What it Means to be Man By YUSUF ZANELLA

Tradition. What passes for it. What’s passed as it. What it is. Very different things. Here where I live at the moment, as well as in many other countries, what passes for tradition, as in “return to,” seems overshot. Some-times. Wide off the mark. A parody.

Growing up without a father I spent most of my teens and twenties looking for men, a man, just one would do. One who could teach me what it means to be a man. I read books. Looked into the past. Read up on philosophers, poets, warriors, Samurais, Zen Buddhists. All manner of literature I scrutinized, picking my way through the ruins looking for men, a man, just one.