Rainbow In The Dark
The lonely side of the male experience.
Rainbow in the Dark is an iconic song, but the meaning may be darker than the night sky without a moon. Loneliness in males is a crucial conversation point. The song lyrics of this song say so much as to the predicament for men in society.
“Do your demons, do they ever let you go?
When you've tried, do they hide, deep inside.”
Listening to this song the other day while driving to work the lyrics hit me hard. I had never really listened to the lyrics before. DIO has been a mainstay in my CD case for years (yes, my age is coming through), now it’s on a playlist in my phone. Men, we can evolve to handle technological things just fine.
Back to the music…
Do your demons, do they ever let you go? When you've tried, do they hide, deep inside.
〰️
Do your demons, do they ever let you go? When you've tried, do they hide, deep inside. 〰️
Ronnie James Dio is a ledged! A man that was in not one, not two, but in three great bands. He has lived the rock star life like no other. Check out this article about the song Rainbow In The Dark by loudersound.com.
Make it stand out
Relating this to our current situation, Dio wanted to make “Rock, not just noise.” Our lives are similar now. How often do we want to be valuable, heard, listened to? Let’s make some ROCK!
Demons are enemies to our vision. They climb in through cracks of our armor, brought on by society’s need to judge us. From the first part of the morning, we rise and head to work. Judged by traffic cameras, judged by our bosses, judged by the person parking next to us, judged by how soon we can come home. Then judged more in our safe place, our homes. This isn’t to say others are not judged in the same vein either. It is to say judgment comes often and comes with a hammer the size of Thor’s Hammer.
“Do your demons, do they ever let you go?
When you've tried, do they hide, deep inside.”
Limiting this judgement requires building walls, walls that are spiked with thorns and turrets to keep our solace intact. We learn defenses against these attacks and build even more walls. It is not healthy.
Recently I had lunch with a business connection, after this lunch I would call him a friend. During our lunch we shared moments that have challenged us to the core. Attacked our manhood. Attacked our ability to provide security and solace for others. We talked about our children. There were two instances we discussed openly, and our vulnerability was shown. I will share, only my story as my friends’ story is his to share, both crippled us and made us question our fatherhood. These are the moments that will stay with us forever. We men being the worse judges of ourselves.
My instance was with my son. He had to have a procedure to remove a cyst. From an adult’s point of view, it was a minor surgery. Outpatient really. A little anesthesia. But when he asked that I go with him because he was scared and I had to say no, I realized I failed to provide a safe space in his mind. Luckily, he was starting to feel the anesthesia and didn’t remember, but I’ll never forget.
This opening up with each other brings to us to the point that men’s mental health is often limited in care due to preconceived notions that we feel less. If anything is more the opposite, we feel so passionately we do not know how to project that passion. Often when we do push those feelings to the surface, they can only be expressed in the only way we know how, through manly expressions. Possibly ways that seem violent. Or the other way, the way that suppresses more, likely with drugs and alcohol.
Could there be a better way to handle this? Probably so, and to add to the dimension of internalized suppression of feelings and societal demands of strong providing men, the suicide rate among men is 3.90x more for males (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 2021).
I’d like to share two paths for better living with the loneliness within us.
1. Take up a hard physical sport like boxing, karate, rugby, etc. Create a path where happiness hormones can thrive. Whatever passion you have, push it to the extremes. Activity has been shown to raise testosterone and dopamine (Men's T Clinic).
2. Encourage the four coping strategies most often used by females: (1) self-distraction, (2) emotional support, (3) instrumental support, (4) and venting (Graves, Hall, Dias-Karch, Haischer, & Apter, 2021)
I’d like to add to the 1st one and allow the second option to shine a bit. Networking, add networking in the 1st choice will push the male bonding experience further to help solve the loneliness. There is something to be said in the after work happy hour that lets us release the emotions of the day without adding to the burden of our spouses.
The communication struggle at home can be stressful and tiring with the need for translation from a task/action style to a venting/inaction style. The transition of thinking can be challenging, however the love we feel is real.
As serious as this topic is, and needs so much more depth, I’d like to share a little laughter to raise the spirits.
To bring the levity back to this article I wanted to share an all-time favorite skit -
Although this is a lite hearted skit, the parody of the situation is real. We Men have a language of our own and it’s nice to bond with other males.
