The Cost of Performing the Answers: Why Men Need to Live the Question

A solitary man stands in quiet reflection in a forest clearing-symbolising masculine stillness and soul searching

Are you living a life of certainty that no longer fits who you are?

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)

Performing the Answers

I grew up in fundamentalism. I learned early on the critical skill of performing spiritually appropriate answers. Childhood curiosity often led to judgment. Questions, especially about the Bible or God, were quickly seen as signs of doubt and as letting the devil tempt you. In fundamentalist settings, it is safer not to ask questions, but by God, you do learn to put on a good show of having all the spiritual answers to questions no one is asking.

It wasn’t just about learning to perform spirituality; I also had to learn to perform masculinity. Preteen and adolescence were the years when I discovered what I was not. I was not godly enough for my father, who romanticised a godly masculinity where sexuality was emasculated. I wasn’t Aussie enough for the boys at high school. The bait for bullies who could vent their insecurities and frustrations on me, I learned to stay in the safety of the school library, not man enough to stand up for myself. So, I watched, and I learned how to perform my version of masculinity that would give me a sense of safety.

Apart from the fundamentalism of my home environment, I am no different from many men who learned early to perform masculinity to keep ourselves safe.

Engaging with the concept of men and emotional healing is essential for personal growth and well-being.

These experiences highlight the importance of men and emotional healing in our lives. Understanding the journey of men and emotional healing can be transformative.

We learned there is little space for us not to know. Little room to stay confused or unresolved. We learned you are supposed to get it together, move on, and man up. Or at the very least, look like you are.

These early lessons stay with us as adult men. I have sat in men’s groups, worked with men, and watched this happen. A man shares something raw; there are a few seconds where fear flickers across his eyes—and within moments, he starts performing a solution: “I guess I just need to work on that,” or “What I have learned from this is…” he says, even though his eyes and his body language are pleading for his pain and uncertainty to be allowed.

Here is the truth we forget:

Performing the answers might keep you accepted. But it will never make you whole.

Masculinity and the Myth of Knowing

Since boyhood, we are taught that a “real man” is someone who knows what he’s doing. Who has a plan. Who doesn’t waver or question too long—because to do so would look weak, uncertain, or maybe even dangerous.

Adolescents and young men understand that if they stay confused and uncertain for too long about life and what they want to do, they risk being labelled as “basement dwellers,” “boomerang kids,” or NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). Uncertainty may even be pathologised with terms like failure to launch syndrome or extended adolescence.

And so, we perform the answers because we are afraid of the questions. Or perhaps the questions seem so overwhelming, and we can’t figure out how to respond, so it’s easier to pretend. To wear the mask of masculinity and hope no one notices our fear of being exposed as impostors.

We learn to mask our pain with polished words, and we say we’re fine when we’re not. We try to sound like we’ve processed our trauma—because anything less feels like failure.

But real healing doesn’t sound like a TED Talk.
It sounds like silence. Like breath. Like an aching pause.

As Parker Palmer (2000) writes, “The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy… but also shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out.”

The same is true for our inner life: it will not come forward if we are performing for fear and approval.

As men, we don’t need louder confidence. We need slower honesty.

Living the Question: A More Courageous Path

Rainer Maria Rilke (1929) urged us to “live the questions now”—not because he was avoiding truth, but because he knew that genuine transformation takes time. Not all truths are ready to be discovered. Some must be nurtured into being.

To live the question means:

  • Holding space for what isn’t yet clear
  • Trusting the slow work of the soul
  • Letting go of the need to “be healed” to be worthy

This is not weakness. It is not passivity.
It is the strength to stay present without prematurely narrating a happy ending.

This kind of presence is what Jungian analyst James Hollis (2005) calls “the ability to tolerate the ambiguity of life and still find the courage to act.” It is an adult maturity that few of us were taught to embody.

Why We Perform: The Protectors at Work

The performing we learn is not random. It is a survival strategy.

When you grow up in systems—religious, familial, societal—that reward image over intimacy, you learn to play a part.

Performing the answers keeps you safe.
It keeps relationships predictable.
It avoids the shame of “not being enough.”

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) terms, performance is often a manager part—a well-meaning inner protector trying to keep chaos at bay (Schwartz, 2021). But over time, this protector can cut us off from more profound truths we are meant to feel, grieve, or integrate.

As Brené Brown (2012) says, “We cannot selectively numb emotion. When we numb the dark, we also numb the light.”

The Soul Cost of Pretending

The more we perform, the more we disconnect—from our bodies, from our longing, from our truth.

  • We say the right words but feel hollow.
  • We appear strong but ache for permission to fall apart.
  • We know the tools but feel no aliveness in our chest.

And in that space of spiritual dislocation, many men begin to drift. Not outwardly, perhaps. They still show up for work, for family, for responsibilities. But inwardly? They’re ghosts of themselves.

Carl Jung (1959) wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
This includes the unconscious ways we fake clarity to avoid pain.

Five Practices for Living the Question (Not Performing the Answer)

Here are five soul-centered, grounded ways to practice living the question:

  1. The Pause Practice

Before responding in conversation, take one slow breath.
Ask:

“Am I saying this because it is true—or because it is expected?”
Allow discomfort. Let your body speak first.

  1. Unfinished Journaling

Try this prompt:

“What question am I afraid to ask out loud?”
Write freely, without needing to resolve it. Trust the act of wondering.

  1. The Candle Ritual

Each evening, light a candle for one question you’re carrying.
Sit beside it for 5 minutes. No fixing. No clarity. Just witness it flicker.

  1. Somatic Listening

When you feel tense, ask:

“Which part of me is performing right now?”
Name the emotion. Stay with it. Movement may arise from stillness.

  1. Seek Witnessing, Not Fixing

Find a mentor who can hold space. Say:

“I don’t need advice. I need someone to hear where I am.”
This is sacred. And it rewires us for trust.

🛑 Not Ready for Ritual? That’s Okay.

If you’re reading these five practices and thinking,
“This isn’t me. I don’t light candles. I don’t journal. I can barely sit with myself…”

That is okay

When a man feels shut down emotionally, it’s not because he’s weak—it’s because something inside him learned to protect itself in silence. In many cases, that shutdown isn’t dysfunction. It’s survival.

Maybe you grew up in a home where tenderness was a threat.
Maybe you were taught that asking questions made you foolish or soft.
Maybe the grief or guilt or shame you carry feels so vast, you’re afraid that opening the door even a little will undo you completely.

If that’s you, hear this:
The bravest thing you can do is stay.
Not fix. Not ritualise.
Just stay in the room.

Stay with this blog.
Stay with the quiet knowing that something in you wants more.
Stay with the ache—without needing to label it, solve it, or explain it.

If breathwork and candles feel like another role to perform, don’t start there.

Start here:

  • Close your eyes for three seconds.
  • Breathe once.
  • Say to yourself (even silently):

“I don’t have to figure this out today.”

That’s it.
No breakthroughs. No revelations. No performance.

Just honest presence in a nervous system that’s still learning; it’s allowed to feel again.

This is the beginning.
This is living the question—in its rawest, simplest form.

If This Is You—Here’s What to Do

If any of this resonated—this ache, this exhaustion, this quiet longing for something real—then you’re not alone.

And you don’t have to keep pretending.

You don’t have to perform the answers anymore.
You’re allowed to live the question.

This is the work I do with men every day—not fixing, not prescribing, but walking with them as they stop performing and start returning to their souls.

🔹 Want to stop performing and start living the question?
Let’s talk—quietly, honestly, without pressure.
Contact Me – Mentoring Through The Maze

 

🔍 References (APA Style)

  • Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books.
  • Hollis, J. (2005). Through the Dark Wood: Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life. Gotham Books.
  • Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Princeton University Press.
  • Palmer, P. (2000). Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Jossey-Bass.
  • Rilke, R. M. (1929). Letters to a Young Poet. (Trans. M. D. Herter Norton). W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Schwartz, R. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.

 

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