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This Man

The man, for that is what we must call him although at times he still thinks and acts like a child, is a mixture of emotions. 

Sometimes he is sad, sometimes he is happy. Often he feels weighed down by the stresses and strains of everyday living. Ultimately the man is a survivor, but sometimes surviving feels hard. 

This man is probably not as mixed up as many others – he no longer flies into uncontrolled rages. Thankfully he has managed to cast those aside. He is happy listening to other people, but sometimes and, sadly quite often, really wants to talk about himself

The man is a husband, a father, sometimes a friend, sometime a confident, often full of bonhomie but often slightly distant and withdrawn. 

For this man is confident in small groups, happy with one on one situations but not so sure of himself in a crowd – in any crowd. Then he can become shy and awkward, feeling that he is often the odd one out.

Many think he is easy to know, but others feel he can be taciturn and awkward. He is not the kind of person to enter into meaningless chatter about the weather or what he calls inconsequential talk. He likes to get down to the more serious side of chatter. 

That being said he is not averse to a joke, to a prank to a lightness of mind that takes him back many years. 

This man lives in the present, still plans for the future (although as time runs out he is not so interested in plans and schemes for the years ahead as he already feels much of what he wanted to achieve in life has been achieved) but owes a great deal to the past. 

He is not a man who talks readily about the past  - although he will allude to it occasionally to make a point. He dislikes hearing stories about "the good old days" consistently telling people that today will be the "good old days" of the future.

This is a man who wonders how others see him. A man who appears differently to different people, a man who is aware that to some he may come over as awkward, stiff and conservative but to others he may be a jolly soul. For this man is a mixture of the serious and the mundane. He likes to think that he is an intelligent being, able to converse on a myriad of subjects. But he is also a man who can become tongue tied on the simplest of matters. He is a man capable of blending in, but who always feels something of an outsider. A man who wants to be smart both in mind and dress but who sometimes cannot be bothered  to make the effort.

He is a man often of good intentions, but the reality of those intentions sometimes falls short of the mark. He is a man who feels ill at ease with strangers but who others feel is at ease. He is a man who on the surface may seem almost laid back but who underneath is feeling anything but calm. He is a man who can steel himself to deal with situations but often feels less comfortable with them than it seems.

Some would call him self opinionated for sometimes he goes over the top with his views. He is a man that likes character in people, who cannot stand petty squabbling, who hates dishonesty and corruption and sees it in many things in the modern world. He is a man who will stand up for the quiet members of society, who remembers being continually overlooked as a child simply because he was the quiet one unwilling to push himself forward. Now he believes that quiet people often have hidden depths.

Ultimately this man is a man of many parts - almost a contradiction to himself. A man who likes being withdrawn and quiet but cannot save himself from being extrovert and occasionally forcing himself forward.

This man is a modernist. He eagerly embraces new ideas, new technologies.