really vulnerable, painful

00:07:59.120 moment for Christ. But famously, they fell asleep on the job. And so they couldn't even give him that

00:08:05.280 little bit of comfort the one time that he asks for it. So that's what we're called to do, to strive to

00:08:13.620 carry the largest portion of the burden that we can. And to do it without complaining, without holding

00:08:21.600 it against our wives or our children, without resentment, without demanding acknowledgement,

00:08:26.040 without martyring ourselves, without feeling the need to constantly talk about it. We're called,

00:08:32.460 in other words, to be stressed and to have anxiety and to not constantly say, oh, I'm so stressed. I'm so

00:08:38.640 stressed out. Everyone listen to me about my stress. I have so much anxiety. Listen. No, we're called to

00:08:46.920 sometimes just shut up and deal with it and not force everyone around us, including our wives, to accompany

00:08:56.100 us in our self-pity and misery all the time. I think as modern men, we tend to make one of two mistakes

00:09:04.420 when it comes to this. Um, or perhaps we make both mistakes. We could, number one, flat out refuse

00:09:10.500 to carry the burden or to carry any burden at all. We may allow ourselves, and some husbands, uh, um,

00:09:18.440 allow, are happy to allow their wives to just carry the entire burden by themselves. A lot of, some

00:09:24.840 husbands are, are, are fine letting their wives do all the work, feel all the stress while they go out 0.99

00:09:32.400 and they go downstairs and play video games or watch porn. Um, I think especially of the families where

00:09:37.820 you see them at church and the, and the, the mother is there with her kids and she's trying to keep them

00:09:41.480 all in line in the pew. The husband's nowhere to be seen because he's at home in his pajamas watching

00:09:46.360 TV. The spiritual formation of, of a, of a child is a very difficult thing. And keeping kids quiet in

00:09:53.860 church is just the, the, the, the easiest aspect of it. It's a very, it can be a very painful,

00:09:59.820 challenging thing to shoulder that burden, the burden of, of spiritually, of, of putting your

00:10:06.460 children on the right path spiritually and guarding them against all the dangers, the spiritual dangers

00:10:11.360 that are out there. And some men are perfectly fine, allowing their wives to take all of that on

00:10:18.120 completely alone. And it is to call it shameful is a, is a massive understatement. The second mistake

00:10:29.740 we may make is, well, okay, we may do our part to some extent, shoulder some of the burden at least,

00:10:36.080 but we've listened too much to modern notions of manhood. We have listened too much to modern

00:10:44.540 ideas about how the genders are supposed to interact. We've become too anxious to take our,

00:10:50.500 the culture up on its invitation for us to spill our guts constantly and to complain about our stress

00:10:57.960 and to share every last anxiety that we have with the world and with our wives. I think there are men

00:11:05.600 who, you know, they'll tell their wives everything, every worry, every fear. If they're in pain, emotional,

00:11:15.480 physical, whatever, they'll make sure their wives know it. They'll make sure everyone around them knows

00:11:20.040 it. Now, here's the thing. Of course, we should share quite a bit with our wives. And there was a time

00:11:27.060 when men were obviously too closed up, too silent. They were just a closed book, like robots in the home.

00:11:36.060 They had no emotion whatsoever. And that meant that they had really no bond. There's, there's, it's hard to have

00:11:43.720 intimacy. It's hard to have bond with your wife when you're not letting her in at all. But I think we've overcorrected

00:11:52.220 now. We've overcompensated some of us. And if we had to choose between the two extremes, I think

00:11:59.120 we're better off on the silent, you know, the strong, silent type end of the spectrum than on

00:12:04.840 this end of the spectrum, where we're so in touch with our emotions that we're just constantly eager

00:12:11.020 to share them with everyone. Not just our wives, but the other day I saw on my newsfeed, and this is

00:12:16.200 not an uncommon sight. You see this all the time. I saw a guy, an adult male, probably about my age,

00:12:22.220 unleash a whole torrent of personal complaints and anxieties right there on the internet for

00:12:28.380 everybody to see for public consumption. I don't know if this guy's married, but if he is, I can

00:12:33.520 only imagine how often his wife must be forced to listen to him complain and moan about every worry 0.99

00:12:38.460 and misfortune and heartache that he has. I think a balance is needed here. But the fact remains that

00:12:46.280 sometimes I believe a man has to carry a fear, a worry, a concern, a pain, and to keep it to himself.

00:12:55.300 Carry it himself. I think a man has to sometimes be willing to be stressed out and not show it.

00:13:03.200 Tired and not show it. Fed up and not show it.

00:13:06.220 Exhausted, stressed out, anxious, whatever, and not show it. To carry it with dignity.

00:13:17.520 Not to feel the need to vent. I guess that's what we call it these days is venting.

00:13:23.300 And I don't want to get off on a tangent here, but venting is

00:13:27.740 generally an entirely selfish pursuit.

00:13:36.120 Usually, when we say we're venting to somebody, whether it's our spouse or anybody,

00:13:40.740 when we say we're venting, what that means is we're just piling toxic fumes and negativity

00:13:47.380 right on top of some unsuspecting, innocent person because it makes us feel better.

00:13:52.600 It's like just vomiting negativity right on top of someone's head and saying,

00:13:58.760 oh, I just had to vent. I hope you don't mind. And then the person, they have now,

00:14:02.760 they're covered in your negativity and they're like, okay, what am I supposed to do with this?

00:14:08.340 Thank you for unleashing all of that on me. That's men and women. I think all of us,

00:14:17.120 all men and women, these days, we're all a little bit too eager to vent and to

00:14:21.280 constantly complain all the time. But a man especially, I think has to be willing sometimes

00:14:27.620 to come home from work where he deals with not only the stress of earning a living, but also the

00:14:33.700 underlying stress, the constant stress of being responsible for sustaining and feeding his family

00:14:41.820 and the worries that come with that, the what ifs, the what thens, all the different things.

00:14:45.860 But he has to come home and be immediately thrust back into family life and the duties of family life

00:14:53.700 with all of those concerns and stresses and responsibilities that come with that.

00:14:58.240 And he has to make that transition suddenly, like flipping a switch, just like that.

00:15:01.840 And without always letting on how exhausted, how burdened he feels.

00:15:05.420 Because not everything should be shared. Sometimes a man should be willing to be a man and carry it himself.

00:15:20.320 That's not to say that he can never speak with his wife about anything. Hopefully his wife will

00:15:26.200 understand what her husband does for the family and what he goes through, and she'll try to give him a

00:15:30.540 break even if he doesn't ask for one, and hopefully he'll try to give her breaks. Hopefully they have a

00:15:34.660 marriage like that. But there should still be that quiet dignity, that quiet strength which shoulders

00:15:41.660 and carries and endures and does it in a way that isn't always noticed and isn't always begging for

00:15:52.140 appreciation and for acknowledgement. But he just fulfills his duty in love and sacrifice.

00:16:00.300 I think that's what's missing. Of course, not in every case, but that's what's missing generally from

00:16:09.880 American manhood is quiet strength and dignity. That is, you know, that's part of a man's role,

00:16:22.000 I think. Just a thought. Just a thought from a Soviet labor camp. Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:16:30.500 Thanks for listening. Hope you have a great day. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 11, 2018

Ep. 28 - What A Man Should Do For His Family

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