Esquire
magazine isn’t a resource I would ordinarily go to for sagacity about manhood. For
many years now, both it and its theoretically more mature competition GQ have, in their quest for a younger demographic,
become only marginally more sophisticated versions of lads’ mags like Maxim. But I have to give Esquire credit for recently initiating The Mentoring Project, which
encourages its male readership to seek out local mentoring organizations in
order to help change the lives of kids who need role models and guidance.
For inspiration, the magazine posed
the question “Who made you the man you are today?” and asked “fifty extraordinary
men to tell us about the parents, coaches, teachers, troops leaders, religious
leaders, and all-purpose mentors who helped them get to where they are today.” The
list includes a range of famous figures from Chuck Norris and David Petraeus to
Seth MacFarlane and Jimmy Kimmel.
Washington Redskins (is it still
acceptable to call them that?) quarterback Robert Griffin III, for example, relates
how “God put a lot of people in
my life that have helped me… My dad
sacrificed a lot for our family. He didn’t have shoes when he was
growing up, so he couldn’t play basketball, and he made sure I had as many
shoes as I needed to play sports.”
Actor Samuel L. Jackson talked
about being shaped by the women who raised him, and by teachers as well: “I had English teachers in junior high and high
school who encouraged me to read different things than I was
reading—to read Shakespeare and Beowulf—and to expand my horizons in that
particular way.”
Some of the respondents mentioned
mentors who taught and inspired by example. Magician Penn Jillette, for
example, spoke
of his dad’s horrible job as a prison guard: “My dad would work all different
hours and come home in his uniform. I didn't realize until I was probably
thirty that my dad had never complained once. Never once. That attitude toward
work, that attitude toward doing something you don’t want to do in order to
serve your family and your community was very important to me.”
Senator Marco Rubio learned
from his grandfather “to dream and aspire.” Actor Kevin Bacon credits his
mother with teaching him and his brother compassion and honesty. Music
powerhouse Quincy Jones is grateful to
Count Basie for teaching him that you have to experience the valleys of failure
– where you find out who you really are – to get to the mountaintop of success.
Interestingly, country music star Dierks Bentley says
that his wife and children made him the man he is today: “[Fatherhood] tears
away the person you were before, builds you up to become the person you have to
become, makes you learn a lot of skills—a lot of man skills.”
Some of the men learned from
negative influences too, not just the positive ones. Skateboarding legend Tony
Hawk remembers
that “When I was growing up, there
were these skaters who were revered, and I met a couple of them. And one or two
of them were just outright assholes to me. It was so devastating to know that
these guys I looked up to were jerks and weren't supportive. That had a huge
impact on me. And I decided I never, ever wanted to be like that.”
To encourage readers to be
proactive about mentoring, Esquire
provides them with a mentor search page
to find nearby organizations such as YouthBuild, Minds Matter, the U.S. Dream
Academy, Youth Mentoring Connection, and Boys Hope Girls Hope, among many
others, all across America from New York to Los Angeles.
Sadly, wisdom isn’t inherited;
every generation has to learn life’s lessons from scratch, either through
painful trial and error, or preferably from those who have gone before us and
who are willing to share their experience, wisdom, support and inspiration.
It isn’t just boys and girls from
troubled circumstances who need mentoring, although they certainly have special
challenges to overcome. Every child
needs role models to steer us in all facets of our lives, from morality to self-understanding
to career. Without mentors, whether parents or teachers or the accomplished
figures we admire, we simply drift, and usually far from shore. Good for Esquire for recognizing that and for
launching the Mentoring Project.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 10/29/14)
