The Authenticity Echo

A Christmas Morning Meditation on Fathers, Flow, and Finding Our Way Home

The universe has a wicked sense of timing. Here I am on Christmas morning, thinking about fathers - not just the jolly red-suited one bringing gifts to children worldwide, but all the fathers. The ones who taught their sons how to be men before we decided men needed to be taught how to be something else.

That post about authenticity and standing in the rain? It cracked something open. Like some cosmic present we didn't know we needed, it triggered an avalanche of revelations that keep tumbling in, each one deeper than the last.

Men started reaching out. Strong, capable, successful men sharing their own stories of trying to navigate this bizarre maze we've created around masculinity. Each conversation peeling back another layer, revealing something profound about how we got here and where we might be going.

Picture this: We're a generation of men largely raised by women, taught about masculinity through a lens that couldn't possibly understand it from the inside. Not because women are wrong, but because you can't teach what you haven't lived. Imagine trying to learn how to be water from someone who's only ever seen it from the shore.

The conversations keep circling back to this phrase "performative masculinity" - how it reveals this bizarre expectation that men should act out a script written by people who've never experienced masculinity from the inside. It's like having someone who's never tasted water write the definitive guide on what water should taste like.

Here's what's making my whole body buzz: The more layers of identity we add - whether through increasingly specific sexual expressions or calculated non-expressions - the further we get from authentic being. It's like trying to find freedom by building a more elaborate cage.

One friend put it perfectly: "The true theater of cruelty is the one that insists on performative artifice and forbids the authentic actions and experience of the self."

And then there's this bizarre evolution where someone else's triggers became our responsibility. When did that happen? When did we decide that feeling uncomfortable meant someone else had done something wrong? It reminds me of trying to teach a river not to flow because someone might get wet.

What I'm seeing in these conversations is a profound exhaustion with performance. Not just from men - from everyone. We're all so tired of checking our authentic responses against an ever-growing list of acceptable reactions.

A friend going through his own massive life transition quoted Fleetwood Mac:

"Thunder only happens when it's rainin' Players only love you when they're playin' When the rain washes you clean you'll know..."

And isn't that the whole point? Standing in the rain that night, I wasn't trying to be anything. The water didn't care about my gender expression or my societal role or my carefully curated identity. It just was. And in that moment, so was I.

What's fascinating is how these conversations keep revealing the same pattern: The more we try to regulate and police authentic expression, the more we create exactly what we're trying to avoid - disconnection, confusion, and pain. It's like trying to make a river run straight. All you do is create pressure that will eventually break the banks.

This Christmas morning, as children worldwide wake up to discover what Father Christmas has brought them, I'm thinking about all the fathers - past, present, and future. About the wisdom that flows naturally when we stop performing and start being. About the gift of authentic masculine presence that our world so desperately needs.

To everyone who reached out after that last post, who shared their own stories of navigating this bizarre maze of expectations and performances: Thank you. You've shown me that the need for authentic expression isn't just a personal revelation - it's a collective awakening.

Maybe that's what's really happening here. Maybe we're all just remembering how to be water.

Standing in truth with you, Cian

P.S. To those still feeling the pressure to perform rather than be: The water knows how to flow. Trust that. It's the greatest gift you can give yourself this Christmas.