Becoming A Man - Part 1

Transcription

Announcer:  What makes a real man? Is he willing to suffer the pain of work?

Michael Pearl:  All right. We're going to talk about what it means to be a man. Now, you girls say, "Well, that won't apply to me." Well, it will too. You young girls are going to marry one of them, a man. You're going to want to pick out a real man. You don't want half a man. I see a lot of girls marrying half of a man.

The answer, as to what a real man is, would differ from one region of the country to another, from one social group to another. To sum it up, a real man is somebody who does his duty to take care of his family. Doesn't shun the hard work or the trials that come along, so that he can feed his wife, his children, keep a roof over their head, provide for their education, and make sure their life is secure.

That's a real man. A real man may never pick up a gun or a knife or a hatchet or a chainsaw or drive a tractor or do anything that's tough and burly. But he's still a real man if he does his duty. If he does it well. If he does it with grace and with peace, gentleness, and firmness. That's a real man.

When you talk about young men reaching that point of adulthood, what does it take for you to graduate and be a real man?

It takes a will to suffer the pain of doing your duty. A French philosopher said, "All work is pain." And it is. I'd a lot rather play than work. What I do is, I find some kind of work that's sort of like play and that way I can enjoy my work. If I have to do the same thing very long, whether it's play or work, it gets boring. I can't stand to fish more than three or four hours. If I had to fish six hours, I'd just get plumb tired of it.

Same thing with hunting. I like to go out hunting, now that I'm 60 years old, about an hour before sunset, when it's 65 degrees, 60 at the coldest, uphill from the house, so when I shoot something it will slide down the hill into my backyard and I won't have to carry it out.

If I have to do much more than that, it gets to be work, and I don't enjoy it anymore. Same thing about fishing. It's got to be real pleasant and very poetic out that day. I need to go out about five in the evening, so I can catch the sun going down, when the fish are biting, and get home before dark. Not be too tired, so my wife won't be put out, having to clean the fish. I'm real considerate.

That's what a real man is. He's somebody who does his duty. It's painful sometimes to work. I hate weed-eating. Weed-eating's a horrible job. I can weed-eat for about a half hour, but longer than that, I'm going to find somebody who'll do it for two dollars an hour. Some illegal kid somewhere that'll weed-eat for two dollars an hour.

Sometimes, a man has to do what he doesn't want to do. That's where the dividing line is. It's when it gets to be painful. It gets to be hard. And it's boring, just sick boring. Painful boring. And you go on and do it because it's got to be done. It's got to be done today. You can't put it off till tomorrow. You do it now. That's what a man is.

We live in a time when society is not producing as many men as it used to produce. There are a lot of free-loaders. There are a lot of lazy bums. Our jails are full of people basically for one reason, and that's because they're lazy.

I just got back from the prison this morning. About a hundred inmates. One of them stood up and told about how, when he was a young man, he tried to rob a bank and took some hostages. The law came out and the FBI came out. He had a shootout with them. He shot two of them. He took a .45, stepped out on the porch, put the .45 to his chest, was going to shoot himself, and a sharpshooter shot the .45 out of his hand.

He lived and he got saved. They gave him 160 years in prison. He'll probably die before he serves all of his time. 160 years. From the time he was about 19 years old, the rest of his life is spent locked up in a little bitty cell. You know why he was there? He was a lazy bum at 19 years old. He didn't want to work for a living. He wanted to get a lot of money and he wanted to get it fast. I know that most of you are never going to think about robbing or stealing, anything like that.

There's a fellow who lives down the road from me. About 25 years old, and he's never had a job over three days. You see him walking the road. He's a scraggly-looking old fellow, even more scraggly than I. He's a skinny boy from eating poorly.

He lives in a house that's falling down. I went into his house. The kitchen floor had rotted through and they've thrown some old carpet down. There's a hole, literally sunk a foot. Where the house sat low to the ground, and it sunk a foot, so that you're walking on rotted floor joists and rotted flooring. On it is some old, wet carpet, kind of dipped down in the middle of the floor. When it rains and water runs under the house, the carpet in the kitchen gets wet and it mildews and it stinks. That's the house he lives in.

Now you know, if Anthony or I or Dwayne had a house like that, within a week, we'd have a good floor in it. We'd find something. If we had to cut old poles off the side of the road and split them with an axe and hew them down, we'd make a floor.

We wouldn't be walking in the mud. The outside of the house is rundown. He's going to fix it someday. One day, he's going to fix it.

Someday he's going to get a job. Someday somebody's going to realize how smart he is. By the way, he's extremely intelligent. He's got an IQ that's probably somewhere around 140, 150. Far higher than mine; nearly twice as big. Yet with all of his high IQ and his intellect, he has not the will to suffer the pain of getting out and working. He told me the other day, he said, "Well, I'm going to go down and ask for a job, down there at the corner." I said, "I'll take you down right now." He said, "Well, they're probably going to be closed pretty soon."

I said, "No, we can get there before they close." He said, "Well, I believe I'll go tomorrow." And I said, "All right. You do that." He never got around to going. I said, "You know, if I were you . . . " I said this to him to his face, I said, "I'd go down and I'd live under the bridge next to that factory. I'd get me some cardboard and I'd make me a place to live under the bridge," since he's so far away from the job site.

"I'd get a job there making eight dollars an hour or whatever they pay. I would go back under my bridge at nighttime. Within two weeks, I'd have enough money to rent one of those little apartments not too far away or one of those little junky trailers. Within two months, I'd have me enough money to buy an old car and I'd have food on the table.

Within one year, I would be working at a better job. I'd have a good car and I'd be able to drive greater distances. I'd be working on a better job. Within two years, I would be buying a piece of property somewhere. Within five years, I'd own a tractor and a truck and a car, and I'd have a good house that I had built and a piece of property.

I would be making my way in life." But this fellow, five years from now, he'll still be waiting on life to come along and work out somehow for him. All that's wrong with him is he's just bone-lazy. He just does not want the pain, the boredom, of working at a job all day long, without great reward.

See, a real man is somebody who does that. I told him, I said, "Do you realize no woman will ever want you for a husband? You’ve got nothing to offer. You’ve got nothing to give. No woman will ever want to marry a man who cannot take care of her."

Announcer:  We hope this has blessed you today wherever you are. As always, remember to check out our special deals on books and CDs and more on our website.