Excerpt: An It Harm None

I have always been interested in the question of what marks the transition from boyhood to manhood, or at least so it seemed. It bubbled under the surface for a long time at least, before the question crystallized in my mind in response to my neighbor, once upon a time, receiving my congratulations upon arriving at his thirteenth birthday. Recalling the many bar mitzvahs I had attended as a youth, I had said to him, “Now, you are a man.”
In return, he asked the most reasonable of questions: “What does that mean?”
I found that I had been unable to answer, and upon that day the question was brought more fully to the surface of my consciousness, as I pondered rites of manhood, read about the subject, recalled discussions I'd had about the topic when I was younger. Manhood is not marked in our society, and does not even have the advantage of an unambiguous biological change, like the onset of menstruation represents to girls. It's probably not a terribly enjoyable transition, and it's certainly not celebrated with the positive emphasis that it deserves, but even in a mishandled culture such as ours, girls at the very least have a milestone upon which to think back. Men have a puberty that is less dramatically punctuated by events – first ejaculation often passes without notice for boys not expecting it, voice changes take too long to be so easily marked, and the need for deodorant is probably the first time that the changes required some external assistance. The cultural significance, I have come to believe, is that a man must accept the consequences for his actions, while it is unsurprising for a boy to attempt to shirk the less pleasant among them. That means leaving behind the lies and laziness of youth and accepting that one is, in the long term at least, generally rewarded well or poorly in life in proportion to the amount of sincerity and effort put in to the venture. Granted, there can be some big changes that result from completely uncontrollable factors such as attractiveness or inherited wealth, but our bodies and minds all follow pretty much the same patterns and our lives are better off when we take responsibility for them than they would be otherwise.
Whether or not personal responsibility is the mark of manhood that anyone can accept I can't say, but as this lad showed many of the weaknesses I had clung to so desperately as a child, I thought it to be a good guide for him. To this day I believe he has not yet attempted to live in such a way, so I am as yet unable to see how well I guessed in his regard.