I recently read the Wizard of Oz and was surprised at some of the differences between the film and the novel. The most interesting difference related to the story of the Tin Man, who was originally just a regular woodsman. He was cutting wood to earn money to buy a home for his fiancé.
While he was working one day, he accidentally cut off his own leg, which he has replaced with a mechanical one. The same kind of accident claims his other leg and his arms, all of which he replaces with mechanical limbs. He discovers that he is able to work much better as a result of replacing his body parts with machine parts.
Eventually, he loses his head and splits himself in half, which results in him becoming a fully mechanical man. Now he can work all day and all night without ever resting. The problem is that his heart is gone and he no longer cares about the woman he loves. All he cares about is working.
Everything else is forgotten entirely. This story is interesting because, despite being a children’s tale, it illustrates a sad phenomena that takes place all the time in our world. I have met many men who meet a woman, fall in love, get married, then work very hard to provide her with the best life he can give her. Those are great things. The tricky part is when the man becomes so engrossed in his work that he stops pursuing his wife.
It’s easy to do because men are geared to work hard. It’s part of what gives life purpose. The problem comes when he stops loving anything but work. For many men, they wind up struggling with restoring peace to their relationship when conflict inevitably arises as a result of the attention paid to work and not paid to them.
This is a natural result of misaligned priorities. In the story, the Tin Man believes he has no feelings, but in reality he does. He becomes emotional at different times, but avoids it because crying makes him rust.
This is typically the case for men who fall in love with work. Feelings are hard to deal with and it’s easier to avoid them than to deal with them. In reality, most men still love their wives and become frustrated when things don’t go smoothly at home.
The solution to this issue in our lives is to acknowledge the importance of our family relationships and focus on them. Work is important, but it is not all-important. The cool thing about the book is that the wizard doesn’t actually do anything for the Tin Man. He just convinces him that he still loves his fiancé so that he will act like it again.
The same is true of most men. They can fix their problems by simply acting like they love their wives: showing them attention, doing nice things for them, having conversations again, going on dates, and all the other stuff they did when they were dating.
This is really just a matter of making our outward actions reflect our inward reality. It’s really not that hard to do. Most men did it well when they were younger. They just have to decide to do it again.
