Ed Hinman wrote a book called The Barbarian in You, and he built his own brotherhood by doing the least barbarian thing you can imagine.
Ed Hinman spent his thirties in Los Angeles working all the time and had no real friends. His buddies from the Marine Corps were scattered across the country. One day he got tired of it and decided he needed people.
So he did something no action movie would ever show a barbarian doing. He called his wife’s friends’ husbands and boyfriends, guys he barely knew, and said some version of: I hear you like to read. Come over to my house. Bring a book you love.
They came. That was 13 years ago. They still meet every quarter, and the group has grown to 25 men who now gather around a fire in his backyard.
The guy who titled his book The Barbarian in You started his shield wall with what amounts to a book-club invite to near-strangers. And it worked for a reason he didn’t expect. He wasn’t the only one starving for it. Half those men were just as hungry for it as he was, and nobody else had picked up the phone.
Nobody drops you into a platoon anymore
Ed’s whole book runs on three pillars. Vigor, wonder, and fellowship. Physical effort and the state change it brings. Awe, imagination, the sense that you’re small inside something old and large. And real connection, the kind that used to come free.
In the military, fellowship was automatic. They dropped you into a platoon and those were your brothers, no effort required. Same with a team, or a fraternity, or the job that hands you a built-in crew. Then you age out of all of it. You’re married, you’ve got kids, you’ve got a living to earn, and the machinery that used to hand you friends is just gone. Nobody replaces it for you.
So it takes work, but not the kind most people think. They think it’s a bigger lift than it is. Ed’s line is that it’s like the gym. The dread is all in the parking lot. “Just showing up’s ninety percent of it,” he said, and once you’re actually there, moving, with people, the resistance you built it up to be evaporates.
I’ll own my own version of the problem, because I’m bad at this. I have a ton of acquaintances and a small handful of actual friends, and almost everyone I connect with, it’s because they’re coming on the podcast or we’re working on something together. There’s an agenda baked in. Then this week a guy I’d never met, 50 years old, turning 50 on Saturday and training to run a sub-5-minute mile, messaged me because we’d both posted about a physical challenge. Turns out he lives in my small town. We went for a run at sunrise, two dudes, no agenda, nothing to sell each other. Vigor from the effort, wonder from the light coming up over the front range, fellowship from the company. All three in one hour, and I drove home realizing how long it had been. I still haven’t cracked how to make more of that happen.
Trust thyself, and other terrifying advice
Ed’s favorite barbarian is Ralph Waldo Emerson, which is funny until you read him. The line Ed lives on is from Self-Reliance: “trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Listen to the pull inside you, the primal inclination, the thing you were drawn to before anybody told you what to want.
The problem is that trusting it is frightening. Emerson called going your own way “the terrible freedom.” Ed felt it literally. He tells a story of being on the fence line at Guantanamo Bay, on patrol with his Marines, driving the paved road, miserable, and feeling a pull to veer off onto a dirt road instead. He took it. Within minutes he knew: I’m getting out of the military. He’d stopped feeling any agency in the life that had been laid out for him, and he had to go build his own.
Ed is careful here, and it matters. He’s not preaching that you torch your life and chase bliss. “There’s fucking honor,” he says, in a man working a job he doesn’t love to feed three kids. The pull doesn’t have to become your whole career. It just has to live somewhere in your week.
He has a clean test for telling a real calling from an ego chase. Would you still do it if no one ever knew? “You would do it if you couldn’t tell a soul,” he said. The higher rank, the shinier car, the win you can post about, run it through that filter and a lot of it falls away as stuff you’re doing for the scoreboard.
I’ll be honest about my own scoreboard. One of the reasons I got married young was that it was next on the list. Navy, then college, then a job, then a wife, then kids. Nobody ever sat me down and told me to. It was just what I believed society wanted from me, sitting right below the surface where I didn’t have to look at it. Ed found his pull at 15, when a kid moved to town and got him into weight training. He’d felt mediocre his whole childhood, bad at sports, bad at school, low self-esteem, and the iron was the first thing that gave him momentum he could measure. He walked into a gym, saw guys built like “pagan gods,” and wanted in. That one pull built his confidence, got him recruited, got him to the Naval Academy. He knew it was his because nobody had to make him do it.
A wall built out of men
Ed has a chapter called Shield Wall, about a battle in the 8th century where Charles Martel’s men locked shields and stopped an invasion cold. He loves the image because a shield wall is a wall built out of people. And his point is brutal and true: “when life starts firing arrows, you’re gonna need your friends there. But if you haven’t helped them and been there for them, they’re not gonna reciprocate.”
You build the wall before the arrows fly, or it isn’t there when they do. Ed went through something hard recently and called on friends he’d shown up for before, and they carried some of the weight. He also described a night at the bottom of a dark stretch, lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan, when he felt what he could only call an energy of love come into his chest, and the gift of it was that he could surrender to it. He was an atheist most of his life. Now he goes to a quiet weekday Mass, “me and all the other lost sheep,” to sit and exhale.
There’s a Simon Sinek bit about finding out a close friend had been struggling and never called. Sinek’s response was fury: how dare you deprive me of the chance to be there for you. When you reach out, you hand someone who loves you the exact thing they’ve been waiting to give.
The way I picture a dark stretch is a ridgeline in the clouds. You can’t tell how high you are, because the fog’s all around you. It clears a little, you look down, and you think, well, I’m not at the bottom, I’m fine right here. Then it clears above you, and there’s higher ground you could reach, except the only way up runs down through some dark valleys first, and that’s more work than staying put. Fear freezes some men there. Apathy holds more of them. I’m good where I’m at is the most comfortable lie there is...
What to do about it
Send the least barbarian invite you can think of. Pick one thing you actually love, a book, a fire, a Saturday run, a poker table, and invite 3 guys you’d like to know better. Ask them to bring one thing. That’s the whole move. Ed’s 25-man brotherhood started with a text to near-strangers, and the effort was almost nothing next to what it’s become.
Stack all three in one hour this week. Vigor, wonder, and fellowship in a single block. A hard effort, outdoors if you can manage it, with one other person and nothing to sell each other. My sunrise run did all three by accident. Do yours on purpose.
Run the ego test on your next big want. Take the thing you’re chasing right now and ask Ed’s question: would you still want it if you couldn’t tell a soul? If the answer is no, you’re chasing it for the scoreboard. Not sure which of your wants are yours? Start with our free Awareness Self-Assessment: focusnowtraining.com/assessment-page. Paid subscribers, Resource 2 walks the whole audit.
Build your shield wall before the arrows. Reach out to one person this week when you need nothing from them, so the wall is standing when you do. On Friday, September 25th, Will and I are running Warrior Define in Charlotte, a full day of men doing exactly this in the same room. Come if you can. Either way, reply and tell me the one guy you’re going to reach out to this week with no agenda. I read every one.
Name your dirt road. Ed felt the pull to veer off the paved road and knew inside a minute he was done with the military. What’s the pull your gut keeps sending up that you keep overriding? Reply with it, and I’ll build a follow-up on what it actually costs us to keep ignoring that signal.
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness
Ed Hinman is a US Naval Academy graduate who served 8 years in the Marine Corps and earned a master’s degree in history. He’s spent his career at Gavin de Becker and Associates protecting public figures, writes the Barbarian in You blog at barbarianu.com, and has had his work run in Task and Purpose, Business Insider, and the Washington Post. His new book is The Barbarian in You. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and, at last count, five cats. Will and I both took this one, on vigor, wonder, fellowship, and the courage to walk off the paved road.
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One more thing before the paywall:
Awareness to Action has been open a few months now, and as of this week there’s a new monthly membership tier, so the door’s cheaper than it’s ever been. Text A2A to 33777 or go to FocusNowTraining.com/A2A-course. It’s built to move you from knowing this stuff to actually running it in your week, with real practices and real men. On the fence? Reply with the word A2A and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s for you.
Until next time,
Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider
Focus Now Training and Men Talking Mindfulness
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