Where have all the good men gone?
Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods? Where’s the streetwise Hercules, to fight the rising odds? Isn’t there a white knight, upon a fiery steed? When I was younger, this song was my syllabus. It was who I wanted to be – the good man. The hero, at whatever sacrifice or cost. And there was sacrifice in my life. There was cost. I lost 7 years to a marriage trying to be the self-sacrificing hero instead of leaving the first time she hit me. I have scars from stepping in between a knife and a victim. I tried to be a good man. But not anymore. Somewhere I fell off of that path, and in the last few years I’ve been reflecting on that. (Amazing what wonders therapy will do for you.) Somewhere along the decades, I watched the buy-in of “toxic masculinity” by the media and society at large. That’s where the song (still idolized and beloved by many) became impossible. The good men are gone – they’ve been burned by a system and a narrative that