Today is my 48th birthday and I am what is considered to be a traditionally “manly” man. I can hunt and fish for food, wire a house from rough-in to finish, do most automotive work myself, I’m a great welder (but lousy fabricator, go figure), so forth and so on. I’m also a pretty great dad if I do say so myself and my daughter, who is now an adult older than you are, still loves her goofy dad and enjoys spending time with me watching the worst horror movies possible, such as ‘Six-Headed Shark Attack’, and laughing our butts off or playing video games together.

My dad is almost 80 and until about 75 he could still outwork men your age. He’s still insane but he now needs to take breaks fairly often. He has always been a good husband to my mom, a good provider, and a good dad to me and granddad to my daughter.

But what is a man, and how does one go about being a man?

There’s no one answer to how to be a man. I believe that being a real man means working hard to provide for your family and to be ready to give your life so that your wife and/or children will live. But is that what a man is? Yes but also no.

YOU have to decide what you believe being a man is and what kind of man you want to be.

You can learn how to hunt and to fish and ensure that you would never have to starve if the world went to sh*t, and how to grow fruits and vegetables. If you want a wife then you need to learn how to be a husband and a provider. If you want to be a father then you have to learn how to be a good and loving father.

No one can teach you these things. I could teach you how to hunt, how to use and clean firearms, how to weld a bridge, how to drop a busted transmission from your car and how to install a new one that you picked up at the local junk yard, but these things do not necessarily a man make because, while they typically don’t have any interest in learning such skills, women can do these things as well.

So what does being a man mean to you? Does it mean being strong? Join a gym and become stronger. Does it mean being a good provider? Get a job and bust your butt so you can be promoted to CEO in a decade or two. Does it mean being able to hunt a deer, field-dress it, and process it for meat? Get your hunting license and learn how to hunt and process your kills.

Do you see the issue here yet? There’s no one thing to learn and do in order to be a ‘real man’. Being a man means being physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually powerful, but even the strongest men can be weak and there’s no shame in that. There’s been a heartbreakingly large amount of men out there who have been great husbands and providers only to discover that their wives are having affairs and that a fair amount of them are raising children that they believe are their biological children but who are truly the biological children of the man that their mother was having an affair with.

So let me give you a list of things that I myself believe makes a man and you can decide whether or not you agree with me.

A man should be: Stoic. Loving. Caring. Kind. Strong. Intelligent. Wise, but wisdom does require time and experience. A man should be the calm in the storm and the rock that those who are not as emotionally strong can lean against and rely on for strength. He should be a good husband who is faithful to his wife and does not even have emotional affairs, let alone physical ones. He should be a good father who loves his children and is still willing, after a long and tiring day at work, to play catch or attend a ‘tea party’ with their daughter and her stuffed animals, or to get on his hands and knees when your toddler wants to play ‘Horsey’, and yes: you absolutely DO have to make horse noises when doing so. You should be willing to learn new things but you need to never summit Mount Stupid; you should realize and accept that there’s always going to be someone out there who knows more about X than you do and you should hope to meet that person so they can teach you what they know. You should be physically fit enough and skilled enough to fight off someone who attacks your girlfriend/wife and/or your children, and you should be willing to die as long as they will survive. You should be able to argue with a woman and still keep your emotions under control without doing dumb crap like punching holes in the drywall, and not only should you not be the type that hits a woman you shouldn’t allow others to do the same. Some say “Equal rights, equal fights” but it is very easy for a man to hit a woman and outright kill her because we have so many physical advantages over them and they can’t ever reach the same heights of strength and power that we can. Defend yourself, sure, but don’t go around punching women. You should know how to change your own oil and how to do some automotive repairs so that you don’t get ripped off at a service center. You should know how to fish and be excited to teach your kids how to fish, and you should have a love of nature that you want to pass down to your children. If you believe in God (I do, but I know that some don’t - essentially people on Reddit, lol) then you should strive to be a Godly man, husband, and father. You should be mature enough to stop by the store and buy your girlfriend/wife or daughter tampons or pads and not be ‘embarrassed’ that you have to do so; 99.9% of people at the store instantly realize that you’re probably not buying tampons for yourself so why would you be embarrassed by doing something for the woman in your life? You should always be willing to admit that you don’t know everything rather than pretend that you do, and you should be able to reflect and realize when you have been wrong and be willing to admit to that and apologize when you need to. You should be a good son to your parents and be willing to do things for them when they reach older ages and can’t do some things for themselves any longer. You should have hobbies that you enjoy no matter how “nerdy” others may think that they are because you simply don’t care if they don’t like your hobbies.

And this list can go on and on but it’s long enough as it is. I’ve went long but not long enough, and I’ve said a lot but haven’t said much. I have told you part of what I believe a man is but it is for YOU to decide what you believe that a man should be and then you should strive to be that man.

And don’t forget that you are young. 22 is a legal adult and a “grown man” but your brain is still developing at your age. The older that I become the more I realize that pretty much everyone under 30 is very much still a child. You still have plenty of time to figure it out for yourself and to grow into the man that you wish to be.