Man is not a single thing, he is a combination of many things and when we’re looking to become well-developed as well as well-rounded people we can neglect any aspect of who we are as men. To become warrior poets. In our modern day and world people like to find little boxes that they can fit in and label themselves with. Left wing or right wing. Introvert or extrovert. This or that. And unfortunately many of these are limiting labels.
People put themselves in boxes and refuse to break out of them, even when suffering pain and discomfort from forcing themselves to fit into them in the first place. This happens from day care to nursing homes. People latch onto certain things and blind themselves to everything else around them. They become calcified and stuck in their ways or changing with every blowing of the wind.
For example a guy who does sports when he’s young and excels there may never develop himself in other ways through life. He may always consider himself a jock and never do things that challenge him or work to develop him in other ways later in life. He may even deny parts of himself to fit in with a certain mold. Likewise maybe another guy reads books when he’s young and shy’s away from physical activity and goes down a similar limiting path as the first guy.
This is not how many was meant to live.
The Tri-Aspects Of Man
Man has three “parts” if you will. Parts that are all equally important and all have a role to play in a man’s life. Parts that if neglected lead to problems and improper functioning and that parts that when all working together become more than the sum of their parts. Again when we talk about a man in full, a renaissance man, a warrior poet we are talking about a man who has developed all aspects of his life, has worked hard on all three aspects of what it means to be a man, leaving none to chance of deterioration.
Those three aspects are physical, mental, and spiritual. Many include emotional in this as well but technically emotional is included in mental so that’s why there’s not a fourth aspect for it. When a man neglects his body, his mind, or his soul and lets it rot, bad things happen. I’m not saying that if he works hard on all three aspects bad things stop happening. Far from it, but he will be prepared to cope with them and work through them.
Unfortunately many males cling to strengths they had in child hood and never work to develop weaker aspects of themselves. Ask the former high school quarterback to perform in a play. Likewise ask the engineer to do a boxing march or spar a couple rounds. I’m not saying you have to be the best in everything. That’s impossible.
Rather I’m saying you should work to develop all aspects as much as you can. Sure you’ll have natural strengths and weaknesses. The process is to shore up those weaknesses and work to increase the strengths, raising everything across the board. Don’t get stuck just using your strength, that leads to imbalance. Work all three aspects of yourself and develop them.
The Physical, Mental, & Spiritual Aspects Of Man
Though a book could be written about this I’m going to try to summarize as best I can what each aspect represents so you have better knowledge of how to develop it.
The physical. The easiest place to start with the physical is physical health. How is your weight? Too much fat? Too little muscle? Start here with diet and exercise? But it goes beyond just physical appearance. It’s also hormonal health, and resistance to and freedom from diseases and abnormalities and so on and so forth. Health across the board. Hormonally, body composition wise, brain wise, gut wise, and a whole lot of other factors. Again this is just a broad start.
The mental. This can be seen in a couple of different ways. There is mental health which is freedom from mental diseases which ties in with the physical as the brain is a physical thing. Diet plays a huge role in this. But also mental stimulation, creativity, and thinking and thought patterns. This ranges from intelligence to social skills to pattern recognition to having healthy thought patterns, confidence, and more. Again broad overview.
The spiritual. The spiritual is the hardest to define. It is your will, your inner core of who you are, your character, your standards, honor, your reaction to art and higher things, your drive, and a whole lot more. None of these paragraphs cover all this is to know about each aspect just broad pictures but spirituality is really a challenge to describe. Its your connection with something higher and beyond you.
The Development Of All Three Aspects
The biggest task is understanding that there are the three aspects and none should be neglected. Most people favor either physical or mental development while we all seem to neglect spiritual development. Take a second and think of which one you favor and what you have been neglecting. Then work to correct that. Again, the point isn’t to give up working on your strength. So if you’ve been a lifelong athlete keep going to the gym, just add in other things to boost up the other aspects.
And understand that there’s going to be overlap. There are sports that develop all three aspects and there are things like hiking in nature that hit both physical and spiritual and that nothing is going to only affect one area. And the point is to work on all three. Not give up a strength to work on a weakness. Keep developing your strength while also working on the weakness. Keep developing all three aspects.
That’s the path to becoming a warrior poet.
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-Charles Sledge
