I'm 64 and I finally understand why my father sat in the car for ten minutes after pulling into the driveway every night. He wasn't on the phone. He wasn't tired. He was transitioning between the person the world required and the person his family needed, and neither one was him. - Silicon Canals

"Most men of my father's generation performed a role every waking hour and died without ever discovering who they were underneath it. The conventional understanding is that those men were stoic. Strong. That they came home from work, sat down at the dinner table, and carried on because that's what providers do."

"What I've come to understand, sitting here at 64 with a few hard years of just watching people and trying to make sense of things on paper, is that many of those men were engaged in something far more exhausting than work. They were managing the distance between who they actually were and the two or three versions of themselves the world demanded."

"The car was liminal space. A decompression chamber between two performances. Social psychologists have explored how we engage in what's been called 'impression management,' the idea that social life is essentially theatrical."

Previous generations of men often appeared stoic and competent, but many were actually exhausted from managing the gap between their true selves and societal expectations. This struggle led to a quiet suffering. The concept of 'impression management' illustrates how individuals maintain different personas for public and private life. The car serves as a metaphorical decompression chamber, a space where men could escape the pressures of their roles at work and home, highlighting the need for a space to be authentic.

Read at Silicon Canals