Jake’s Tears, My Respect and The Emergence of a Mensch

Jake’s tears welled up in his eyes about 11:30pm last night. He was a fifteen year old boy at a camp in Pennsylvania who took me up on the offer to continue the discussion started earlier that day in a Boys To Mensch program I had run with the entire group that afternoon. Of the 31 in the original group, 19 of them  voluntarily showed up at 10:30pm last night and stayed with me in conversation until almost midnight.

2/3rds of them often do show up when given the chance. My experience consistently now is that boys this age are not just hungry for this kind of discussion and interaction, they are in fact starving for it.

The intention I held for this additional discussion with them last night, emerged from something one of them had said earlier that day. It had to do with how limited we all are by the beliefs we hold that have never been critically questioned. I pointed out to them how the more emotionally charged we become about our beliefs, the more closed minded we become.

No matter what point the boys brought up, I pointed out to them alternative viewpoints that could in fact be true, and that in fact had real validity. Some of them they loved. Some of them they didn’t understand. Some of them, they hated.

Jake really took issue with a point I made about how many truly successful and accomplished people do not follow traditional paths. I used examples of how many of them, like Bill Gates, even do things that most of these guys would never do, like dropping out of school to pursue their dream.

Jake felt that many of these people got there in part due to simple luck. His primary argument was that while it wasn’t all luck that got them there, luck as a factor could not be denied.

I refuted him and offered a different consideration. I argued that these people were in the midst of the same data and evidence as everyone else. The difference for them though was what they filtered and sorted for – in Gates case opportunity that he sensed would soon boom and he could be on the cutting edge.  Many thousands of young men Gates’s age saw the same news about computers that Gates did. They just read about them with a passing interest, while Gates though went after them.

Jake grew more adamant that luck counted. The more I refuted him and brought in evidence to the contrary, the more fired up he became. His primary reference was Malcolm Gladewell’s pop-culture book Outliers and his (in my opinion) endlessly oversimplified ideas.

I finally turned to him and said, “Jake you are not going to win this so give up.”

That’s when the tears welled up… “But you are being too narrow and there is nothing wrong with there also being luck…! Aren’t you just… I mean by telling me I can’t win… aren’t you just being a HYPOCRITE!”

It was almost painful for him to say it. It took balls to confront me like that…

“Jake,” I replied. “Let me tell you why you are not going to win…. Because I am not actually debating you!”

He looked shocked and puzzled.

“This whole time with you guys I have held one intention, to raise your awareness to how fundamentally closed minded you become the moment someone challenges a belief you hold personally meaningful.

Not once Jake did you even stop to consider that what I am saying could be right. All you did was listen to me and try and figure out a way to prove me wrong. How can we ever as men learn and grow if all we want to do is prove ourselves right and anyone who doesn’t see things the way we do as wrong…

Jake if you could tell me that you have in fact in the past actually considered my perspective and after consideration, you’ve come to think otherwise, then you have a strong position. Have you? (he nodded no)… “Otherwise, all you are doing is wanting to be right…. Take that to the extreme and you have the Middle East. Israelis convinced they are right, Arabs convinced they are right… all of them programmed since birth to be utterly closed minded to any consideration that they could ever be wrong…”

Jake just stared at me. From the place he was sitting and the place I was sitting and with the lights we had outdoors at night, I was probably the only one who saw the tears in his eyes.

I looked back at him for a few seconds and he just held himself there, composed, feeling something enormous inside… something I recognized and know all too well… These are the moments that present themselves as invitations to step into maturity. To be willing to let someone else be right, to allow someone older and wiser with ruthless compassion expose your blind spots, your weakness, your ignorance… and to do it publicly with his peers as witness… and he let me use his fired up response as a means of making the point to everyone… and he let me do it without needing to make it a point of being right… or getting the last word or anything to save his pride…!

I then told him, “Jake you have my respect. Any one your age who is willing not just to go toe to toe on an issue like this, but who is also willing to let me use them like this to make a point, has my respect.”

A few minutes later, we ended. As the boys were filing out, I called out to Jake and asked him to come back. When he did I shook his hand again and said, “Jake, I want to reiterate to you that you have my respect in more ways than you may realize. And I do not say that lightly.”

He replied, “This was really helpful. You are really smart. This gave me a lot to think about.”

And as he was walking away, I called out one last line, “Who knows Jake, maybe I am the one who was LUCKY to meet you…”

He smiled and walked on.

Laying in bed last night after this, thoroughly exhausted from a day of holding the space for groups of boys to experience this work, I was also profoundly excited.

I replayed the many conversations with boys like this over the past few weeks, many of them at a few select summer camps like this one who have stepped up to bring Boys To Mensch into their world. I thought about what a gift this experience is to these boys and how so many people out there just completely don’t get it.

Then, in my own honest arrogance, I thought, any camp that doesn’t bring this to their program is utterly stupid.

Of course, maybe I am wrong… but then again, maybe I’m not.

http://www.BoysToMensch.com

108 Year old Man in Oklahoma

I stopped by Babies’R Us last night to pick up a few items for my  daughter. While checking out the Assistant Manager named Darrin asks me if I want to join their Frequent Buyers Club and qualify for discounts. As there was no cost to join and it only took a minute, I said yes.

The only thing was that the purchase I made didn’t get credited in my new account so I would have to go to their online website, click through three pages, create ana online account and insert a 20 digit receipt code, to get my credit.   There was no way I was spending another second on this let alone to create yet another online account somewhere and have to keep track of it.

I asked them if they could just void my sale and then do it again immediately, but this time under the new Frequent Buyers account. Very quickly the young sales lady did this, and handed me the new receipt saying, “This is your new receipt.”

I quickly thanked them and grabbed my items and headed towards the door. As I was about to go out the door, I noticed the new receipt said $0.00 on the bottom. I paused and looked at it again. This didn’t seem right as it should have said $34.

I stopped and called over to the sales people and said, “Are you sure you charged me? This receipt says $0 on it.”

The lady quickly explained how crediting back the old and buying the same new, leads to a “zero exchange” which is what the receipt reflects.

Darrin then said, “I LIKE THIS GUY! HE ACTUALLY IS HONEST. HE DIDN’T JUST WALK OUT…”

I quickly responded, “Yeah Darrin. And believe it or not, I actually live my life that way…”

On the drive home I thought about the exchange. Particularly I thought about what a pathetic statement it is about our society that my honorable gesture stood out so much that it got that surprised response from the Assistant Manager, even in a Baby’s-R-Us store. Clearly he, like many store owners, do not expect customers to be honorable in these circumstances. I’ve heard enough stories to understand why.

There are two considerations that always go through my mind:

1) What would be Grandfather have done in this situation?

2) What would I want my daughter to see me do and thus learn to do herself?

The answer becomes for me, a no brainer.

I have many conversations about these kinds of things with the kids I work with, many of whom  have friends who shoplift or cheat in various ways all the time, and some of whom do it themselves.

Some of the most disturbing stories I have heard in my practice in the past few years are the stories about parents who make far more money than I do, not modeling this kind of behavior for their kids. I’m sure these parents would be embarrassed to know that their kids talk about this side of their life with me, at least I hope they would be.

I am grateful that these kids do bring this up with me though. The fact that a 15 year old is still struggling with defining morality and ethical behavior when their parents no longer do means there is still time and more importantly, still hope.

Far and away the most common thing that those who work with me share, are parents who are determined to raise their kids with their more traditional honorable values, even in a culture that often times does not and when it is made especially challenging because other parents around them are not living by these same values.

“Your teacher is a Stupid F’N IDIOT”

The other day one of clients who is a senior in high school, looked me dead in the eye and said, “Hey, Risk equals Reward!”

It stopped me dead in my tracks.

Me: “Where did you come up with that one?”

Him: “My economics teacher.”

Me: “Well your economics teacher is a Stupid F#CK” !

The kid, startled, looked at me glazed eyed and asked, “What do you mean?”

Me: “I mean that is a stupid f#ck’n thing to say, a stupid F#ck’n thing to believe and a stupid policy to practice.”

Him: “Well that may not be exactly what he meant…”

Me: “Yeah well my response to your teacher is “You must have a very unrewarding life since you are a school teacher, in the lowest risk profession, teaching a bunch of unsophisticated kids who don’t know enough to challenge you on anything. No risk in your life therefore no reward.”

Him: “Harsh.”

Me: “… and I am just getting started!!!” (and any one who doesn’t understand how I work and why I do this the way I do it, will probably think it is even more harsh than this teen did… One thing for certain, he was listening and will remember…)

Who permits idiots like this to teach kids such stupidity? Forget it, I already know the answer, WE DO. Day in and day out in fact our kids are exposed to utter stupidity, outdated information and narrow thinking by often times well-intentioned school teachers and we are nowhere around to be there to insulate them from the assault on their sensibility and in fact are expected to stand by and support the invasion of this nonsense into our home lives in the form of “home-work”.

I sometimes run into parents – typically dad’s though occasionally mom’s – who have been encourage by their spouse to meet me and support me working with their kids, and who upon hearing a little about what I do, respond with “Well isn’t that my job to be doing that for my kid?”.

Of course it is our job as parents to be doing this for our kids. I also think it is our job as parents to be surrounding our kids with strong, positive, morally mature wise adults to help us as well. My wife and I have already begun searching for them and collecting them for our children to have in their life as their teachers and advisors… people I’d much rather them get advice from than from their peers who know little or nothing more than they do (which is where most teens get their advice). I firmly believe (and have substantial historical evidence to support this belief)  that it was never intended to be a parent’s job alone to raise kids into adulthood. It was always throughout history, the shared responsibility of the community, especially for the elders of “the tribe” to play a critical role.

And yet these same parents who are so discerning in engaging my services (and I encourage them to be and respect them for doing so), will hand their kids over to school teachers for 7 hours a day for 12 years with little to no vetting, and often with no challenge whatsoever to the content, method or approach these teachers teach, offer and take with their kids. Now, having worked in schools and closely with them for almost 15 years now, I can say first hand I have met some phenomenal people working and teaching there, people whom it is a gift and inspiration for kids to be able to spend a year in a room with. Sadly though, I’ve also met too many idiots like this guy; and too many uninspired, burned out people who by law can keep their jobs but who by any order of ethical code, should have been cut loose years ago.

Yet we allow the system to dictate who our kids must be exposed to for hours a week, years at a time and do virtually nothing about it or the content they push on them… This to me is a##-backwards!

If my son came home and told me the teacher told him “Risk = Reward” I’d be in the teacher’s room the next morning. If indeed it is what the teacher said, I’d be grilling him on what exactly he thinks a teen-aged kid will do with information like this… On the difference between considered, critically assessed risk versus random risk…on the difference between correlation and causality… on the difference between association and equality…  on what exactly risk means and more than anything on what constitutes reward… By the end of our chat, the teacher and I would either be much closer together (and for an idiot like him that would likely mean him much more like me) or I would be taking this to another level in the school…

Then regardless of the outcome with the teacher, I’d be taking my son to speak with real life people in the financial and business world who apply real life economics, and have them sit down and begin talking with him about the realities of risk and reward, of painful and costly mistakes by taking foolish risks, how they could have avoided them had they paid closer attention to the signs that are always present… I’d let them offer him “street smarts” from the roads in real life, not the hallways of isolated institutional academia…

Then when that was done, we’d be going and meeting with a group of people in their 80s and even 90s who could teach him about what they know about what it means to have REAL REWARD in a life… the kind that makes a life worth living… the kind that makes a life RICH regardless of whether or not a person is wealthy.

I Hate Superstars But I Love Artists: Thoughts on American Idol and Many Fools

This is my first official totally public blog. They say a title matters and to me, so does honesty, integrity and the willingness to take  a position and stand on it… So let me begin with I don’t hate all superstars, just the ones whose driving reason for doing what they do and doing it the way they do it, is just  to be a Superstar.

I read this article last night about how 2009 Idol Runner-Up Adam Lambert wants to be a “Superstar”, and has said this explicitly. Winner Kris Allen though says he just wants to have his music be “respected” and wants to be “respected as an artist”.  

This was evident all along and is, on some level, the reason Kris won and Adam didn’t.

We live in a culture that so values fame, money and superstardom that this has become the dominant marker of success. In my practice which focuses primarily on teens and young adults, the “Superstars” are the ones who go to big name colleges and who get significant public recognition & praise when they do. Many of these kids do whatever it takes to get into these Superstar schools, even when the majority of it is just to boost their application appeal and has no authentic representation of their interests, their true beliefs and their soul.

I hate it. I hate that we do this in this culture. I hate the fact that we brainwash kids to think they are only truly successful when they are “rich & famous”…

More than anything I hate adults like Adam who want to be an image and have the perks that come from it, regardless of whether or not there is substance beneath it (and in Hollywood-America, the vast majority if our Superstars do not have much substance beneath them). 

In that regard, I have no issue with those who become Superstars as a result of their true substance… as a result of their truly hard earned success… time tested character… those who have been initiated by the true tests of responsible adulthood… In this regard, Michael Jordon can have all the money and fame he’s gotten and I know unequivocally that he does not define his sense of self-worth by how others perceive him, by the money and fame…He did it for the love of the game, the thrill of competition and this has been documented by many of his teammates and associates for decades now.

 Adam Lambert though did everything he could to be a famous star and in so doing, on a stage of amateurs, he lost. He’ll win at Stardom though in the way that most who get there do… Most likely he’ll be a hit now, make some big money then within a few years will be playing Reno or will be a second rate draw of a name on a Broadway stage like Taylor Hicks has become… There he’ll be competing against actors who are far more talented than him, who have paid more dues and who while they may never get the notoriety Adam got on this TV show, will build  a career on legitimate talent, skill and character… and will also likely never be as rich and famous… I hope that doesn’t lead them to think they aren’t successful though. 

The path of the artist is well traveled… it has a legacy dating back eons… and history shows that the true artists, the ones who created something new and whose life work proved to be of sacred value, lived lives that could stand the test of time, built character that could withstand the inevitable windstorms of life… 

The path of pop-culture Superstar is well worn now too, if only in modern society.. It is filled with stories of eventual drug abuse, divorces, scandal, suicides… 

The wisdom of life teaches: Better to build a small house on a deep, solid foundation then to build an enormous mansion built of straw….