Even those men who are not afraid to cry when they have lost a friend and don't consider it a form of emasculation. Men who represent the image of God through thick and thin. These are the ones that I look up to in the end.

It has been said somewhere in the past that we are all players on a stage. Let us make sure we are cast in a part that says life has meant something.

Men, remember that your lives count far more than you will know in this lifetime. Wake up each morning knowing that you are special, the very image of God Himself. Don't let that image be tarnished by cruelty. Allow it to be conformed in love. Begin to love yourself and others will soon follow.

The time has come to grow up and grow out of that which will hold us back from our fullest potential. It is time to leave the hood behind and grab hold of something greater…a brotherhood of men, forged of iron and steel. Filled with love and life. A new man above the crowded corridors of mediocrity.

Then you will realize what I have come to realize: all men are brothers; it's just that some are more adult than others.

Mark A. Rawls is Asst. Vice-Pres./Dir. Of Ins. Services of Golden Circle Life Insurance Company of Brownsville, Tennessee, which is currently ranked as the 8th largest black-owned life insurance, company in America (Black Enterprise Magazine June 2001 issue)

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