What the "Midnight Hour" Gives You as a Man

When I went to see Woody Allen's film, Midnight in Paris, I was told it's a "romantic comedy" about a bad relationship, and expected all kinds of lessons about attraction, dating and marriage. I didn't at all expect that it was going to be an equally thought provoking guide to career choices coming from our inexplicable experiences with the unexpected. That it would treat the two prime concerns of men in the form of women and work in equal balance, or how it is that the hour of midnight has a role in a man's life, were the biggest surprises of all.

There are some specific lessons and skills that you can pull out of this film for your life as a man - things that you have never thought of in this way. And you can do so in a way where your career actually helps guide your choices about women, while your lessons from relations with women can give you career insight that can't be had in any book or from any advisor.

We decode this connection in the Mature Masculine Power Program, where we lay out what we call The Equation of Masculinity. That your overall masculinity depends on two "variables": Your skill with women + Your progress on a career mission. The higher your level of masculinity, the more attractive you are to women in general, the more passion you feel in pursuing them, the better you do at work, the more passion for your work you are, and overall, the more vital and passionate about life itself you are.

Which is obviously a good thing. It's the "most alive" you can feel when you have both women and work figured out in your life. In fact, struggling with these two things are of prime importance as a cause of the condition we have identified, called DEPRESCULINITY®. A whole training at this dilemma most men face at one point or another is available to you by the same name - Depresculinity - "Masculine Intelligence With Your Emotions as a Man."

Depresculinity is a kind of depression combined with a strike to your sense of masculinity itself. It's something with which a man might still be able to go to work, date or have relationships with women, and do all the duties you have to do. You know, pay the bills, go to the gym, head to the office every day, go on dates...

...but still never feel REALLY GOOD, really vital, thriving, growing, and ALIVE as a man.

The closest thing to it, they used to call, "Melancholia," and Owen Wilson's character in Midnight in Paris could be said to suffer of it.

He's a successful Hollywood screenwriter in the film, but that's not exactly what he's always wanted to do for a career. He'd like to write good novels, satisfying stories, and he romanticizes the "Golden Age" of American writers mixing with the great artists of Europe on the West Bank of the Seine in the Paris of the "Roaring 1920's."

The problem is - not even clearly in his awareness - is that he is about to be married to a pedantic, narcissistic woman (played by Rachael McAdams) who both disdains and actively works against his "dream career," let alone doing the slightest thing to make him feel like a man in their relationship.

But she's hot, of course - the downfall of many a man with big career dreams.

Tagging along with her fathers mundane business trip that takes the couple, and Wilson's future in-laws to Paris, there is arguing, infidelity, and complete miscommunication with each other that sounds the death knell to their relationship.

But inexplicably, irrationally, and magically, when Wilson's character starts going on midnight walks to experience the lights of Paris which so inspire the writer, he falls through nightly time warps into the past of Paris, where he meets his heroes such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, Gertrude Stein, and finally, the ultimate man's man writer, Ernest Hemingway.

They, and especially Hemingway, will be his guides and mentors when it comes not only to his chosen dream career, but his choices with women too.

The "Magic Hour" for Men

There's plenty of advice for men out there - oftentimes in the form of lists and bullet-points, like one finds in an auto repair manual.  Step one, step two, step three. It's understandable how many times we instinctually discourage other men and ourselves from being "too much a dreamer." After all, it's usually action, action, action that a man takes which leads to real change in his quality of life - breaking up with the woman not right for you, leaving the job that's no good for you, and getting one that treats you better, and sometimes a change in geography - a move to a larger city doing wonders for your opportunities as a man. I certainly have advised men how valuable it is to live in several different cities during your lifetime.

But the interesting dilemma that Owen Wilson's character faces is one that neither has such concrete answers to the direction he should take, nor is he the kind of guy who naturally has the style of personality that lends itself to such determined action. He's creative, a deep thinker, cares about others in general, and even the woman who treats him so poorly. He's invested a great deal in his fiancee, as well as his screenwriting career (quite successful at that), and isn't quick to walk away from all that. It's just that since he was a young man, he has yearned for the life of Paris, and if he could have his way, it would be the Paris of the 1920's.  That's his fantasy anyway.

In our KWML Mastery Program on personality style, love and friendship with women, we call that kind of guy a Lover Personality.

Answers in life to a Lover Personality are not as simple as black and white choices. There are shades of gray, and even if it were that easy, this kind of guy prefers "thinking his way to the answers" even if he will ultimately have to decide and act on his choices with women and work.

Here is the first skill you can learn from this film if you are this kind of guy, or a part of you is like this guy: Observing Ego it's called. The prime core skill of personal growth, without which you cannot learn from your mistakes, change or grow. It is like being your own coach, advisor, and guide in real time, and is accessed by asking yourself questions such as, "What do I need right now?" Or, "How am I doing?" Or, "Should I actually marry HER?"

We cover Observing Ego in the MindOS Mastery Program, but in Midnight in Paris, you can see a film technique being used that directors call "The Magic Hour." It actually happens twice every twenty-four hours, and is the time at both pre-dawn and twilight at which the lighting in scenes filmed outdoors provide just the right values to film the actors with minimal need for artificial lighting.

The "Magic Hour" is a transition between day and night, between the mundane and the imagination, and while a period of moments of time, if captured with the right timing and skill in filming, can contribute to an artistic work that will be "timeless."

There is something to be learned from this concept to use in your everyday life. The parallel from the Magic Hour of the cinematographer to the practicalities of your own, real life is what psychoanalysts call "transitional space."

Transitional space is for children what can be called "play space" - where there is not a care in the world, but your toys, and your imagination can run wild. For adults, it becomes harder and harder to access this "mental territory" of the imagination - the "suspension of reality" - in that when we try to transition away from the workaday world of challenges and difficulty into a mentally creative place, if we get there at all, it is for moments, after which we often dismiss the brief window for insights and inspirations about our lives as being "silly," or "daydreams," or worse - "distractions from matters at hand."

That's just the mindset which Owen Wilson is in with Rachael McAdams. He just goes about "doing his duty" as a career man with a fiancee he's trying to please all the time, even while she insults him, blocks his access to this "transitional space," and really doesn't understand him (or men) at all.

It's obvious to the rest of us that this couple is not meant to be, but like the neuroticism of many of Woody Allen's films, we sure associate with the experience of "just sucking it up" in life, doing what "we are supposed to do," and force ourselves to "deal with reality."

Wilson's character, a writer, an artist, and Lover personalitied males in general, don't solve problems doing that.

They need transitional space, which just like the Magic Hour to the filmmaker, is fleeting, but if seized at the right time, and attention, with the right skill in the right way at the right time, can permanently change one's life course for the better.

And that's exactly what this psychological skill called Observing Ego provides you.

The "Midnight Hour" for Men

The Midnight Hour of this film, and what the wee hours of the night offer men is something very different from the transitional space, the Observing Ego, of the Magic Hour.

I don't know if you consider yourself a morning person or a late night person as far as when you are at your best as a man, whether it's in career or with women, but they have the same effect on your life - they are places in time when you shed all duties and distractions, all work just for work's sake to instead be alone and entirely free with your thoughts. There are no demands from a woman in your life, or from family or friends, and no directives from a boss who likely doesn't have any dreams for your personal development or welfare - just profit.

Symbolically, daylight stands for our conscious minds, the state of thinking we are in when we go to the job at the office, or try hard to please a woman we are with.

But nighttime, especially starting at the Midnight Hour, we have long left the daytime world and all it's duties and responsibilities. We've transitioned through the attention and taking notice that Observing Ego provides, and fully immersed in a world of night - which is symbolically our own unconscious, the place where creativity and spontaneous discovery arise.

Owen Wilson's character has nowhere to go to get away from his overbearing fiancee and into his own head, his own dreams completely uninvaded by her. Maybe at some point in your life, you took breaks from the fights or challenges you faced with a woman, and found clarity, identity, and good self-counsel late at night in this way (or early morning if you're one of those early-risers.)

Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, Batman has his Batcave, and you must have a private, protected, even secret place and time to work on yourself and read your own thoughts. In the Mature Masculine Power Program we call this instinct which masculinizes us as men - and makes us more vital, passionate for life, and "feeling on top of the world" - the Hades Instinct, the Greek god of the underworld, the unconscious, and "solitude" as a masculine need.

Taking a purposeful time out from life, once a night in this way, can give you a "second life" - an "alter ego" life where you are free to finally get to know yourself, which is ironically a more real self than that one who goes to an uninspiring office every day, or makes due with a lackluster woman who doesn't quite understand or support you.

It's a place where you have a natural boundary setting you apart from the daytime stresses and expectations - the time when we may be socializing with new people out on the town one night, perhaps writing in a personal journal another night, and enjoying the freedom and solitude of consoling, exploring, and clarifying who we are and what we are meant to do in this world in terms of career. It's the time to fantasize about the kind of woman we really want to be with, even if it's not the one we may spend all our daytime hours trying to appeal to, appease, or otherwise get along with.

This time of making a boundary against everything else, a brief but always available space in every twenty four hours to really be ourselves - might also be when we can most vividly access our heroes, other men to look up to and learn from, imitate in our nature and choices, and if fully engaging in it, finally know with certainty what we need to do.

Then all that's left to do is to take action on what we learn.

This certainly happens to Owen Wilson's character - for in the counsel of Ernest Hemingway, he discovered his perfect career activity to do, and practices at it, and even learns some of the profound lessons that will lead to a solid decision on whether to go ahead with the wedding to Rachael McAdams.

Get yourself a "Midnight Hour" experience once a day - meditating, self-reflecting, and accepting insights about your life in its late, dark silence.

"The Hour of Need" in a Man's Life

Somewhere inside - likely the unconscious that the "Midnight Hour" represents - we all know that there is no more real, effective and needed person to solve our problems than ourselves.

It is our "Hour of Need," and the real hero of that chapter of life, must be US.

Still, we do have a little help, even if it is in the form of an imaginary friend we call a "hero." For Owen Wilson, this is Ernest Hemingway, a man who died before he was born and will therefore never meet in person - and yet a man who most certainly was intimately known as a mentor simply by way of the writings he left behind.

That is the pleasant guarantee by those other men we call our heroes. We will never absolutely need to meet them in person because all we have to do is to read about them, study their works, their women and their lives in order to find not just inspiration, but instruction.

Believe me, the advice of Ernest Hemingway to Owen Wilson's character in Midnight in Paris, is man's man inspiring and instructive. At one point he asks Owen Wilson whether he loves his fiance, and how is she in bed, and our main character says that of course that's true he loves her. And she is also a wildcat in bed.

Which it is not. The real truth is that he is hanging on to an effigy of a good wife, a mannequin masquerading as a support, and friend and lover, and a shrewish, insidious impediment, even a deadly obstacle to becoming the happy, successful man he is destined to become. It's what identifying and solving Depresculinity is all about - first step of which is shedding our illusions that people, places, and activities (jobs included) which are bad for us, can somehow "work out" with effort, or even be tolerated a moment longer.

He needs this mentor, this hero, in this hour of need, even if HE is going to have to be the one - having now recognized that there is a problem in his relationship, his career and his life all intertwined among them - to take the corrective actions.

Hemingway (the illusion that is at once, "real" as a force in his life) tells Wilson, "Do you forget death when you are making love to her?"

He has to admit, "no, I still fear death. Who doesn't?"

Hemingway says, "Well if you truly love her you will forget death exists - at least for a time - and when it returns you must make love to her with even more ferocity."

incredibly funny, and yet so true.

It's only in this Midnight Hour, in transitional space, with Observing Ego, that we eventually reach an Hour of Need where we can have dreams and enough imagination to access our heroes, and have enough time and attention to hear their advice...

...which we of course then, in reality, alone, have to be the only ones to act on it.

Hemingway has another great quote as a career bookend on the advice regarding love and women. He says that good writing (or a man's career efforts) has to be honest and true, and can be simple, so long as it shows courage. And good writing can only come from the act of loving, or loving well, which are the same thing.

One can't miss that women and work are so very intertwined in our concerns and passions, and that both must be faced bravely, honestly, and at the most crucial times, alone and without guidance.

But it's in our Hour of Need that our best heroes advise, even when we are physically alone. We can only access this at night, separated from the drama and noise of daylight duties.

The "Finest Hour" in a Man's Life

The Finest Hour is your moment of victory over a challenge or dilemma, and is the only place where you grow by leaps and bounds as a man. It may not be a situation where you have total certainly about what the future holds, but that's not the point or the goal. It's feeling like a man, solid that you have won a battle and can hold your own in life, alone if you need to but open to new opportunities and new people.

You are able to move through trouble and move on even when you have felt the pain of transitions and loss.

Your Finest Hour can only be reached by:

• Starting with the Observing Ego - the attention and silence in the window of opportunity that is The Magic Hour
• Then to the walling off from stress and drama that having good boundaries and privacy in the Midnight Hour afford...
• Then awaiting, expecting, and dealing with the Hour of Need that most surely will fall on you time and time again as a man (or you aren't really trying or living)...
• To arrive at the Finest Hour, when you will have to make a courageous decision with incomplete information, resources, or readiness, but know you are backed by training, skill, counsel of your heroes and mentors, and above all, have an ability to value yourself, a willingness to go that last step entirely alone...

To victory over life's dilemmas.

If we could offer deeper study in this craft of building your life as a man, it would start with MindOS, go to Depresculinity, and end in the Mature Masculine Power Program.