I knew I had hit rock-bottom the day I went dumpster diving and returned home to my wife and daughters with a pack of thawed scallops and two fat rolls of Jimmy Dean sausage.
The monumental collapse of my corporate empire was swift and terrifying. At 36, I went from semi-retirement, ruling over a successful business conglomerate, to being penniless, living in self-imposed exile in one of the most expensive areas in the world, and with four mouths to feed.
That was two decades ago.
It took years of painstaking introspection and analysis to finally make the connection between my colossal failure and the absence of a mentor in my life while coming of age.
“Around 12,” Mark Twain once said, “a boy picks a man to admire and then goes on to imitate him for the rest of his life.”
Not always, Mr. Twain…
As a 12-year-old boy, my first hero was Zorro, the intrepid swordsman in black mask and costume, flowing cape, flat-trimmed hat, his trusty steed Tornado and faithful deaf-mute servant Bernardo. Set in California under Spanish rule during the Mission Era of the early 1800’s, the region was under the heel of Capitán Monasterio and Zorro’s quest was to end the oppression and free the peasants under Monasterio’s rule propped by the noble, landed gentry.
The fact that my life, and that of my country, closely mirrored what I was watching on the black-and-white TV must have been what resonated so deeply in my young mind. Back then, my family was part of the noble, landed gentry of a third-world country under the heel of one military dictator after another and in the throes of a civil war that would last until 1996, the year I went into exile.
Besides the uncanny parallels, what I think so fascinated me about Zorro is that, while a daring hero at night, his daytime identity of Diego de La Vega was of a gentle, sensitive, introverted and cultured gentleman who read poetry, enjoyed music, and knew how to dance. Diego and I shared the same temperament which explains why I yearned to become a writer since the age of eight.
But growing up in a country which disdains a man’s softer side and forces him to repress it, I learned that in order to fit in, I had to coat my sensibility with a coarse veneer of macho bravado.
‘Ponte los huevos y se hombre!’ was a common injunction back then: ‘Strap-on your balls and be a man!’
With those clear marching orders, my boyhood hero was soon replaced by Michael Corleone from ‘The Godfather’ and Gordon Gekko from ‘Wall Street.’ I suppose I thought if I could only acquire Michael’s ruthless power and Gordon’s money, I would become a real man, and, hopefully, one day, gain my father’s approval and blessing.
I became so adept at masking my true nature that I succeeded in my own right, amassing great wealth and gaining the esteem and admiration I so craved. But, as Abraham Lincoln warned, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” And the one person you can never, ever fool, is yourself, which is why all my victories always had a strange bitter taste of defeat.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.
– E.E. Cummings
At no point in my mistaken journey did a wise mentor show up to guide me toward my true path in life. My dad was bipolar, thus no matter how wise, his advice was often confusing and contradictory. Besides, fathers are not meant to mentor their sons, either because they love them too much so keep them from daring greatly or away from unconventional paths, or they get too intense, feeling time is running out, and try to keep their sons from repeating their mistakes or, worse, push them to live-out their disallowed dreams.
“The spirit of a boy is too great for just a family to contain and his horizons are wider than a family can provide for,” says Steve Biddulph in ‘Raising Boys.’ “By his mid-teens, a boy wants to leap into his future but there must be a place for him to leap to and strong arms to steady him.”
No strong arms were there to steady me which is why my adolescent leap into the future led me straight to the dump to scavenge for scallops and sausage twenty years later. I have no doubt that this harrowing experience and the heavy priced I paid were the catalysts for ‘The Hero in You,’ my current book for boys.
In every hero’s story, I tell them, you’ll find the wise workings of a mentor.
“You should know that the best mentors are often those with snow-white hair and skin as wrinkled as a raisin. For that’s how they end up after spending a lifetime battling dragons. It shows they’re men of fierce character, which is a word first used in Greece for a tool used for cutting and carving. Character, in other words, is the etching of life’s challenges into men’s faces and souls. These marks tell us the mentor was once a hero himself who survived great trials and is therefore ready to pass on the gift of his skills, his knowledge, and his wisdom.
Greek philosopher Aristotle tutored young Alexander the Great.
Professor Dumbledore took Harry Potter under his wing.
Guided by Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker became a Jedi Warrior.
Old Gandalf mentored Frodo Baggins.
Dr. Miyagi trained the Karate Kid.
Mentors will not only train you but will make you understand your strengths and limitations. They will take time to get to know your temperament or nature, and will tell you whether what you’re thinking about doing is either right for you, or not. They will also tell you when you are absolutely ready to go on your hero’s quest.” (Excerpt from Chapter 8, ‘You Can’t Go It Alone’).
The purpose of aging, I suggest in a recent article, is to become a wizard, one who will use his hard-earned wisdom to initiate boys into men and help them develop the character strengths needed to live authentic and spirited lives of noble purpose.
My life proves that the wrong train often takes us to the right destination, but while my long and tortuous journey finally brought me to the life I was always meant to lead, I still wish Dad would’ve found me a wizard.
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