Thank You Sister

A surprise gift at 10 pm--a rose and a reminder that we men don't have to tough it out all the time

I walked out my front door last night, trying to see the “conjunction” of Jupiter and Venus in the sky.

Instead, I experienced an earthly wonder.

A young woman came up to me and offered me a white rose.

Given all the troubled people in my hometown of San Francisco, I was a bit wary at first. Was this a woman acting odd because of mental illness?

No. Something like the opposite.

“I'm giving these to men in honor of Men's Mental Health Month,” she explained. “We're all struggling.”

Yes we are. I took my rose. And also a little flyer with reminders including:

“You are never alone”

“Suffering doesn't make you weak”

“You don't need to ‘man up'”

I let my guard down. Who was this Florence Nightingale, wandering the streets and seeking to heal hurting guys?

She told me her name is Richa. She works in tech. She just moved onto my block this year. And this is a way for her to give back.

Wow. There are a lot of problems with the tech industry, including its gentrification impact in San Francisco and the way male tech titans like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are corrupting our planet and politics.

Those two and others have fallen sway to an outdated, “confined” masculinity that is about domination, extreme individualism and emotional ignorance.

But Richa is showing us a better way.

Thank you sister.

We “Jupiters” have a lot to learn from the “Venuses” in our lives.