What's their secret? That questions makes circles on my head a lot these days. When I say "they", I refer to those guys. Those who are considered "proffesional" men. Those who have salaries ranging in the hundred hundreds. They who have impecable, chiseled looks. They who have girlfriends and wives that look like Cosmopolitan-cover models. What's their secret?

     You know, you can take two 25 year-old men and place them side by side--Imagine this--and there could be such radical differences. You could have a 25 year old who's 6'2", has alpine-boy looks, dresses like the GQ man, and just looks like he has "it". And beside him, there's another 25 year old, scrawny looking, pimples and irregular hair, dressed in stylings from the local Salvation Army center, and just looks like...well...not "it."

     Now, I know looks aren't "it". Money can't buy "it." And physiques can't inform you about "it." I'm aware that some of the most intelligent, artistic, and spiritual men have been nothing much to look at. Gandhi. Einstein. Even Jesus looked pretty much like an unclean hippie.

     Yet as much as I know and push forward the cause of character as the measuring stick for men, I still grapple with the question: "What's their secret?" I really wish I could asking myself. I wish I could stop wondering if the goal of all modern men is to end up like one of these carbon copies of model masculinity.

     I think: The Dalai Llama-- there's an spiritual man, wise, at peace. Is he less of a man because he's not caucasian and lifts weights five days a week? John Lennon--there was a creative, truly individual man. Was he less a man because he didn't wear thousand dollar suits and had ripped abs?

     We live in a society in which "beautiful people" are practically laid everything at their feet. If they're malevolent enough, they could get away with murder. And we celebrate the beautiful endlessly, aspire to be them, and we don't recognize any others as human unless they look as them.

     And you know what: All men who are not white, who are perhaps a little short, who are somewhat overweight, who are hairy, who are disabled, who may not have the perfect angled looks....they're all men, and capable of reaching any heights they set themselves out to. They're all equally worthy of opportunites. They're all equally deserving of love. Why must we build a society geared to the physically perfect? Why have we taken up the idolatry of flawless-looking people?

     "What's their secret?" It's a futile question that'll continue to make circles in my head-- yet I already know the answer. Happiness isn't about being some perfectly molded man. I suspect that in the end, men like the Dalai Llama truly embody beauty and the essence of being a realized man