When You're Young You Find Inspiration, In Anyone Who's Ever Gone, And Opened Up A Closing Door
--"Being Boring (cover)", West End Girls
In my family we always had this little clique. It was me, my brother Francis, my cousin Vincent, and his brother Victor, whom we called V.J. No matter what the occasion was, no matter what we were celebrating, the four of us always broke off from the main gathering. If it was at my parents' home, we retreated to my room since my room was actually the guest house. If it was at my aunt and uncle's house, we usually retired to what they referred to as the "bonus" room, which was just actually the upstairs den.
I don't know how many hours I've wasted in that bonus room of theirs. I don't know how much joking around, kidding around, has occurred within its confines, but the dynamic was always the same when we were kids. My cousin Victor, being the eldest over me by ten months, has always been the unofficial leader, though he hated it when we used to call him that. It was simple. When it came time to making a decision we always used to look to him to be the tiebreaker. When it came time to pointing blame, he was always the first one we used to throw underneath the bus. I mean--it wasn't even his personality per se that caused us to bestow this mantle upon him. It literally was just the fact he was the oldest. I don't know if any of the four us could be described as a natural leader or if there is such a thing as someone who's born a natural leader, someone who doesn't learn the qualities as they go. Yet time and time again all the way up through high school we turned to my eldest cousin to be the de facto decision-maker. You might even say we looked up to him because he represented the best of both worlds, he was someone around our age and yet he was the closest to crossing over to that mystical realm of being looked upon as being grown up and mature.
That's just the way mentorships work.
Growing up, I thought being mentored and being taught were the same things. I thought they could be used interchangeably. It wasn't until much later on that I began to notice the distinction. When one is apprenticing below someone it's because that individual has a type of rarified knowledge he wishes to pass along. That is relationship built around the principle that the information will flow one way and one way only. While a mentorship is based around a perceived respect for a person based on their life experience. They might not have done anything worthwhile or gained any particular set of truths that can be gleaned directly, but because of their age, their travels, or even just their simple interaction with sets of people outside one's range of comfort, these people take on a mythical quality of having some inner spark that we need to see for ourselves.
It's the relationship Breanne has all but admitted we had when we first became friends. I was the big 'ole college dude. I was five years removed from being where she was at the time. I was the one who had criss-crossed the country three times before she had even left her immediate region of the country. It fell to me to be this all-knowing avatar of higher understanding. And I played the part well. I'm already a natural advice giver and the gods only know that, if you give me enough rope to lead you around with, I'm pretty much going to hold onto the reins as long as possible. It was like leading around a blind guy without any knowledge of where they needed to go beforehand. I was over eager to play the part of tour guide that I never stopped to consider that I was a little out of my element too. This isn't to say I gave her bad advice or that I lead her astray time and time again. It's only to say that mentorships, like me to my cousin, aren't often a contract agreed to by both parties. Often times the mentor is thrust into the role, whether he likes it or not, when the mentee decides that that's the type of symbiosis needs to be established.
Yes, sometimes it's entirely manufactured. For instance, I used to know this guy at St. Rita's named Marcos. I remember he had been invited over to my friend Tommy's house for his birthday. It had been this deal where we'd been allowed to pitch a tend and camp out in Tommy's backyard. Well, of course, we spent a lot of the night discussing girls and how far everyone had progressed in their deciphering of the ways of the fairer sex. When we found out this Marcos had done things we were at least a year or two away from experiencing ourselves, we simply had to pick his brain. It might have been bragging. It might have been an honest account of his experience up until then. Either way it represent an elevation in level of respect. It was a perceived promotion out from amongst the ranks of us peons, deserved or not. At any event, it was calculated and predetermined effort to distinguish himself and it worked to perfection.
The trouble with any mentorships is that since it isn't rarified knowledge the mentor is guarding, there's always a sense of being deceived when the mentee at last attains the same set of similar experiences as the mentor. It's inevitable. I remember when I realized that my cousin wasn't the end-all be-all of what was the cool thing to do. It was like visiting Disneyland for the first time. Sure, it's this magical place once you get there... but it's also not everything all those friends of yours said it was going to be. You stop looking at people the same way once you've done a lot of the same things they've done. You stop finding them special. Or, as Lucy says, as soon as she got as old as I was when we met it was like she had landed on the moon after me. I'd lost my edge. I'd lost a bit of the mystique that my age carried with it.
It's funny. By that time I'd already almost gotten her pregnant, had listened to her practically living on the streets for days at a time, and seen her blossom into the fiercely independent creature she is today. If anything, she was the one having all sorts of life experiences that I had never run into. She was the one, if we had chosen along the lines of who could be teaching whom, should have been explaining a bit more of how the world works to me. That's a reputation that's by rights deserved, which mine wasn't.
I think that's just the relationship I crave. I always seem to do better with people in general when I feel I'm above them. I don't necessarily look down on them. I never once looked down on Breanne or Jina (5 years younger) or Tara (4 years) or DeAnn (3 years), but inside I felt always had a marker over them. With most people I stay friends with for a long time, I either feel like I have things I can show them... or, more precisely, I can show off to them. I either feel like I'm more intelligent than them like I did when I was with DeAnn. Or I feel I've "lived" more like I did with Jina. Or I just plain feel like my age entitled me to be the ultimate decision-maker in the partnership. It's only when I feel like people have usurped my authority that I feel threatened and usually end things. Or all things to end. I kind of need that mentor mentality to keep me interested in a person.
Brandy calls it the "bargain mentality." I have to feel like I'm getting the better end of the deal. I have to feel like anything I do won't be one-upped by my friend. Remarkably, Lucy said she always felt like it was the opposite for her. She always felt like she's gotten the better end of the deal because for a long time I was doing all these things she couldn't do. She was sort of living vicariously through me. For her it was like getting to do all these things before she was emotionally ready or, indeed, legally able to do them for herself. I don't know--I guess that's why we lasted this long. Usually, I'm not one to hold the spotlight for very long, but I do like the ego stroke holding the spotlight of at least one or two people can provide. Conversely, she's used to being the center of attention and it's still of curious interest to her when she hears me do something she's never tried or she's never had the opportunity to involve herself in yet.
Even though by now it's really devolved into a an almost fair partnership, she still allows me the honorific of being the older one. She still pretends like a lot of what I tell her is of great fascination to her... like she did in the old days. I stopped being a mentor to her a long time ago.
And yet, what I've found in my own life, is that once you bestow that title onto somebody it stays that way, at least a little forever. I still catch myself deferring to my cousin strictly out of habit. And I guess she still finds it soothing, like an old song she used to sing, to treat me like the older brother who's been out and about a little bit longer than her. It might not be true, but to her (and I guess to me) that's the relationship that's been established. Even if it's only a name, that's far better a tradition to keep than to tear asunder now after all these years.
Once a mentor, always a mentor, I say.
And once a more than generous friend, always that kind of friend as well.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
In my family we always had this little clique. It was me, my brother Francis, my cousin Vincent, and his brother Victor, whom we called V.J. No matter what the occasion was, no matter what we were celebrating, the four of us always broke off from the main gathering. If it was at my parents' home, we retreated to my room since my room was actually the guest house. If it was at my aunt and uncle's house, we usually retired to what they referred to as the "bonus" room, which was just actually the upstairs den.I don't know how many hours I've wasted in that bonus room of theirs. I don't know how much joking around, kidding around, has occurred within its confines, but the dynamic was always the same when we were kids. My cousin Victor, being the eldest over me by ten months, has always been the unofficial leader, though he hated it when we used to call him that. It was simple. When it came time to making a decision we always used to look to him to be the tiebreaker. When it came time to pointing blame, he was always the first one we used to throw underneath the bus. I mean--it wasn't even his personality per se that caused us to bestow this mantle upon him. It literally was just the fact he was the oldest. I don't know if any of the four us could be described as a natural leader or if there is such a thing as someone who's born a natural leader, someone who doesn't learn the qualities as they go. Yet time and time again all the way up through high school we turned to my eldest cousin to be the de facto decision-maker. You might even say we looked up to him because he represented the best of both worlds, he was someone around our age and yet he was the closest to crossing over to that mystical realm of being looked upon as being grown up and mature.
That's just the way mentorships work.
Growing up, I thought being mentored and being taught were the same things. I thought they could be used interchangeably. It wasn't until much later on that I began to notice the distinction. When one is apprenticing below someone it's because that individual has a type of rarified knowledge he wishes to pass along. That is relationship built around the principle that the information will flow one way and one way only. While a mentorship is based around a perceived respect for a person based on their life experience. They might not have done anything worthwhile or gained any particular set of truths that can be gleaned directly, but because of their age, their travels, or even just their simple interaction with sets of people outside one's range of comfort, these people take on a mythical quality of having some inner spark that we need to see for ourselves.
It's the relationship Breanne has all but admitted we had when we first became friends. I was the big 'ole college dude. I was five years removed from being where she was at the time. I was the one who had criss-crossed the country three times before she had even left her immediate region of the country. It fell to me to be this all-knowing avatar of higher understanding. And I played the part well. I'm already a natural advice giver and the gods only know that, if you give me enough rope to lead you around with, I'm pretty much going to hold onto the reins as long as possible. It was like leading around a blind guy without any knowledge of where they needed to go beforehand. I was over eager to play the part of tour guide that I never stopped to consider that I was a little out of my element too. This isn't to say I gave her bad advice or that I lead her astray time and time again. It's only to say that mentorships, like me to my cousin, aren't often a contract agreed to by both parties. Often times the mentor is thrust into the role, whether he likes it or not, when the mentee decides that that's the type of symbiosis needs to be established.
Yes, sometimes it's entirely manufactured. For instance, I used to know this guy at St. Rita's named Marcos. I remember he had been invited over to my friend Tommy's house for his birthday. It had been this deal where we'd been allowed to pitch a tend and camp out in Tommy's backyard. Well, of course, we spent a lot of the night discussing girls and how far everyone had progressed in their deciphering of the ways of the fairer sex. When we found out this Marcos had done things we were at least a year or two away from experiencing ourselves, we simply had to pick his brain. It might have been bragging. It might have been an honest account of his experience up until then. Either way it represent an elevation in level of respect. It was a perceived promotion out from amongst the ranks of us peons, deserved or not. At any event, it was calculated and predetermined effort to distinguish himself and it worked to perfection.
The trouble with any mentorships is that since it isn't rarified knowledge the mentor is guarding, there's always a sense of being deceived when the mentee at last attains the same set of similar experiences as the mentor. It's inevitable. I remember when I realized that my cousin wasn't the end-all be-all of what was the cool thing to do. It was like visiting Disneyland for the first time. Sure, it's this magical place once you get there... but it's also not everything all those friends of yours said it was going to be. You stop looking at people the same way once you've done a lot of the same things they've done. You stop finding them special. Or, as Lucy says, as soon as she got as old as I was when we met it was like she had landed on the moon after me. I'd lost my edge. I'd lost a bit of the mystique that my age carried with it.
It's funny. By that time I'd already almost gotten her pregnant, had listened to her practically living on the streets for days at a time, and seen her blossom into the fiercely independent creature she is today. If anything, she was the one having all sorts of life experiences that I had never run into. She was the one, if we had chosen along the lines of who could be teaching whom, should have been explaining a bit more of how the world works to me. That's a reputation that's by rights deserved, which mine wasn't.
I think that's just the relationship I crave. I always seem to do better with people in general when I feel I'm above them. I don't necessarily look down on them. I never once looked down on Breanne or Jina (5 years younger) or Tara (4 years) or DeAnn (3 years), but inside I felt always had a marker over them. With most people I stay friends with for a long time, I either feel like I have things I can show them... or, more precisely, I can show off to them. I either feel like I'm more intelligent than them like I did when I was with DeAnn. Or I feel I've "lived" more like I did with Jina. Or I just plain feel like my age entitled me to be the ultimate decision-maker in the partnership. It's only when I feel like people have usurped my authority that I feel threatened and usually end things. Or all things to end. I kind of need that mentor mentality to keep me interested in a person.
Brandy calls it the "bargain mentality." I have to feel like I'm getting the better end of the deal. I have to feel like anything I do won't be one-upped by my friend. Remarkably, Lucy said she always felt like it was the opposite for her. She always felt like she's gotten the better end of the deal because for a long time I was doing all these things she couldn't do. She was sort of living vicariously through me. For her it was like getting to do all these things before she was emotionally ready or, indeed, legally able to do them for herself. I don't know--I guess that's why we lasted this long. Usually, I'm not one to hold the spotlight for very long, but I do like the ego stroke holding the spotlight of at least one or two people can provide. Conversely, she's used to being the center of attention and it's still of curious interest to her when she hears me do something she's never tried or she's never had the opportunity to involve herself in yet.
Even though by now it's really devolved into a an almost fair partnership, she still allows me the honorific of being the older one. She still pretends like a lot of what I tell her is of great fascination to her... like she did in the old days. I stopped being a mentor to her a long time ago.
And yet, what I've found in my own life, is that once you bestow that title onto somebody it stays that way, at least a little forever. I still catch myself deferring to my cousin strictly out of habit. And I guess she still finds it soothing, like an old song she used to sing, to treat me like the older brother who's been out and about a little bit longer than her. It might not be true, but to her (and I guess to me) that's the relationship that's been established. Even if it's only a name, that's far better a tradition to keep than to tear asunder now after all these years.
Once a mentor, always a mentor, I say.
And once a more than generous friend, always that kind of friend as well.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Age, leadership, Mentoring, partnerships, West End Girls
posted by mojo shivers @ 11:58 PM
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