To the Protege: You Might Become Interesting
"In Okinawa, belt mean no need rope to hold up pants. Daniel-san, karate here [touching Daniel’s head]. Karate here [touching Daniel’s chest]. Karate never here [touching Daniel’s belt]. Understand?”
~ Mr. Miyagi-san, The Karate Kid
Have you ever noticed that the best stories, the absolute best stories of all time, always involved mentors?
In his book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, British journalist, Christopher Booker spent almost 20 years examining the great stories of all time, stories from classical literature, fairy tales, theatre, the bible, films, and other stories to chase down the age-old question: “Are there just a few basic plots that explain why people tell, write, enact and love stories?” His answer: there are seven basic plots. These are: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. While each of these has very specific descriptions and twists and turns, Booker discovers this: we have a psychological need for stories to make sense of our lives. Every story is an autobiographical experience for us. Every protagonist—the person at the center of the action around whom the action rises and falls—just might be us, and we are every protagonist in some universally meaningful way. We seek others with whom we might identify, learn from, become.
This is an observation of Joseph Campbell in his classic, The Hero’s Journey. Campbell, a scholar and philosopher of sorts, was curious about certain stories and images that recur throughout human history, throughout human literature, and throughout human storytelling. He called these archetypes. In The Hero’s Journey, Campbell observed one of the archetypal figures in the life of emerging leaders and emerging heroes was the guiding presence of a mentor.
“Mentor” even serves as the name of a wise guide in an epic poem by Homer. Homer’s hero, Odysseus, is drawn away to the Trojan Wars. These wars would last for years and as a last act of fidelity with his family, he appoints Mentor, a wise old farmhand, to care for his son "until the hairs grow up on his chin." In other words, like a wise and safe uncle, Mentor would complete the parenting task in the absence of the father. A close reading of the poem also reveals that Mentor is actually the goddess Athena, who has taken on bodily form. This would be an example of the mentoring influence Campbell observed in his research.
I find it very interesting that Homer, 700 years BC, associated specified influence with the care of emerging leaders. It's as if God takes on a human face, human hands, and a human presence in the work of shaping the life of an emerging leader, if we see it from Homer's point of view. The same pattern is repeated in the best stories of all time. In the "greatest story ever told" (also called "the Gospels"), God takes on the form of humanity, invests his life in 12 emerging leaders for three years, sits at a table breaking bread with them, and continues even after his passionate, world redeeming death. Invested into the lives of these 12 is His imprint. As their mentor, He sends them forth to represent His name, His pattern, and His practices.
Good stories have mentors woven throughout. This pattern can be seen in the greatest book ever written, the Bible, where we see: Joshua has Moses. Elisha has Elijah. David has Samuel. Ruth has Naomi. Mary has Elizabeth. Paul has Barnabas. Timothy and Phoebe have Paul. Apollos has Priscilla and Aquilla. Even in our contemporary stories, some with the most unlikely of protagonists, many have the mentoring pattern spread throughout. Luke has Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Daniel Larusso (Karate Kid) has Mr. Miyagi-san. Rocky has Mickey. Frodo has Gandalf. Harry has Dumbledore. Neo has Morpheus, as well as the Oracle. Peter Parker (Spiderman) has his uncle, Ben. Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill) has Pai Mei.
And, if this is true, then we ourselves are enacting a story, we are seeking a storyline, we are an audience to others, and we are makers of storied meaning. More interestingly, mentors seem to show up in the best stories…persons who emerge as a guiding presence in the life of the protagonist.
What about you? What about your story? Is there a whisper of greatness, goodness, or giftedness that beckons you to be more than you are, to go farther than any around you have gone, to become interesting? Do you feel called from some voice beyond your own heart and soul? If so, you may just be on the same kind of path many emerging leaders—the protagonists, the characters we connect to and follow in stories—have found themselves on over the years, in the stories, that have gone before you.
And if your story is like their stories, perhaps a mentoring experience is forthcoming in your future. Such a prospect raises certain questions for you:
Are you a protagonist? In what story?
Which of Christopher Booker’s stories might best describe what you’re going through? (If the subject of plots and stories interests you and you would like a resource for further exploration, I recommend you check out The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker.)
What comes next? What’s the next big scene for which you have to get ready?
Who’s watching your story, waiting to see how it works out? Who is depending on you to solve the kinds of puzzles main characters, the protagonists, must solve?
Do you think a mentor would help you?
Does the mentor come to you? Do you need to seek out the mentor?
Must they be old, silver-of-hair, wizened by experience?
Must they be male? The same gender as you? Can a couple, both as mentors, help you?
Must it be one-on-one? Or can a group process work for you?
Must they speak with broken accents of wisdom like Mr. Miyagi, use the riddle-like reverse lyrical diction of Yoda, or appear and disappear like Aslan, Gandalf, and Dumbledore?
Would you easily yield to the disciplines and delays that the mentors of the movies and history seem to lay in the lives of their apprentices, protégés, and understudies?
What if you find no mentor, will this prevent you from stepping up to become mentor to the Lukes, Leias, Frodos, Harrys, Rons, or Hermoines hovering at the edges of your storyline to become a caring, guiding voice to them?
These questions, and many more, will become topics for future discussion. The list grows as the appreciation of a mentor’s influence in one’s life grows, and then, in return, seeks to become a mentor in the lives of others.
Here’s the opportunity: by siding with the emerging mentors that may come and go in our lives, like some of our most fabled characters from literature, television, and film have done, we might come to experience similar moments of acceleration, direction, and formation that some of these characters have also experienced in the narratives we know and love. Only, we will not mere be characters rather, we will gain the character that truly makes us interesting.
Our lives become entrancing stories to the lives of those around us.
Find a mentor. Become interesting.
