The Two-Hour Lie

A brother I deeply respect just stepped out of the officer line one chair away from the East. What he told me about why is something every lodge leader needs to hear.

Frank had been telling us all year he was stepping out.

We didn’t want to believe it. Senior Warden. One year from the East. After years climbing through every chair, learning every part, showing up when life made it nearly impossible, he kept saying he wouldn’t go through with it.

We kept brushing it off. We’d talk him into it. Remind him how close he was. Appeal to his sense of duty, his investment, his brotherhood. He’d come around.

Then officer nominations came and went, and Frank made it clear: he would not accept any nominations.

It’s done. He stepped out of line.

My response all year had been what you’d expect from a Past Master trying to hold his officer corps together: “Dude, it’s two hours a month. Come fellowship with your brothers. Bump knuckles. Get a little stress relief.”

The words came out without thinking. That’s what we say, right? That’s the pitch. It’s just two hours a month.

Frank listened patiently every time. And eventually he told me why that’s the biggest lie in Freemasonry.

Imposter syndrome

I asked Frank to describe what the officer line actually felt like.

“Imposter syndrome in the lodge is everywhere, and it is not openly discussed.”

He’s right. I felt it every single meeting when I sat in the East. And I never once heard another Master talk about it out loud.

Frank kept going: “I had no idea how much the Officers actually did. It’s not just a couple hours a month. That is just where you bring the fruits of your labor.”

The stated meeting, that two hours we keep telling everyone about, that’s just the presentation of the work. The actual work happens in all the invisible hours between meetings:

The anxiety about memorizing your lines for regular communications and degrees. The pressure of performing ritual you don’t fully understand yet. The guilt when your kid’s swim meet falls on practice night. Learning what to actually do for degrees when you still don’t know what the meaning is behind everything. The weight of knowing your brothers are counting on you, and you’re not sure you’re good enough to deliver.

Frank can’t do “barely good enough.” That’s not how he’s wired. Rather than show up and half-ass it, which, honestly, the lodge would have accepted and supported, he chose to step back entirely.

I get his choice, I don’t like it, but I absolutely get it.

High standards

The men most likely to hold themselves to impossibly high standards are exactly the men lodges need in leadership.

Who actually shows up to lodge? Who takes the time to memorize ritual, to understand the philosophy, to invest in something bigger than themselves? These aren’t lazy people. These are ambitious, driven, self-reflective men who want to grow.

Those same high standards that make them excellent candidates also make the officer line unbearable for them.

When Frank told me he couldn’t give it everything, my response was basically, “That’s fine, we’ll support you at whatever level you can give.” And I meant it. The cable tow exists for a reason. Life happens. Brothers understand.

But Frank’s response showed me something about how he, and men like him, think about commitment. He told me about showing up to Junior Warden unprepared for his first degree and doing horribly. “That’s when I knew I was half-assing due to life demands outside the lodge. It almost made me step out of the line then.”

Then life kept happening. Divorce. New job. Single dad. And every meeting: “I show up to the regular feeling like a complete fraud and that I made zero growth in the craft since last regular.”

Frank calls it imposter syndrome. I call it the worthiness gremlin. Same thing. That voice that says you’re never good enough, that childhood BS that tells you you should always be doing better.

If he can’t do it with integrity, he won’t do it at all.

That’s not exactly stubbornness, I’m no psychologist, there’s something else there also, but it’s honest and worthy of my respect.

The weight lifted

Frank chose himself over the status quo. He prioritized his wellbeing, his kids, his actual capacity over the expectation that a Senior Warden becomes the Master.

When I asked him how it felt now that he’d stepped back, he said: “It definitely feels like a weight has been lifted. I can come and go as I please without being missed in a chair. Knowing that I don’t have the time to give and admitting it was hard. But it needed to happen.”

Everyone says they support that choice.

The brothers in my lodge have been gracious. No one’s calling him a quitter. No one’s publicly judging him. Everyone has said the right things.

But there’s still that quiet energy underneath. That 1990s sitcom dad voice: “We’re not upset. We’re just disappointed.”

What does that tell us about how we really view service? About the unspoken expectation that “good Masons” sacrifice their wellbeing for the institution?

We talk about the cable tow. We recite language about every Mason being bound only by what he can truly afford to give. Do we actually believe it? Or do we quietly judge the brothers who take us at our word?

Frank is planning to stay active. He’ll come to family events. He’ll participate in ways that fit his actual life. He’s not leaving. He’s adjusting.

That’s not something to be disappointed by. He’s a good man who, through the pressure test of moving through the line, got “frank” with himself, his wellbeing, and his family balance. Rather than feeling pressured, he did the hard thing and chose himself and his family, just like we told him to. Frank is an excellent example to any brother struggling with balance. That’s wisdom. If there’s any dissatisfaction, it’s my own self-judgment that I, as his brother, both military and Masonic, wasn’t able to help him in a way that relieved more of the burden.

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441 members

In 1962, my lodge had 441 members.

With that many brothers, you had retirees with flexible schedules. You had businessmen who ran their own shops and could close early. You had men who worked 9-to-5 and came home to wives who handled everything domestic. There were just a lot more guys like my fellow secretaries who had or made the time to give.

Today? Not so many, and not so much. Everyone in my officer line works full time. We’ve got shift workers, cubicle captains, active service members, a truck driver, guys pulling mandatory overtime. Frank said it himself: “It’s definitely a second job being in the line. If you’re doing it right.”

The structure assumes resources that no longer exist.

Frank made a comparison I love. He related it to a three-year cutter (ship) billet in the Coast Guard. (He’s a veteran too, which is probably why we get each other.) “Year 1 you get your bearings, Year 2 you’re better but you really don’t know your ship until the last year. Then you leave.”

That’s the officer line. By the time you understand the chair you’re sitting in, you’re moving to the next one. You never feel like you’ve mastered anything before the next expectation lands on your shoulders.

The system was built for abundance. We’re trying to run it in scarcity. And we’re wondering why our best people are burning out.

I’ve heard more than one lodge elder say that “you should really be learning the chair above you BEFORE you move up into it.” Sound logic. Makes perfect sense. But most of us don’t have that luxury. Never did.

That advice came from a time when we had an abundance of men who sat on the sidelines for a couple years, sometimes far longer, before they got in line. Today? You’re likely to get asked to “fill in” for a chair. And within a year, you’re in the line, figuring it out as you go.

We’re getting advice built for abundance and trying to apply it in scarcity.

The ones who disappeared

During our conversation, I told Frank something I’ve been thinking about for a while:

“On our roster of seventy dues payers, fifty of them don’t show up. And I would bet twenty-five of them are people just like you who wanted something from it. But in reality, they were already doing the deep personal development work that the craft promised. And they realized they weren’t getting what they needed from it, and they faded away.”

Frank’s response: “Bro. Nail on the head.”

This is the part that keeps me up at night. We’re not losing lazy brothers. We’re losing our best people. The ones who took Masonry’s promises of betterment at face value and showed up ready to do the work.

They look around and see nobody thinking like them. So they leave. But they keep paying their dues because of the promise of what they hope Masonry can be, or should be, or could be.

And the rest of us? We keep lying to them and to ourselves that it’s just two hours a month.

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What needs to change

I’m not here to propose some grand overhaul. I’m a lodge secretary, not the Grand Master. But some things need to be said out loud:

Two-year positions instead of one. Frank said it himself: “You could master your position before you move.” Give brothers time to actually learn the chair before pushing them to the next one.

Call it what it is. Stop pretending it’s a casual hobby. When you add up the practice, the memorization, the committee work, the showing up early and staying late, this is real. Name it honestly.

Permission to read.

Trigger warning for my ritual purists. I had an RGL tell us once: if you have to read from your ritual, do it, but for heaven’s sake, practice reading it. Many times. Put some art and feeling into it. Don’t make it sound like a fifth grader with dyslexia asked to read aloud in front of the class.

I’ve seen Masters in lodges I won’t name, ritual open to the right page, refuse to look down in the moment and stumble through something so incoherently that nobody could understand even a hint of what he was hoping to say. Because of pride. Had he looked down, and a hundred more like him, and just read it with feeling, it would have been a far better performance.

Nobody will die. The ritual still works. The meaning still lands. We have to stop treating memorization as the highest form of Masonic achievement when it actively excludes brothers who would be excellent leaders.

Readiness, not advancement.

Stop assuming every man who enters the officer line wants to sit in the East. I asked Frank if it’s better to force someone into a chair they’re not ready for or slow the advancement of the line. He didn’t hesitate: two-year positions sound much better.

Name the mental load. Talk about imposter syndrome openly. Admit that this is hard. Let brothers know that if they’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or inadequate, they’re not failing. They’re experiencing what every officer experiences but nobody discusses.

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Frank didn’t fail. He didn’t quit. He made the hard, mature choice to step back rather than burn out completely. He assessed his actual capacity, compared it to what the job demands, and made an honest decision.

In any other context, we’d call that self-awareness. We’d call that emotional intelligence. We’d call that healthy boundary-setting.

But in the lodge, we call it disappointing. At least quietly.

I told Frank during our conversation that I hoped he realized the judgment he was putting on himself, that feeling like he was letting Kelly and me down, wasn’t a standard either of us had ever held anyone to.

Frank knows. He said it himself: “No I know that. I know it’s my fucked up high standard. And I know why I have it. That never good enough childhood BS. I’m learning to let that go. But it pops up.”

Same, man. Same.

Frank doesn’t need my disappointment. He needs lodges to be honest about what they’re asking of officers. He needs brothers who will celebrate his choice to stay involved on his own terms rather than disappear entirely.

So let us ask: Will we build a lodge culture that makes space for brothers like Frank to participate authentically at their actual capacity? Or will we keep pretending it’s “just two hours a month” and wondering why our best people keep disappearing?

If you’re sitting in an officer chair right now, feeling like a fraud, wondering if you’re the only one who feels this way, you’re not.

That feeling has a name. Frank called it imposter syndrome. I call it the worthiness gremlin. Same damn thing.

And it’s time we started talking about it.

-Brother Rob

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