Mentors

I once worked with a student who was quiet in class.

That’s not an anomaly of course. I teach literature at an all boys school. Coercing young men to discuss poetry requires some cunning. But this student, in particular, was different because he wanted to engage me in discussion after class. That’s a time when students move faster than they have all day—into the safety of the halls, away from the oppression of thinking.

This student always lingered.

I’ll alter his story for the sake of anonymity.

At first, we discussed the material. How Gatsby dreamt himself up before he ever dreamt of a girl or how Malcolm X’s street intelligence informed his speeches. I would tell him that he had brought up fascinating points and that he should raise his hand in class to bring more students into the discussion.

He’d nod, look away, then be back the next class after the bell to see if I had ever listened to Kendrick Lamar or Meek Mill because they get this nightmare-of-the-American-Dream stuff. Over the course of the year, our conversations became more personal—a natural progression in the English classroom. An advantage, maybe the goal, to teaching in the humanities is, well, bettering your humanity. We began to talk about our lives insofar as they could relate to the characters we studied.

One day, though, he told me he was really struggling. He couldn’t sleep at night. His girlfriend was moving and he had to decide whether or not to stay with her. He said his head was spinning because he didn’t want to break up with her and felt he couldn’t find someone else like her once she was gone.

“Is she leaving tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Then you don’t have to act like it.”

I gave the student a few suggestions about ways to quiet his mind—see the recent post, The Meditating Ruminator for exactly how.

He came back a few days later and said that it worked. And he thanked me. Then he mentioned something he had never divulged to me before. He said that because his father is back in California where he was raised and his mother is working at night, it’s nice to have an adult to talk to.

“It must be nice to go to school here, too. There are a lot of male mentors around.”

“Mentors? Here? Nah.” He snarked. “I don’t have any mentors here.”

I laughed to myself as he left. No mentors? Exactly what did he think I was?

I like to tell that story in meetings because it is very recovery.

Mentors, call them sponsors if you like, are the most important people in the world. They work without praise, backstage in the performance of our lives. We need people who are disconnecting from the outcome to guide us, people who care about us more than our success.

It’s being a sherpa. To get sober requires a guide, someone who has been there before.

I’ve had countless people guide me up the sober mountain. Too many to mention. And if I did, much of the magic would be gone. Just as I’d lose the magic if I mentioned all the people I have helped to mentor, in turn, a good deed gone unrewarded is all the better for it. Good deeds are rewards in themselves. I enjoy the parts of scripture where Jesus describes this—the act of unrequited kindness—as heavenly riches. I’ve learned what that feels like in recovery. And there really is nothing better.

Remaining an invisible force for the good can make you feel like a soldier marching for God’s kingdom. Not to be too preachy—the fruits of mentorship exist across religious traditions. It’s just being human. In the Bhagavad Gita, When Arjuna sees himself in the opposing army, he appeals to the Lord who tells him that he must perform his warrior duties without attachment to the results. It’s not results but our attachment to them that renders our actions unfit.

I’ve developed ways to incorporate this in my work with people who struggle with drugs and alcohol—work that, by the way, is just a transfiguration of all the work others have done for me when I was newly sober and stubborn.

Understand that there are two people you are speaking to when you are speaking to someone suffering from addiction. The first person is the sufferer. He will lie to you, hurt you, manipulate you to no end in order to get you off his case. Help him anyway. There is another person inside of him, listening carefully to every word you say. One day later on, that person will get clean and sober, look back, and realize it was you who made the difference. They may let you know how you helped or they may not. We don’t attach ourselves to the results. Our rewards are in the heaven of the here and now—the usefully whole.

Ultimately, in working with others, it’s never the things I do find the courage to say that keep me up at night, it’s the things I don’t.

I think back to friends I’ve lost to addiction. I replay our conversations in my head, review them for what I should have said as if it would have made a difference. People will tell you there is nothing you can do for victims of addiction. It’s all their choice. And those people are right. Lord knows I chose to ignore each and every mentor who tried to guide me away from the lifestyle I led. But there are some things—and losing loved ones is one of them—that can make perfect sense in your head but never sit right in your heart.

That’s the burden of mentorship, I guess. You have to keep at it despite the reasoning to the contrary.

I write this post on Memorial Day, a holiday close to my heart because of my grandfather Bud.

He is proof that we are affected by people we have never met. The picture of him stationed in Japan sits on our mantel. I think and re-shape the stories I hear about him over and over—my favorite being that he read poetry every day, his favorite being Sam Walter Foss’ The House by the Side of the Road, a poem I’ve committed to memory in his honor.

This holiday also gets tucked nicely in between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, two other holidays devoted to mentorship and legacy.  

Much of my life—and I would argue most lives—has been guided by the loving hand of my mother and father. Two people whose influence on me is so vast I could never express it fully. But each time I see my son or daughter grow up in the likeliness of me, I realize the extent I have grown in the likeness of them.

And I come to believe a little more in the immortality of things.