The demand that does not soften is the permanent height of the measure under a weak age. A traditional order carried part of that height in law and custom, so the man met a standard the world still named. The support has withdrawn. The measure has not come down with it. The differentiated man either meets the unadjusted demand or he begins the long work of explaining why this hour is an exception.
Softening presents itself as sense. A friend calls the standard harsh and offers belonging if he will lower it for the evening. A role pays more when he will match the room's pace and stop treating the pace as a problem. Each offer asks the same concession: that the measure move down to the condition. Once it moves, the claim of the higher type has already been traded for ease.
Young men feel this pressure more sharply because the language around them has no word for an unadjusted demand except arrogance. The absence of the word does not change the height, and it only makes the acceptance lonelier. Softness will call the loneliness imbalance and propose a compromise that looks like maturity. Compromise here is the first step down. The path consists in continued acceptance of the demand the age has declined to share.
Meet the demand in the next place it tries to bend. Keep the body under the hour already set when the excuse is ready. Speak the true sentence and leave it standing when a softer one would have bought the room. Refuse the role whose price is a lowered standard. The man who can do these things under that invitation has accepted the demand in the only form that still counts.