Rick Belden shares some of his thoughts on why elders seem to be largely absent from the lives and experience of younger men.
This was previously published on poetry, dreams, and the body.
The other day, I read a very timely post written by Jayson Gaddis called “What I Got From The Inter-Generational Dialogue Between Men”. Jayson began his post as follows:
After eight months of gathering together, the leadership team of the Boulder Men’s Experience (BME) decided to pick a theme for the BME-8: Elders. While the BME has been a deep and rich experience that has been able to serve a wide spectrum of men at various levels of development, we felt that one obvious thing had been missing—older men.
Jayson went on to explore this subject, and reflect on his personal experience with it, in greater detail in the context of a recent men’s group focused on the topic of what I’ve previously called “an absence of elders.”
I left a comment in response to Jayson’s post and felt it was worth repeating here:
Jayson, I think you hit on something important here regarding the absence of older men at these gatherings: they don’t see themselves as elders. Furthermore, they don’t see themselves as having anything of value to give younger men, nor do they see younger men as wanting anything they might have to offer.
All of that has certainly been true for me, and the problem is not new. It goes back several generations. In the program A Gathering of Men in 1989, Robert Bly said, “I never realized that young men needed anything I had to give them.” When I first heard him say this, I was 32. I’m 54 now and struggling with the very same issue.
I think it’s also true that many men my age simply have very little personal contact with younger men, outside their carefully prescribed roles in work and family, and therefore have very little opportunity to connect with them in meaningful ways. Without that experience, an older man simply has no context for understanding what is needed and what he can offer in response.
Another factor for men my age, I believe, is that we came of age during a time when distrust of men in authority was deep and pervasive, and for good reason. It was hard to see any man in a position of authority as an ally or a helper who cared and could be trusted, much less as a friend.
I still carry that distrust of authority within me. To see myself, or for other people to see me, as some sort of authority in any context generates a great deal of cognitive dissonance in me. I’m still resisting because part of me still sees a man who embodies and projects authority as the enemy. I worry that, if I fully accept my power and responsibility as an older man, I might turn into one of those old bastards who sold me out and are still selling out our men, young and old, even now.
Finally, as you said, a lot of men my age simply haven’t done the developmental work that’s needed to prepare them to sit and listen to another without trying to offer advice, fix what they see as a problem, or defend themselves. If you can’t sit with your own discomfort (or even feel it), you’re probably going to have a hard time doing it for someone else.
It hurts me to think that younger men might have anger and distrust for me as an individual because of my age, but I can certainly understand it. I remember, when I was in my early 30s, telling a man fifteen years my senior (a man I liked and respected) how angry and disappointed I was with his generation for dropping the ball, being so selfish, and leaving such a mess for my generation. I could hardly disagree with a younger man who might want to say the same thing now to me, or to any man of my generation.
I recommend reading Jayson’s blog post to get the full context of the discussion. This is a deep area, largely unacknowledged and unexplored, and there’s a lot more than can be said.
For another take from me on this subject, see “Coming to Terms with an Absence of Elders”.
Read more by Rick Belden and Jayson Gaddis on The Good Men Project.
Why aren’t more older men showing up for younger men? by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Image of two men portrait on white courtesy of Shutterstock
About Rick Belden
As an “older” man who has a lot of younger guy friends, I thought I might throw a word or two in here. I can’t say that I have ever been to some conference, or support group for men’s issues to meet these guys. I still like going to rock and roll shows, even if it is just some garage band at some local dive. Just as long as the PBR is cheap, and cold, and there are a few hotties shakin’ what they got. That’s where I meet and talk to them, and not surprisingly get invited to parties, the beach, bigger shows, and silly art events. I am also a bike nerd (I even have a Brooks saddle!) and most other bike nerds are young guys, so I go on rides and other cycling events. I hate to say it, but most of the cats that are my age have become boring as hell. Musically, they are stuck in classic rock land, and they are wrapped up in some pretty mundane crap like the stuff they own and television. I am still very close to my crew from high school though, possibly because every time we get together we slide back in time a few decades.
I never had any distrust or hard feelings toward the generations of guys that came before me. On the contrary. I find a lot to admire in their struggles and accomplishments, and I have friends that are older than me as well. Always good for a poker game. As far as I’m concerned, past generations left us the best of all possible worlds, considering how crazy this planet is.
My advice to younger guys is to live free and fun, and to try and fail, and try again. My most consistent mantra is that they need to make close and lasting relationships with guys their own age, and to stick out those relationships to the end. That takes some effort. Women and jobs come and go, and when they do, you have to have something besides your family to cling on to get you through the rough spots. I am a big history buff, and I also stress the importance of living your own life and concentrating on the people that you actually share space with, and not on the “World”. The World will get along very nicely on its own, or not, just like it always has. You just have to focus on making the place you are right now, a little nicer, a little happier, and a little more rock and roll.
JP, you sound like the kind of guy I like to hang with. Rock on, dude.
Good points….
I think it is so important for men to hang out with their elders…it takes special effort…Karate is filled with old and young guys getting together…not always easy to get the old masters together with the younger ones who need their guidance…I just contacted the great master (he is 2000 miles away!) in our style of karate…I’m hoping he will try to contact my sensei and give him some needed man-to-man words about impending fatherhood and dealing with life struggles….
I hope men here at GMP read this and write in on it. It’s clear that there is a wide range of ages who read GMP and I would like to hear from the different age groups.
I guess because of my age, I would fit into the “older guy” group. So that’s the prospective I’ll come from. With age comes wisdom and I’ve personally experienced the younger generation discard that wisdom with “what do you know, you’re from a different generation” or “It’s different now, it’s not what it like when you were our age.”
The older generation, in my opinion, has a stronger set of values which is again discarded with similar comments I’ve already stated. The older generation evolved in a society where there was more black and white and far less gray but we’re perceived as being out of touch. So, what is the older man to do? How many times do we have to hear these things before we say “screw it, why bother?”
Even at the age of 58, I still find a lot of benefit in listening to men who are my elders. It’s sad that this isn’t happening with younger men today. Different generations? Yes. Different situations? No. And it’s my view that the younger generation isn’t willing to listen.
Have some men in my generation done poorly? Absolutely, but at the same time we have time on our side to have, in many cases, figured out their flaws and corrected them.
The two sides of the coin … Young men who are speaking and feel that the older generation isn’t listening and the older generation speaking and the younger isn’t listening.
Tom, thank your for commenting and for encouraging others to comment. I, too, would like to see a more expansive, ongoing conversation on this topic. I hope others will join in and share their thoughts and experiences. Thanks to all who’ve already done so.
I think it’s also true that many men my age simply have very little personal contact with younger men, outside their carefully prescribed roles in work and family, and therefore have very little opportunity to connect with them in meaningful ways. Without that experience, an older man simply has no context for understanding what is needed and what he can offer in response.
I think a part of the reason that this happens is that such limited contact is not just a side effect that happens on its own but is rather a built in feature in the script of being a man. The idea that as men are must make it on our own with no guidance or else we fail at being a man (and no failing at being a man does not necessarily being “becoming a woman”, there is much more at stake than that when it comes to “failing” at being a man, despite what a lot of people would like to think).
Or perhaps we are taught that the lessons and wisdom we pick up shouldn’t be actually shown and taught, but rather we just somehow “pick them up” over time (a good example of this is on the show NCIS where Agent Gibbs has often said he doesn’t teach but he expects his team to learn nonetheless, and look how well he gets along with his own father and how he relates to DiNozzo and McGee, who are clearly portrayed as his “sons”).
Another factor for men my age, I believe, is that we came of age during a time when distrust of men in authority was deep and pervasive, and for good reason. It was hard to see any man in a position of authority as an ally or a helper who cared and could be trusted, much less as a friend.
I wonder if this is something that has been perpetuated not just in your age but through out several ages going back countless generations in countless locations and cultures. Part of the idea that the son is to one day rise up and out perform his father but he has to do it the proverbial hard way with as little direct influence as possible but with the knowledge that his manhood rides on doing so.
These are just bits I’ve thought up to offer to conversation.
Now as for my current place in all this. I am 31, putting me almost at a place inbetween “the elders” and “the youngsters” (I’m basing that on the average life span of a man being late 60s-early 70s). And I’ll admit that I don’t look to the elders for wisdom not do I offer any to the youngsters. I think I don’t seek out the elders is because I’m still running on a hard headed “I have to do it my way” mentality while at the same time not reaching out to the youngsters because of thinking “They have to do it their way” and honestly because I don’t think I have much to offer.
If you can’t sit with your own discomfort (or even feel it), you’re probably going to have a hard time doing it for someone else.
True.
Lots of good points, Danny. I remember very well being in that “in between” place you describe. It felt rather awkward to me at the time. I’d already made some rather bad choices with regard to male mentors and I didn’t want to repeat my errors again, but I knew I needed something I couldn’t give myself. I was also, as you said, determined to prove myself as an independent man who could figure out his own life without depending on anyone else. In some ways I was succeeding and in some ways I was not.
Mostly I was still doing what I’d been doing since I was a teen: relying on male peers in my own age group, who didn’t know any more than I did because they had no more guidance and no more life experience to draw on than I did. As a result, I did a lot of stumbling around and screwing up. Fortunately I stumbled into some circumstances that gave me the opportunity to form deeper connections with men of various ages around things that really mattered in our lives. That was the beginning of a new way for me.
I think that as a man “in between” older and younger you have a opportunity, if you want it, to act as a bridge between the two. Your unique perspective as a “man in the middle” could be a very valuable asset in exploration and discussion of this issue.
Maybe you should try asking the real question: Why aren’t younger men acceptin older men’s attempts to to interact with them?
You frame the problem as being that older men aren’t interested, but I think it’s the younger men who don’t want us oldsters around anymore. While some younger men do care and are interested, the vibe I usually get from younger guys ranges from simple disinterest to contempt and/or disrespect. Either they think they already know everything, or else anything we might have to offer in the way of knowledge or experience is obsolete and of no use to them.
Mike, first and foremost, thank you for sharing your perspective on this issue.
I wouldn’t say that I framed the problem as being that older men aren’t interested, but as a combination of factors that boil down to lack of recognition of their value to younger men, lack of opportunity to connect with younger men at a deeper level, and perhaps some unfinished business in their own maturation as men that holds them back. That’s my perspective, at least in part. It may be that none of these factors apply in your case.
Nevertheless, I think you make a valid point that’s worth exploring. Tom B said something similar: “It’s my view that the younger generation isn’t willing to listen.”
I included a quote from Robert Bly in my post above from the 1989 program “A Gathering of Men”. In another part of the same program, Bly recalls a conversation he had with Albert Szent-Györgyi, the Hungarian physiologist and Nobel Prize winner credited with discovering vitamin C. Bly quoted Szent-Györgyi as saying this:
“When I got out of graduate school, I knew exactly who I wanted to work with. I would’ve walked 150 miles to work with this man, and I did. I worked with him, I loved him … I’ve been here 30 years. Not a single American man has ever come and wanted to work with me.”
Obviously, we’re talking about a dynamic that’s been in place between older and younger men for some time now.
What I see here is distrust, disappointment, pain, confusion, and misunderstanding on both sides, each about the other. Jayson’s blog, to which my post was a response, goes into these factors in much more detail. I highly recommend reading it if you’re interested in exploring a bit further.
Thanks again for helping to move this dialogue forward.
Hi Rick,
As I read this, I thought about my own tendency to close down and distance myself whenever someone responds to my writings in such a way that I feel they’re perceiving me as any kind of authority. I actually had not been so aware of the underlying, nagging fear that I could risk “becoming like one of those bastards in power” …
Alongside this is the detrimental cultural bias that you mention. Far from acknowledging all the wisdom they might have attained with their years, our social construct views older men generally as having had their time in the sun and now representing decline and decay. Many cultures throughout history have held the exact opposite view with much better results insofar as overall spiritual welfare was concerned.
Thanks for your comment, Seth. Very astute observations re the detrimental cultural bias. That is certainly a factor, as both Tom and Mike have expressed in the personal experience they shared via their comments.
I’ve also found myself thinking about the very negative effect someone like Jerry Sandusky has on the relationship between older and younger men. In a previous post on this site (“A View Through a Cracked Lens”), I said:
“Jon (Ritchie) and others like him, who were close with Jerry Sandusky and saw him as a mentor, a hero, a role model, and a good man, are part of the collateral damage, secondary victims who’ve been deeply wounded by a horrific betrayal of trust and confidence that cuts to the bone and warps one’s sense of reality.”
In the larger context of relationship between older and younger men, the damage of a Jerry Sandusky cuts both ways. Some younger men may feel they have even more evidence that trusting an older man deeply puts them at risk of some sort of horrible, unanticipated betrayal. Some older men may feel even more reluctant to engage with younger men deeply because they fear being seen or suspected of having some sort of “unnatural” or dishonorable interest or motivation for doing so.
Of course, Sandusky is not the only older man at Penn State who betrayed the younger men who depended on him. And sadly, the situation at Penn State is far from the only scenario in which younger men have been, and are being, horribly misused and betrayed by older men. This is not to say that every older man is guilty or responsible for the actions of his peers; not at all. But I do think it’s important for an older man who wishes to engage with younger men to realize that at least some of them are going to see his face as the face of the enemy, whether they want to or not, whether they realize it or not.
I think the key for older men is not just to talk to younger men, but to listen, and not with just our ears, but with our hearts. I suspect that many young men who come across as “unreachable” are longing, first and foremost, not for answers and advice, but to be seen and heard by an older man in a deep way, perhaps for the first time. I think this is one of the best and most effective ways to break through a legacy of hurt and distrust that is keenly felt, if not always openly acknowledged, on both sides.
I consider, that you are not right. I am assured. I can prove it.
“I worry that, if I fully accept my power and responsibility as an older man, I might turn into one of those old bastards who sold me out and are still selling out our men, young and old, even now.”
Hi Rick,
I want to thank you for writing this post. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I lead men’s groups and one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed was a man embodying his true eldership.
At one point during our group – this older man turned to one of the younger men and said, “You are so much more than you even know you are. I believe in you. I know you can do this.”
This Elder embodied himself and his truth (without any pomp or bullshit, I might add, he was just him Self) and he gave such a gift to this younger man who had probably been looking for someone (particularly a father) to say something like that to him his whole life.
The whole group actually got teary eyed – even *I* have sought to hear something like that from an Elder and couldn’t help but feel emotional at the vulnerability and truth.
Elders are so rare. We live in such an adolescent culture that promotes archetypes and the continuance of adolescent ideals. Thank you for sharing your wisdom on the subject and for speaking to a void that is longing to be filled by men just like you.
With Great Heart,
Christin
Hi Cristin,
I’m really pleased to receive this comment from you, not only for the sake of the comment itself (which is great), but because I was not familiar with you and your work. I just spent some time browsing your website and feel very impressed and encouraged by both your story and your work with men. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.
The story you shared about the interchange between the older man and his younger counterpart in the group is wonderful. I’ve witnessed that sort of thing before myself in groups, and it’s a moment that nearly always takes everyone in the room by surprise with its undeniable potency. It works in both directions, too. A lot of elder men, too many, do not feel seen and appreciated, or even useful. When they are recognized and sincerely appreciated by younger men, it’s like watching someone emerge from a long exile.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Best wishes for continued success in your important work on behalf of all men and boys.