…I didn’t know what to make of it.
It’s two men talking and it arrived in my email as an audio file from a friend without much description. Two men who are presumably friends, and one receives support from the other through a hard time.
One figure of speech I have never heard of is words of support one of them calls “Giving you your flowers.”
It is touching and kind, poetic and beautiful.
The file says “Don’t wait for Opportunity, Create it” and the name Pace Morby.
I haven’t looked up this name on google.
I just listened.
And I was captivated by whatever this is...
A man working hard, and nobody notices it.
There is no thanks from anywhere for whatever it is that this man does to pay for things. He is driving a truck, yet there is much more depth to his commitment to his family than his job title.
The host of the talk keeps saying, “I’m giving you your flowers.”
I don’t know what that means. There’s no context.
Well, I think I know what it means…
I have never heard of such a thing before—a friend or acquaintance telling a man who works hard that if nobody else is “giving him flowers” for his duty and devotion to doing right even where he is not wanted, that someone must be the one to “give him flowers.”
That he will do so as his male friend.
The Greeks and Romans believed flowers could be used to express emotion and status. The ancient Greeks gave floral crowns to the winners of contests and competitions to signify success and victory.
Honor.
We have discussed this topic of “Honor” before as being defined as “retained value in good deeds done in the past.”
In other words, instead of “What have you done for me lately?” - a dishonor of the investment and work of the person, the loving response is to honor effort, where the value that lasts from investment and work and love delivered even in the distant past is still of worth, remembered and it counts.
It makes me think of slogans surrounding prisoners of war: “No man left behind” and “You are not forgotten.”
As I spent this day thinking about the “Epidemic of Loneliness” that is underscored by the dearth of friendship ties among males, that less than half of America has a best friend to rely on or to call…
Or the story of Navalny and his death in a prison, where he was not forgotten by his wife all that time, still loving him, and loving him after his death…
It’s the importance of “Honor” in a man’s life.
And as for those services rendered, the effort and investment in a home and family and marriage, you might remember an ironclad rule of their psychology:
Responsibility = Authority and Authority = Responsibility
It’s a way of “calculating honor” almost numerically.
What it means is that if someone has the Responsibility to do an effort, invest a resource, contribute or maintenance something needed, they also inherently possess the exact same amount of Authority over that task or its beneficial outcomes, its results.
If someone commands or wields Authority, this means that the exact same amount of Responsibility has been saddled on them in the subject matter of the Authority, the duties and tasks as then theirs to perform.
I think Honor, Responsibility and Authority were the real topics the two friends were discussing.
So the mental image of a man psychologically “giving flowers” to another man who works hard—because nobody else can even “see him” and what he is doing for those who need him…
…was a way for a male friend to correct what’s missing by being the one to honor his friend, to “give him his flowers,” and so the memory of the weight of all this responsibilities while also in a deep lack of authority over their use was made lighter, perhaps could be forgiven and even could be let go.
Then the friend would have some healing and be made more whole as a man again.
Share your thoughts…