Manhood and Intimidation

We are all on the path, and I would hope I’m not the same man I was even a week ago.
To be human is to be variable. It does no good to envision truth and reality as somehow objective, an entity to which we aspire. Our ability to perceive it waxes and wanes with experiences and internal mechanisms we will never completely nail down. There is no magic formula to all things, no final answer, simply because no one alive on this plane is capable of handling it. We are more variable and dependent on outside forces than is popular to admit.
Manhood should not be seen as aspiring to be some unmovable rock against the storms of life. Sticking to the metaphor, it’s more like having the good sense to identify a good rock and hanging on to it.
But I prefer the image of walking a path. Sometimes you have to cut your own path, blaze a fresh trail, only to find it’s some ancient path long forgotten and overgrown. That’s how I see my own manhood. Intellectually, I suppose I may well miss something essential from the ancient truths, revealed by God and buried under vast human falsehood, but I have better trust in God by a long shot than in myself.
Nor any other man. In times past there were moments I was intimidated by other men, and maybe even a few women. That wasn’t meant to shoot down any claim to manhood, but the sense of intimidation means you haven’t answered their challenge inside yourself. When you feel intimidated, the right answer is to hang around until you find out what that unanswered challenge is.
For example, I have some online acquaintances intimidated by certain bright minds in the blogosphere. They won’t dare comment on these blogs for fear of being overwhelmed verbally and logically, or in some way embarrassed. For some, the experience of being verbally humiliated equates to a physical beating. Having received a few physical beatings in my life, I’ll let you in on a secret: the results of combat of any sort, verbal or physical, has no bearing on your manhood. That you showed up and stood for what carried you thus far is sufficient.
Further, the fundamental issue of intimidation itself rests entirely upon not seeing the flaws and weaknesses of every man. You need not face anyone in combat to realize they have a serious opening in their armor. All you need to know is that there is one, and once you see what it is, suddenly you are facing just another combatant, no greater than you. More skillful and experienced, perhaps, but missing something you have and therefore, vulnerable.
So while you may get kicked off their blog or forum for whatever reason, they are no greater than you in the final sense. You can walk away knowing you need not compete in their league, because it’s just a closed and limited forum, not the whole world. Especially so with the virtual world of the Internet. They don’t own the whole thing, and certainly not the wider reality of your existence. You have your own league, where they would not compete so well against you. In other words, they really can’t do anything to you, and there’s no cause for that creeping sense of dread, or intimidation.
Yeah, you might be crazy and have people say so. It’s their loss, not yours.
Once you know your mission and are pursuing it, the active pursuit itself defines your manhood, and it works in Game and all of life.