We met through my ex-wife. He ran past our house one late Summer’s afternoon.
Ken was a distinctive figure. Late 40s, fair, very tall and shirtless, with one hell of a physique, carrying a three-legged dog, aptly named Chico, on his shoulders.
He stopped to talk to Klara, this unusual but formidable man, who stood at the end of my driveway. I eyed him suspiciously.
But from here began an unlikely but incredibly important friendship for me, with a man that I now care deeply for, who has given me so much. Looking back, it is as if destiny brought us together.
Stuck in an unhappy marriage, but unable to see or find a way out, it was not long before he got me doing things I would not formerly have entertained. The innuendo is clear here, I realise, I’ll give you this.
Ken has a keen sense of suffering – he sensed it in me from the get-go. He witnessed a middle-aged man on the edge, beaten down and angry as hell with his predicament. He was able to see right through my calm and controlled exterior, this necessary albeit unhealthy mask and mechanism I’d adopted in the face of internal chaos. He spied a deep longing in me, the longing of a man who wished for his life to be not as it was.
And so began his loving, caring and supportive friendship, defined by his capacity to meet other men as they are, with no judgement, this unique quality that is so rare. How we are surrounded by perpetual judgment.
In me, he saw a wounded warrior, a man built like a brick shithouse, determined as hell, that attacked life but did not fully live it, with a deep voice, beard and a lot of muscle, who underneath the seemingly invulnerable and impenetrable bulk carried a profound angst and fragility, worn down by the heavy burdens he carried in his heart.
Unfamiliar with the 12 Steps, I had met my sponsor without even knowing it, and soon entered a much-needed fellowship of other men, who were wounded too, and like me, screaming to escape the shadows of women they’d become enmeshed with.
Before long we’d all be expressing our lost masculinity – how easy this is to be deprived of in the modern world – but also finding brotherhood in a community of men needing to express all of themselves, light and dark.
Everything was permitted in this place, a container for the lower self, with all of us free to express as much anger, resentment and rage as we wanted, these emotions welcomed not shunned or shamed. What a relief?!
It was the antithesis of much of the self-development and spiritual bypassing hokum out there, which advocates unconditional love while not acknowledging the ambivalence and polarity in human beings.
All of us in this group had been assembled by Ken. He might have met us at different times – the majority of us when we were in crisis – but the group had brought us together, to find healing in and with one another, led by a brilliant facilitator he had also known for many years.
Ken presents as cool and unflappable, a surfer dude with good looks and eternal laissez-faire, but underneath there is someone more fragile and uncertain, who knows he needs fellowship as much as the men he brings together do.
Part of him floats through life, his ADHD affording him an unexpected freedom, while another struggles with the conventions of a society that demands he operate a certain way, which his idiosyncrasies including his chronic, lifelong insomnia will neither accommodate nor permit.
Possessed of a deep love of animals, of the kind one rarely witnesses, his love for them extends to helping any he finds in need or distress. He is fiercely protective of foxes, feeding them when he knows they are hungry and malnourished.
He gravitates towards the underdog – the urban fox perhaps the epitome of this archetype, reduced to a life of scavenging for human scraps – as if seeing the great potential in us all, wanting to help others, but always with a profound humility.
Enormously gifted with his hands – and this is not just when he’s in the boxing ring or halfway up a climbing wall – Ken is able to craft something beautiful out of something seemingly broken, again, with a natural proclivity to see the potential in all things, including himself, even if they are deemed inherently ugly or defective.
It’s this commitment, to finding the beautiful and whole in the seemingly ugly and broken, which drove him to reach out to me with a helping hand when I so needed it, as he has done for so many others.
He is indeed inimitable, and good-hearted, and there are many of us, friends of his, who are extremely grateful to have him in our lives, even if sometimes he has us climbing 100ft trees and risking our lives in the pursuit of liberation!