So how do we cultivate courage in our children, so they will stay true to their hearts when the rest of society tells them otherwise?
Early Saturday morning I heard an interview with Michael Lerner from CommonWeal. Lerner resigned from a tenure track teaching position at Yale to start Full Cirlce: a school for delinquent kids in west Marin county where they study the role of nutrition and behavior disorders on children.
To resign from a tenure track position at Yale and start a non-profit takes a ton of courage. 30 years later, it turned out to be the right decision. I want my boys to have this courage to follow their hearts on tough decision in life.
The word courage actually comes from the French word for heart–“Coeur.” When we act courageously we are in alignment with our hearts. The problem arises when social pressures or conditioning cause us to disregard our hearts in order to be a model citizen, student, worker, father, husband, etc.
When we act courageously we are in alignment with our hearts.
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So how do we cultivate courage in our children, so they will stay true to their hearts when the rest of society tells them otherwise?
With this question in mind, I took my sons for a hike Saturday afternoon in the redwoods of Northern California. The weather forecast was for six inches of rain over the weekend. Although this might not seem like much precipitation to other states, in drought-ridden California, this is a deluge.
When I asked other parents to join us, they looked at me like I was building an arc. “It going to rain all weekend. You can’t go hiking,” they said assuredly.
But my sons were stoked, so we set off on a hike in Woodside. Although we caught a break in the rainstorms, huge drops still fell in the redwood forest from moisture soaked trees.
My oldest son, Jett, wanted to find a newt, his favorite kind of animal, but the damp groundcover matched the skin tone of a newt perfectly, so it was near impossible distinguishing vegetation from reptile.
He was feeling disheartened (note the root of this word), so I told them that he had to start looking without using his eyes. “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them,” I reminded Jett of Obi Wan’s words to Luke when training Luke to use the Force.
“There are newts everywhere, but we can’t see them because the ground is wet and they move very slowly. But you can feel them. If you still yourself and stay silent, you will feel them,” I tried to channel Yoda and Obi Wan’s wisdom.
I told Jett how one time I hadn’t seen a friend of mine in over a year. I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Then while sitting in a meditation circle with my eyes closed, I just knew that she was there. When I opened my eyes, she was sitting right in front of me.
So Jett and I tried to feel newts. At one point, I charged off the trail and explored a steep hill. “I feel a newt, Jett,” I said with my hands open facing the ground like I was dowsing for a well.
“You shouldn’t go off the trail, Daddy,” Jett said with hesitation.
“You have to go where your heart takes you, Jett, even if there is no trail,” I replied realizing the teaching moment.
“You have to go where your heart takes you, Jett, even if there is no trail…”
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“What if we can’t find the trail again?” Jett said lagging behind.
“Then we figure it out when we get there,” I said. (Interestingly enough, my younger son, who hasn’t started formal education yet, had no problems going off-trail. He barged through the underbrush, climbed up the hill, and just kept going.)
I swear I felt a newt in my vicinity, but after digging around, climbing a steep embankment, and standing still for a good 10 minutes (praying for a newt to appear), I told Jett that we were lost. We could either retrace our footsteps to try to find the trail or forge forward and hope the trail crossed our path. Fox, my younger son, made the decision for us by running recklessly down the other side of the embankment.
“I thought you said you felt a newt, Daddy?” Jett looked like he was going to cry.
“Sometimes you follow your heart and it takes more time than you think, Jett. Maybe we are supposed to go on this detour because when we get back to the trail there will be a newt there, but if we hadn’t gone on the detour we would have passed the newt before he got on the trail.” I was scrambling to keep faith alive.
We found the trail and kept hiking up the hill. Jett kept saying, “No newts. Still no newts. Nope, nothing here.”
“Jett, if you keep telling the newts that they are not here, then they will never appear to you. And even if they do appear, you won’t see them because you will be looking through the glasses of ‘no newts’.”
Jett looked at me suspiciously, but stopped saying “no newts.”
At a certain point, I felt the urge to go off trail again. This time Jett followed without hesitation.
I was standing on the side of a small hill with my hands out, palms down. For some reason, my hands were full of energy, so I just stood there enjoying the feeling.
Jett ran over and said, “I saw something move.”
He began digging right under my right hand and found a newt!
“Thank God,” I thought.
I’m just grateful that Jett got to see the value in going off the beaten path and trusting your feelings.
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I have no idea how this happened, but I’m just grateful that Jett got to see the value in going off the beaten path and trusting your feelings.
I consider this a planted seed that will hopefully grow into a deep courage when Jett has to decide if he really wants to go to college or not, what he wants to study, whom he wants to date/marry, or what career is best for him.
With my younger son, I’m thinking about keeping him out of school and letting him grow up in the woods like Tarzan. Unfortunately, my ex-wife has something to say about that.
Photo: Flickr.com—Bachellier Christian
Trouble is that society spend so much time destroying courage of individuals. Kids get knock down so many times that they don’t have courage at home and let follows them in the workplace.
Agreed, G. I really believe that in order to follow one’s heart, we need to leave the well-traveled (socially conditioned) path. Of course, this idea is as old as Adam–quite literally. Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Einstein, Mary Magdalene–all took the road less traveled. I just hope I can guide my sons towards this truth in small ways, so when the big decisions come, they will have the courage to follow their hearts.