Curious Life Lessons from Learned Men
I'm in the middle of a community-building kind of project for a con I'm going to. We're going to be co-ordinating groups of people to live blog and agregating other bloggers who will be liveblogging independently from the con...
And I've been wondering where this particular skill of pulling people togehter comes from...because it certainly wasn't in my background. Yeah, my Dad was a decorated Army Master Seargent, but I never saw him in that role....
So who was it that I learned this particular skill from??
And then I remembered The Singer. He taught me how to make people feel special when we all have to work together.
He always made me feel special.
I remembered the first time I saw him--how he strode into the office I was working in, in a black suit with a crisp white shirt and blue tie...a shock of steel gray hair falling across his forehead--those blue eyes and that Alabama gentleman's voice...
It was certainly infatuation at first sight on my part.
We worked pretty closely together for about 3-4 years, help get some books published, organize some conferences. I watched him, followed his lead when we had to work together on projects. He taught me special lessons on how to behave a certain way, to smile and be open, gracious and generous.
These were skills I never learned at home.
Sometimes I think we put too much emphasis on what's learned at home as children, and we give short shrift to the lessons we learn in our 20's as we are practicing for the place we will occupy in society later in our lives.
I learned interesting things at home (will have a post on that later) but there were things I learned from men like The Singer than shaped me.
Yet as I reflect, I see that so many of these lessons were learned from men. The lessons I learned from The Singer were so subtle, that it wasn't until I had actually needed to use those lessons in several different instances that I could see what the lesson had been. And what I learned.
Sometimes I think women don't value certain lessons we learn from men because the men may have been lovers. It's so easy to get hurt and consider that lover a terrible person who broke our hearts. But there's something to be said for the lover who doesn't mislead--who's very clear about his life situation.
Not all the me we are intimate with are men we must marry. Sometimes that's not their roles in our lives.
Men aren't always fathers or brothers or husbands.
A song by the White Stripes warns girls not to marry brothers or fathers...to marry lovers instead. Maybe, though, it's not about marrying them at all...
Maybe those men are there to teach us and guide us.
Maybe they're there to help us become women.
The Singer was 27 years older than me. He had told me how he'd helped hold community together in Newark during the race riots of the 1960s. And how he learned German so he could be part of the town where he was stranded in the 70's. He'd had an incredible life, and a strong faith had grown from that life.
It was only because of that faith that he could teach me without being boorish, obtrusive or cloying...
I'm not sure if I loved him, but I cared very much for him. And I knew he cared for me enough and in a special way....
I think that women deny themselves great life lessons when they don't allow themselves to have relationships with certain kinds of men. It's true that we do indeed learn from men without having them as lovers. There's always that special teacher or professor or boss who saw the potential, nurtured it, and celebrated it.
But then there are those other men, who teach us life lessons in a special cryptic language of body and soul--because it is the only way they can teach those lessons.
And we may not know or even understand those lessons until we need that knowledge we've subconsciously (or unconsciously) stored away like a pirate stores a precious treasure.
So, here it is--close to 20 years since I've seen The Singer, and yet, his lessons are such a part of my being that I know I would not be able to accomplish certain things in life without them.
Makes me wonder what other gifts my life will reveal....
And I've been wondering where this particular skill of pulling people togehter comes from...because it certainly wasn't in my background. Yeah, my Dad was a decorated Army Master Seargent, but I never saw him in that role....
So who was it that I learned this particular skill from??
And then I remembered The Singer. He taught me how to make people feel special when we all have to work together.
He always made me feel special.
I remembered the first time I saw him--how he strode into the office I was working in, in a black suit with a crisp white shirt and blue tie...a shock of steel gray hair falling across his forehead--those blue eyes and that Alabama gentleman's voice...
It was certainly infatuation at first sight on my part.
We worked pretty closely together for about 3-4 years, help get some books published, organize some conferences. I watched him, followed his lead when we had to work together on projects. He taught me special lessons on how to behave a certain way, to smile and be open, gracious and generous.
These were skills I never learned at home.
Sometimes I think we put too much emphasis on what's learned at home as children, and we give short shrift to the lessons we learn in our 20's as we are practicing for the place we will occupy in society later in our lives.
I learned interesting things at home (will have a post on that later) but there were things I learned from men like The Singer than shaped me.
Yet as I reflect, I see that so many of these lessons were learned from men. The lessons I learned from The Singer were so subtle, that it wasn't until I had actually needed to use those lessons in several different instances that I could see what the lesson had been. And what I learned.
Sometimes I think women don't value certain lessons we learn from men because the men may have been lovers. It's so easy to get hurt and consider that lover a terrible person who broke our hearts. But there's something to be said for the lover who doesn't mislead--who's very clear about his life situation.
Not all the me we are intimate with are men we must marry. Sometimes that's not their roles in our lives.
Men aren't always fathers or brothers or husbands.
A song by the White Stripes warns girls not to marry brothers or fathers...to marry lovers instead. Maybe, though, it's not about marrying them at all...
Maybe those men are there to teach us and guide us.
Maybe they're there to help us become women.
The Singer was 27 years older than me. He had told me how he'd helped hold community together in Newark during the race riots of the 1960s. And how he learned German so he could be part of the town where he was stranded in the 70's. He'd had an incredible life, and a strong faith had grown from that life.
It was only because of that faith that he could teach me without being boorish, obtrusive or cloying...
I'm not sure if I loved him, but I cared very much for him. And I knew he cared for me enough and in a special way....
I think that women deny themselves great life lessons when they don't allow themselves to have relationships with certain kinds of men. It's true that we do indeed learn from men without having them as lovers. There's always that special teacher or professor or boss who saw the potential, nurtured it, and celebrated it.
But then there are those other men, who teach us life lessons in a special cryptic language of body and soul--because it is the only way they can teach those lessons.
And we may not know or even understand those lessons until we need that knowledge we've subconsciously (or unconsciously) stored away like a pirate stores a precious treasure.
So, here it is--close to 20 years since I've seen The Singer, and yet, his lessons are such a part of my being that I know I would not be able to accomplish certain things in life without them.
Makes me wonder what other gifts my life will reveal....
posted by Tish Grier at 11:28 PM
4 Comments:
For me it was my voice professor in college. I was on scholarship, a lower class, hard-edged kid who sang in bars and didn't have a clue of how to function in an upper middle class private school -- or in the world any of those other kids came from, either. He was in the closet, very conflicted, and drank a lot, but he taught me everything I know about passing. When I was working at the roughest bar in town he'd sit at a table up front and coach me between sets, not just on my voice, but on how to stay dignified and unapproachable in tough settings. He hated that I sang there, but he was determined I wouldn't ruin my voice to make money.
For Christmas the first year he gave me a pair of real leather gloves and took me shopping for a winter coat because all I had was a beat up denim jacket when the temp was below zero. He never expected a thing from me other than that I learn what he had to teach and treat myself with respect.
When I ran out of money and had to quit school, he cried. I never forgave myself for that.
thanks so much for sharing that, Terry...I wish I could gather together all the stories about these special men so we could blast ourselves out of that tired, pseudo-feminist thinking that says we are best off with other women. pheh! Men and women touch each others lives in so many special ways. We should always remember, cherish, and at times celebrate those relationships--even when the memories are bittersweet
I think for a lot of us, mentors are more important than we realize at the time. Though there was never anything romantic with mine, but it was the first real nurturing relationship I had with a man. Just the fact that he cared if I was cold in the winter and safe in the bars where I sang was life changing for me. For a lot of years I compared all men I meant against him.
I hear what you're saying, T...yes, it's very hard for us to understand the whole mentor thing, I think because it's just not something that women expect--not to mention that when it comes from a man, well, we're kind of conditioned to expect getting hit upon. I met my first intellectual mentor when I was 25 and he was 80. I always felt like he was a grandfather and *never* felt anything untoward from him. It just wasn't a factor. He, too, was a man of great faith, who had lived a full life, and just wanted me to think--and to *not* be an object.
I think, though, that however the mentoring comes, these are amazing relationships whose memories will always be special.
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