To the Protege: Our Cohort Keeps Us Young
I'm a very fortunate man. In the last few months, I have enjoyed relaxing moments of lingering conversation with some of my best friends in the world over warm and cold drinks. These are the people I knew when I was in high school, when I was a young Marine, when I was in college, when I was in grad school. Before there was Facebook and the ability to select from a menu of options to find groups you were once a member of, good friends kept in touch with one another by being good friends. They did not have to request to be your "Friend," instead they demonstrated friendship by spending time with one another, keeping up with one another, writing letters, and scheduling vacation time with one another.
Perhaps my age is showing, like their age may be showing, but that's how my best friends continue to show me I matter to them, and I show them they matter to me. In the case of these dear friends I have been reconnecting with, "there ain't no school like the old-school."
In these moments of reunion, I cannot help but notice the increasing dusting of "salt and pepper" that adorns the top of our heads, the deepening lines that suggest we are not just getting older, we're getting wiser as well. There's an awkward moment when we first arrive in one another's presence, and an almost imperceptible moment occurs, as each of us secretly says to ourselves: "my, my, he's not what he used to be…she's not what she used to be…." We are too polite to say this out loud, in most cases…with the exception of the sardonic jokers. Perhaps we are too polite because we know these people represent the "mirror effect." The mirror effect says this: "if they look old to me, I probably look old to them. However, in the best of cases, it works the other way also: "Well, you haven't changed or aged one bit," means I might not have changed all that much in their eyes as well.
In moments like these, we find those we have known the longest to have a particular service to offer. They can say to us, like almost no one else, that you belong to someone. They are able to convey to us, "I have known you, I know you, and I want to know you."
You see, our cohort keeps us young.
What does this have to do with mentoring?
A great deal of mentoring centers upon the wise old sage who helps the young green upstart to master basic life lessons early on. The relationship has a kind of awesome metrical design that looks like a tall person standing next to a short person, at least if experience could be represented with height. However, very few mentoring images in most cultures focus on the power of peer mentors. The formula seems to negate this being a possibility: if peers, then merely friends.
Why is this necessarily so? Isn't it more likely that we are able to access life lessons, how to tips, or insights from people who are closest to us, people with whom there is a natural affinity, with whom we have whiled away generous portions of unguarded time?
This is the time of year when we necessarily say goodbye to many of our peers. School years end, weddings are planned, and friends ship off to college, the military, and 1,000 promising opportunities to pursue their dreams and destinies. And, granted, while it is a Facebook world where it's easy to continue to see the updates and happenings of 900 friends at a time, it's not the same as sitting down for a long, lazy coffee chat.
Do this:
Promise to stay in touch. Being a Facebook world, it's more convenient in our day to stay in touch than in any other time in history. However, don't forget to use the phone (for calling). Sometimes, fill your gas tank and go. Commit to being an improving influence and improving presence all along the way.
Promise to cheer for one another. Life is hard, unpredictable, and often unfair. Things are going to happen that no one expected. There will be "basement people" and "basement problems" that drag us down, make us doubt, leave us in the dust. Commit to be a "balcony person," one who will try to see the best in your peers, speak the best to your peers, and think the best of your peers. This is not a plea to deny flaws, defects, and misbehaving. But those who have known us the longest have the most insights to offer when life has destabilized us. Give the gift of knowing at such times. Commit to being a cheerleader to their success.
Promise to stay true to the lessons you learn together. Some lessons we learn, we learned in a community that has shared an ordeal together, listened to lectures together, or earned badges and credentials together. We are bonded in some moments around a set of practices or standards of excellence. Serve one another by reminding one another what you learned together. Improve upon those lessons, interrogate those lessons, and test those lessons. Commit to being a keeper of the shared learning.
Promise to talk fondly of the teachers who made you. Sometimes just the mention of an old teacher's name transports us to a time when life was simpler, when the principles were clear, when someone stood for something…when someone stood for us. Unapologetically, rehearse those lessons from those teachers. Remind your peers of the ones who shaped you along the way. Recall the idiosyncrasies, the funny stories, the top assignments, and especially the top assignments, these were the shared ordeals those teachers and mentors designed for our well-being in the future. So, from the future, look back and affirm those things that can be held, even as you carefully discard those things not right for you. Commit to being one who celebrates the mentors and teachers.
Promise there will be a reunion. A bit of Hebrew wisdom is useful to us on this point: "the person with many friends will come to great ruin." This statement from the Bible seems counterintuitive in the Facebook world, a world where one can easily have 1,000 "Friends." This pithy insight seems to suggest we can handle intimacy with only a few people. If there are people in your world right now who have a remarkable influence upon you for the good, is there any good reason why you would not want to invite their influence well into the future as well? The way you invite that influence is you put a date on the calendar and make room for it to occur. “Next year at my place," is the kind of thing that once it has begun, it can continue for as many years as it remains enjoyable to all parties involved. A contrasting thought, some relationships must have "necessary endings," as one author described it. It is as important to withhold making promises of reunion when it is clear the relationship is temporary, or merely coincidental that you and the other party have shared the same spaces for that leg of the journey. Commit to discerning those you will keep with you along the journey through reunions.
A promise is a guarantee there will be a fulfillment between word and deed after there has been a period of necessary postponement. Making a promise is one of the shortest ways to ensure you will rearrange your life to keep true to your word, to keep faith with what you care about. In a Facebook world, clicking on a "Friend" button can create the illusion we are actually friends.
Take a page from the old-school by not relying on computer screens to do all the heavy lifting, instead commit to the virtue of peer development, time spent sharing life upon life, and pledging to the success of another. After so many years have gone by, you just may discover your peers, your cohorts, are the very things that kept you young.
