The Epstein files are where the conversation begins lately.
Men sit across from me angry, disgusted, shaken. They talk about corruption, cover-ups, elite rot, and from there it expands to ICE, immigration, the economy, climate collapse, and institutional failure. They feel betrayed. They feel despair. They feel as if everything solid is cracking beneath their feet. And beneath all of it is the same confession, whether they say it directly or not.
“I feel powerless.”
They are not wrong.
They are impotent.
Not sexually. Existentially.
There is nothing more tragic than a man who confuses outrage with power and information with agency.
The Seduction of Distant Power
Most men believe that because they care deeply about national scandals and global instability, they are strong and engaged. But engagement without jurisdiction is fantasy. There are men whose actual work is to prosecute criminals, shape immigration policy, stabilize markets, or negotiate climate agreements. If that is your vocation, then carry that burden with clarity and courage.
But most of the men spiraling over the Epstein files are not in those rooms. They are husbands whose marriages are thinning out and fathers who barely know the interior world of their children. They are leaders who have not clarified what they stand for in their own homes, yet they can recite every detail of a scandal unfolding across the country.
That is not potency. That is displacement.
You are pouring emotional and intellectual energy into arenas where you have no authority while neglecting the only territory that is actually yours. Your marriage is yours. Your children are yours. Your body, your habits, your character, your choices are yours. These are not abstract responsibilities. They are your jurisdiction.
At the same time, research consistently shows that fathers spend limited focused, undistracted time each day in meaningful engagement with their children, while adult male screen time stretches into multiple hours daily. So your son is learning masculinity from algorithms while you rage about corruption, and your daughter is forming her sense of worth from social media while you debate immigration policy. Then you say the culture is broken.
You are the culture inside your walls.
Potency Is Jurisdiction
Viktor Frankl wrote that the last human freedom is the ability to choose one’s response. He did not say you can control the world. He said you can choose how you respond within it.
You cannot control the Epstein files, restructure ICE, or singlehandedly fix the global economy. But you can choose how you show up tonight. You can decide whether your wife gets your presence or your distraction, whether your children get your curiosity or your exhaustion, whether your body reflects discipline or neglect. Choice is potency. Jurisdiction is kingship.
When you abandon your jurisdiction and obsess over what is beyond your reach, you become impotent no matter how informed you are.
The King at Midlife
Midlife is a crossroads, not a continuation. A man either ascends into kingship or decays into commentary. A king does not rule the globe. He rules his kingdom. He creates order where he has authority, blesses what is within his reach, and becomes generative instead of reactive.
If your marriage is eroding while you obsess over national scandal, you are not a king. If your children feel emotionally distant while you dissect economic collapse, you are not a king. If your attention is scattered and your convictions undefined, you are not a king. You are a spectator with opinions.
That is why I wrote The Guy in the Glass: Six Questions to See the Man You Were Meant to Be. It is for the man at midlife who is tired of feeling impotent where it actually matters and ready to reclaim the only authority that has ever truly been his. Those six questions are not about fixing the world. They are about confronting the man in the mirror and deciding whether you will finally take your seat on your own throne.
The world may remain chaotic. Institutions may fail. Scandals will continue to surface.
But your marriage is yours. Your children are yours. Your character is yours. Not only are these areas yours, they are the only areas that are ultimately yours.
So close the screen. Walk into your house. Look at the man in the glass and decide whether you will continue leaking your power into noise or concentrate it where it can actually create life.
Rise up. Become a king of your kingdom. Become a potent man.
