I remember smoking a cigarette when I was about 16 years old, crying as I was drowning in loneliness on a stoop. My neighbor, pitied me saying “You’re too young, you shouldn’t be feeling like that”. In some ways she was right, but I couldn’t shake it off. With divorced parents, not many good friends and a crisis in identity, I felt like I didn’t want to be in this world. In some respects, I didn’t have it bad. I was tall white kid that recently moved from Ukraine to Brooklyn New York with a working class family, but I didn’t have the emotional tools to deal with my new surroundings and negative inner thoughts. I would often get into fights both physical and verbal, have low self esteem and generally just not feel mentally well.
It took me a long time and a lot of trial and error to get from that place to a much better one where I feel stable and generally happy. Today I want to share with you the main catalyst that has worked for me and a few things that helped along the way.
Fast forward to 2018, I am 27 years old, and I am embarked on my first true digital nomad journey by going to Bali while maintaining a software engineering job. It is as beautiful of a paradise as you see on Instagram or Youtube. I thought I made it. However, about a month into my journey, that loneliness crept back in and I felt lonely again like that 16 year old boy.
“Damn, I thought I fixed this”, I wondered to myself! “I put in so much work over the last several years and now I am lonely in paradise and it seems even more depressing than that 16 year old me in the concrete jungle of Bensonhurst Brooklyn.”
You see, at 22 years old I read Tim Ferriss’s “Four Hour Work Week” and Tony Robbins’, “The Giant Within”, the 2 personal development nerd bibles of the last 15 years, and I saw that there was a way out of my unhappy predicament. So while I continued to work at my corporate finance job, I learned how to program on nights and weekends and by 24 got my first programming job. At the same time, I also worked on having a better friend circle, improved my relationship with my parents, traveled and so on.
So when I embarked on my digital nomad dream of living in South East Asia a few years later, I was stunned that I still had these problems of dreaded loneliness.
One day I was wondering around in Bali and a friend of mine invited me to a men’s circle. A group of men coming together each week to share their feelings? Sure that sounded a little odd to me at the time, but not any more than the dozens of Tantra workshops being offered nearby. Bali, especially the hippy town of Ubud, is known for a lot new age workshops so it was an easy decision to give this thing a shot.
I went there and was instantly able to connect with the brotherhood of about 20 men. Each week we would gather and share what was on our mind. We offered support to each other after each person shared what good and tough things they are currently dealing with while also treating each other like men and we didn’t try to fix each other.
Over a few weeks this weekly ritual eased my problems considerably and got me to enjoy all the Bali had to offer from beautiful waterfalls, acro yoga, to jungles and more.
What that made me realize is that especially as men, while we may have good friends, girlfriends and parents in our life, we often don’t talk about our problems anyway, big or small. Sure I can occasionally call a friend, or a family member, but I don’t feel like talking about my problems all the time to them. To me sharing too many daily struggles to a friend feels like complaining, or being a negative person. Groups like the men’s circle is a dedicated space to share what’s real for me this week, clear the BS on my mind and also support other men.
After a hiatus during Covid, I am back in a Men’s Circle in Mexico City for the last year. I have generally felt great over the last 6 months, but mental health requires weekly upkeep. I generally don’t miss brushing my teeth or working out when I have a good or a bad week and the same applies to my men’s circle. I will feel lonely again for sure as it’s a fundamental part of human condition, but when I am in good times, I think more about the other people in my life and how I can support them and it keeps me more resilient in the dips in my life.
I’ve discovered that progress personally and professionally is great, but in today’s world of distractions, it is easier to go down a negative spiral than ever before even if some of us are deemed “successful”. If a men’s circle doesn’t jive with you or it’s not available in your area, another option that I have had huge benefits from was picking a physical group hobby. In Bali, Acro yoga was a great supplement for human connection and fun while here in Mexico I regularly attend bachata socials.
Below are a few men’s organizations that I have heard great things about if this any of this interests! Also, feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
Groups:
Cheers! Andriy
PS Thank you to
Samantha Law for helping me edit this piece. It was way different than when I started my first draft with it :-)
I love what you are sharing here Andriy! We men can offer a lot to each other if we quit pretending to be the macho man who has it all together, and confide in other men. Like you said, it is not complaining. We are here to support each other. By doing so we all become stronger.
Love the bravery from you to write this piece. I remember reading the first draft and then coming to this and realizing you wrote the piece you needed to write, not the one the world wanted to hear. Well done!