What does it mean to be a man?

I've been reading James Reeve's "The Road to Somewhere," within which, he repeatedly asks "What does it mean to be a man?" No matter, what he's calling attention to is not his own provided answers - which are shallow stereotypes, if not caricatures of stereotypes - but the absence of any satisfactory answers to that question in the modern world, period. James' great-grandfather built his own cabin and raised several children in it; his grandfather was a company man who did well for his family as sole breadwinner before ending up in a nursing home following a stroke; his parents struggled to make ends meet at a mix of legitimate and illegitimate jobs; James builds websites. The modern world came earlier each generation for their pride and self-determination.

Or, who knows. Maybe James' family is just a bunch of losers who aren't made for this world, and are falling by the meritorious wayside to those who are. If that's true, then my gut tells me that I'm in the same boat as James' family.

I have a one-year old daughter who reminds me every day that I don't know what it means to be a man. Does it mean I'm always gentle, so that she adores me? Or always stern and unbending, so that she grows up disciplined? Does it mean I never get mad, or never get sentimental, or never get nervous, or scared? Or that I know, at once, the time for each of these things, as if this wisdom were part of my genetic programming?

Does it mean that I never get bored by mundane repetition? Or that I hide the feeling? Does it mean that I enforce patriarchy? (If that's the goal, then I am losing quite badly - we gave my daughter my wife's last name!)

I think that more than anything, being a man is supposed to mean that I already have all these answers. But I don't, and neither does anyone else. Maybe being a man means acting confident even when I don't feel it? Or acting confident even when I know nothing at all? Maybe Donald Trump is 2018's most archetypal man, because he is pure bluster - an id that follows an ego, a body that follows a voice - having broken free of the constraint of objective reality so completely. If this is one of the things that has changed in the modern world, then I am sure of it - I am not made to live in this time, and I will fail more every year.

What I really feel, as a man with a one-year old daughter, is: uncertainty that often paralyzes me from acting at all; fears that I can't dismiss, that leave me bouncing between spastic anger and a nervous sadness; and a gratitude that comes to me in strange moments - to have been chosen for this to happen to at all, because I have never felt ready nor capable of what it takes. But the world didn't care, it chose me anyway, and when the uncertainty and shame subside, I'm left with a quiet honor, and the desire to be a better father.