How did we get ourselves into the survival situation that our society is in today? What can be done to rebuild lives, relationships and communities strained by stress, fear and lack of trust? Join us for a discussion on how you can create your life around multiple pillars of support.
The “art of manliness” is a website that offers advice on how to build your life upon multiple pillars of support. The article discusses the importance of financial, family, and spiritual support.
The project of constructing your life may be usefully likened to the construction of a structure.
When a building’s structure is supported by just one or two “pillars,” these columns are subjected to significantly greater stress than they were designed to withstand. When a spouse is depended on as one’s entire source of companionship, amusement, and validation, for example, a marriage becomes stressful and toxic. The strain of focusing practically all of one’s demands on a single subject or person often obliterates the good that may have been accomplished if handled with more balanced expectations.
Even if we don’t destroy life’s structural pillars ourselves, they will surely fracture and disintegrate due to events beyond our control. Then woe betide the person who had staked their whole life on them. When a man’s whole identity is entwined with his career, he feels adrift and sad. When a relationship ends, a man who avoids going out with his friends to spend every waking minute with his girlfriend finds himself without a social network. When a parent’s life depends on their children, being an empty nester feels like they’ve lost an appendage.
Jobs come and go. Or it may come to an end. Members of your family may relocate. Or you’ll perish. Friends let you down. Even a strong faith has its ups and downs. When the vicissitudes of life compromise the structural integrity of just one or two of these pillars, the whole structure will come tumbling down.
It is thus necessary to build your life’s architecture around numerous pillars of support — to buttress your sense of self and sanity with a diverse set of sources of interest, emotional nourishment, and significance. When the earth trembles and one pillar falls, the others will be able to support the weight, and the structure will remain standing.
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