Give The Young And Foolish Some Room To Grow

Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

Oscar Wilde

As I look back at my youth, I usually end up with the same conclusion: “the fact that I survived into adulthood is amazing.” Regrets? I’m not sure I would call them regrets. All the foolish mistakes, wild adventures, and dumb decision I made growing up made me into the man I am today. If I’m completely honest, whatever wisdom I have now at this age is thanks to having been foolish during my youth. And then I look upon today’s youth and become saddened, not because of how they are, but rather because of how we are as parents.

My youth was made up off broken bones and a heart broken enough times to fill a Victorian library. It was made up of scars, physical and psychological, and enough secrets kept from the authority figures around me that I would have made any Italian Mobster proud. I learned that the world could be beautiful and devastating, uplifting and unforgiving, all at the same time. I took enough risks to believe myself invincible, yet the simplest things like walking up to a cute girl were terrifying. And it was all glorious, or at least as glorious as a tragic accident where the people involved survived could be.

It taught me that unknown roads lead to adventures, and adventures lead to unbelievable stories. It taught me that the only way I would to be heard was to speak up. It taught me that risk sometimes pans out while other times it meant getting hurt. And it taught me that with enough time, you can get over getting hurt. Scars meant bragging rights, respect can be earned by standing up for yourself, and knowing how to keep a secret forged loyalties.

Then I look at myself as a parent, as I know that my kids are now learning all those same lessons, and I find myself dealing with the personal terror of “letting go of the bike even if it means your kid falls down.”  We tend want to keep our kids safe, take on the world’s horrors and dangers for them. We want to keep them safe while at the same time provide them the best tools for them to make something out of themselves. But are we really providing them the best tools when we never let them learn how to use these tools? No matter how many times my martial arts maestro told me to keep my guard up, I never really did it till after I got hit… hard…  several times… on the face.

People don’t learn by being told what to do, but rather by being allowed to do.  They’ll learn even when they fail. This is especially true when they also learn what can go wrong by not doing. The lessons you learn best are usually the one that cost you. Yet we constantly try to keep our kids from learning that way, in a misguided sense of parental protection.

You can’t complain about a man who doesn’t know how to basic car maintenance, when you bought him a new car when he was 16. You can’t complain about a man who doesn’t know how to keep up a house if you never asked him to even take care of his room. You can’t complain about a man who’s entitled if you constantly keep bailing him out of trouble. We can’t really complain about men who can’t handle life’s challenges without calling out a parent who never let the kid face challenges by himself.

So, what can you do to prepare your kid for a stern world? All you can do is mentor them and become an example for them to emulate. All you can do is provide them with the tools they might need along their way. And at the end, all you can do is really hope it was enough and pray for the best while trying to be emotionally ready to let them learn from their mistakes.

A Father who lost (guest post)

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Actions will delineate and define you.

Thomas Jefferson

A while back I wrote about dads who’ve been absent from their kid’s lives for reasons beyond their control. The response was equally surprising as it was depressing, receiving messages from men who’ve lost their relationships with their kids due to several situations of life. I felt that I wasn’t suited to expand on the topic as I was fortunate enough to never have lived this kind of events myself, but as luck would have it, I ran into this wonderful post on No Deadbeat Society: An Army of Fathers who give a sh*t. I think that there was no way that I could best explain what a situation like this meant like a man who lived it himself.

With that I leave you with an open letter to any Dad’s facing custody dispute: From a Father who lost.

Dear Dad soon to be standing in front of a judge for rights to see his children,

This letter is from a man who lost everything. I immaturely acted like a 20 something year old man would to things I didn’t like in my situation. And in the end, I lost everything. Enough time with my children to be able to do simple things like take them to park, or see them off to school on their first day…

Most of what you will read online, especially where there is opportunity for men to openly discuss the court process; you will read and hear that the court systems are extremely biased. That the system is ripping men from their children. While it sometimes seems that is true, you have to understand that it’s quite often the actions of men that cause it. Note; this letter is in no way aimed to speak about or cause debate about the court system. You can form your own opinion about the process, and any bias you feel judges may have in America towards mothers. All I can offer you is passionate advice on how to best situate yourself as you are preparing to face a custody debate.

You need to humble yourself. The truth is that as men, we are raised to be strong. We see it in the news, the media, movies, video games, books, music, the list goes on and on. A man should be able to protect himself and his family, no matter the battle he has to fight. No matter who is on the other side of that battle. Someone hurts one of our family members, we have almost been taught over the years to let them know in whatever way possible that you won’t tolerate that, and they should fear doing it again. What we have to learn is that sometimes, that fight requires you to humble yourself. Not become a victim per say, but accept that sometimes you have to let things go…

Your children must be your first priority.  There is absolutely NOTHING more important than them. You have no excuse, there is no situation you can justify anything over them. So if at this point in this letter you are muttering “bullshit” to yourself. Don’t even bother continuing to read. But if you are open to understand continue on.

This isn’t legal advice, if you are seeking that google a family lawyer in your area that represents fathers. Quite often they will have free resources on their websites that provide detailed action plans for fathers seeking custody. But trust me, they will tell you to act similar to how I am, only they will say it’s for purposes of court proceedings, I am telling you this because it is for your mental health and happiness.

My advice is from the heart. From a father who lost.

Your ex has a new man in her life?  Let it be….. If he isn’t hurting your children, let it be…  You will someday fall in love again and want to have your new wife or girlfriend around your children. Your children’s mother will feel exactly how you are about her new man in the picture.

Let go of your ex. Let go of everything you remember that may have been a great time. Now is a time for you to focus on your mental health and unconditional love for your children.

Your ex speaks down to you? Let it be…. it doesn’t matter.  Reality check.

No matter the abuse you may go through, do not react. Find sources of healing, support groups. Learn about meditation. See a counselor.  Don’t act out, but don’t keep it bottled in. There are people you can talk to. Just don’t let it be your ex, or your children.

Never act out in any abusive form. Mentally or Physically. No matter how big and bad you think you are. If you can’t control your anger and realize how much that could negatively impact your children if they witnessed it, you will end up in a very dark place.

Embrace and love your children every chance you get.

Never speak negatively of their mother in front of them. No matter what they repeat to you that may have come from her mouth. Respectively address it via some sort of correspondence with her and ask her to correct it with your children. Do your best to articulate to your children that it isn’t true, but never call her a liar. Keep their happiness and wellbeing a priority throughout these kinds of conversations.

If you have to pay child support. Who cares. Pay it. Is not paying a few hundred bucks a month worth risking seeing your child at all because of your reaction to having to pay it? If it is…

Create goals for yourself that better your life. Career goals, health goals. Focus on becoming the best person you can be.

If you have ever acted towards your ex in a way that if a man acted that way towards your sister or mother you would have been extremely upset and confronted them; seek help. There is an underlying issue there, not only for the courts, but for yourself.

Do not claim victim. Immediately humble yourself and start the processing of obtaining peace and happiness.

Her new boyfriend threatened to beat you up? You know you could beat the hell out of him… Don’t. There are other means to addressing this that set a much better “I will not tolerate this kind of bullshit in my children’s lives” message to her.

Don’t fake being a good person to prove to the courts that you are a loving father. Truly become a good person, develop the skills necessary to make yourself such a good person that it makes you a happy person. That there is nothing false about the man you have become. You are stronger for it, not weaker.

Look at this process optimistically. This is your opportunity to seek a better future. For yourself, and for your children.

People say that if you repeat something enough times you will believe it as truth. Let your actions do this as well. Make doing good deeds a regular part of your routine, even if it’s not in front of your children. (hold the door open for people, give to charity if you can, volunteer, help people, etc…)

It truly takes a village to raise a child, be good to all of the people you love. That love will be returned 10 fold in ways you could never imagine. They will appreciate your struggle and they will provide your children with an overwhelming amount of love.

Never make a choice in your life that could negatively impact your kids. Don’t do it. There is no but, what if, or any excuses acceptable here… You met a sexy chick at the bar on your weekend off who frequently uses drugs and you want to start dating her? Don’t…  You’re invited out with some boys you used to hang out with who you regularly used to get in bar fights with? Don’t go. You drink and drive and never caught? Stop it… You think hanging out with “tough guys makes you look cool”. Get over yourself. Grow up.

The basic impulses no longer apply to you. You aren’t a man. You are a father. It’s a different breed of man. It requires a depth you never had before.

Never make an impulsive decision of any kind. Weigh out all the negatives and positives and then form your opinion and act. Do this for everything, even minor decisions like where you are going to go for dinner. Do this so much that it becomes a regular part of your decision making process.

Humbling yourself his one of the most difficult things a man can do. Some women are horrible people, just as men are. Some judges will look down on you. Midst all of the chaos that is a custody dispute you have to humble yourself. You need to shift your focus to being the best person you can be. It took me years to realize this, and quite frankly it was too late.

I never want a man to feel what I feel now.

Do it for your kids.

Signed,
A Father who lost, and learned the hardest lesson in life he ever learned.

The Word Earned

Boys can make babies. It takes a man to raise them.

Oprah Winfrey

Dad. Really sounds like a simple word as it gets thrown around and stuck on every kind of cheap coffee mug, preceded with the phrase “World’s Greatest.” But is it really that simple? As the world changes, so has the image we expect from ourselves as Dads. No longer are we willing to accept our role as a simple provider or are we willing to be that bumbling idiot or the babysitter when mom’s not around. Now we are a parent, doing parent things with our own dad flare. So if you are expecting to receive that coffee mug, you damn better take action to earn that prefix before the word Dad.

How do you do that?

By realizing that fatherhood isn’t a label attached thanks to having children. It comes attached with the actions you take because you have kids.

It’s not about being able to buy them a bike, but taking the time to teach them how to ride it. It’s about taking the time to read them a bed time story when all you want to do is go to bed yourself. It’s about all the games you don’t miss and the plays you attend instead of the lessons you paid for. It’s about all the homework and school you do together and not about all the tutor fees you can pay. It’s not about being able to post magazine worthy images of your kids in social media, but about living a storybook worthy life with your kids.

It’s about that costume you made or the fieldtrip chaperoning you did. It’s about understanding that bad grades and bad behavior isn’t a sign of a bad kid, but a call for help about some other issue. It’s about willing to look for answers and understanding instead of worrying what will the neighbors think. It’s about putting aside whatever issue you have with the child’s mother as you place priority on the child. It’s about willing to drop everything and relocate if needed to make sure the kid has a better chance at life. It’s about making sure you talk WITH them, not TO them.

Do any of these actions guarantee a “good” kid? No, but it sure improves their chances.

And that is what being a Dad is all about. It’s about giving your kid a chance to be a better man or woman in a world bent on breaking them. It’s about letting them know that no matter what, they can count on you. It’s about letting them know that even if they don’t yet believe in themselves yet, you do.

Don’t Assume I’m Broken

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Aristotle gave us a vast fountain of knowledge and wisdom. But within all those profound ideas, he had one concept which I can’t agree at all on. He, like so many men in Ancient Greece, viewed women as “defective by nature” and as incomplete or imperfect men. Women were viewed as having little control over their emotions, having a quick temper, void of shame or self-respect, and more prone to lying. His ideas were assimilated by many as society evolved as a way to justify not offering women the same opportunities as men.

Believe it or not, now we know better.

I want to take a moment to applaud the current trend of supporting the efforts of girls, one that promotes the notion that they can achieve whatever they set their minds to. They are taught to do this, not only for themselves, but as something that all other women can be proud of. We see how this empowerment, not only comes from moms, but from dads, who have become an integral part of these girls’ development. These men realize that their role as a father is that of raising a girl worthy of the spotlight that will shine on her. We see these girls growing up into strong women of character who prove that gender doesn’t hold anyone back, that girl power is powerful, and being a woman is something to be proud of…

And then we tell the boys and men that they are “defective by nature” and that men are basically the rough draft that was later polished into women. Men are viewed as having little control over their emotions, having a quick temper, void of shame or self-respect, and more prone to lying.

Sounds oddly familiar.

Have you ever stopped and thought about how we treat men, boys, and masculinity? You see it in the father who forces sports on his son, as he tries to live vicariously some kind of athletic glory, yet is angered by his child’s lack of interest. You see it in the mother who is constantly disciplining her son because he won’t follow strict instructions. You see it in the teacher who has to constantly punish a student because he refuses to sit down and be quiet in the classroom. You see it in the wife who constantly complains about her husband’s actions, or lack of.

At a grander scale you see it in comments like boys will be boys, because being a boy means that irresponsible behavior is to be expected because of their gender. We see it in the assumption that young men can’t control their sexual urges whenever we complain that a young lady’s clothing is a distraction. We see it in the assumption that every man needs a woman (be it a mother, a girlfriend, or a wife) to fix his life. We have become a society of people shaming men on everything they can’t do as we take any and every opportunity to let these men know everything they are doing wrong.

As a reaction to this attitude against manhood, instead of proving them wrong, some men have chosen to actually embody everything that society views wrong with men. They create a vicious cycle of men who behave badly because they are told that men behave badly.

So what has society’s warriors done as a reaction? They blame masculinity and the “man box” as being the toxic aspect that hurts men. There is a dangerous toxicity in the constant pissing contest, the almost universal idea that violence and confrontation will solve anything, the emotional distance as emotions are viewed as a sign of weakness, and the notion of an ever present unquenchable sexual desire. So the SJW have chosen fight these faults by condemning ALL things masculine and placing the absolute burden of fault on men, as apparently dealing with the specific negative elements is not as easy as a generalized condemnation of masculinity or realizing how we set men up to fail from the beginning as we view masculinity only from a negative lens.

What we end up is with half of society shaming men because they don’t measure up to the ideals of what a manly man is, and the other half shaming men because it’s the only way to keep them from falling into the trap of manly men. Did you notice how it’s all basically setting up men for a no win situation, where no matter what they do, they will fail in someone’s eyes? Then we wonder why boys and men have little aspirations and ambitions, or why so many become self-destructive.

Maybe it’s time that we look at what we are doing successfully with girls and do the same with the boys. Girls are outperforming boys in almost every field, and we already know that gender has nothing to do with it. It has to do with how we have chosen to empower women.

So what should we do? Stop treating men (and boys) as starting out as failures that need fixing! Instead of telling them how to live, give them proper examples by how you live. Let them learn by seeing. SHARE with them why you love something, and let them make up their mind. If they don’t like it, let them share with you what they love. Give them the space they need to fail or succeed on their own merit, instead of assuming they will fail if you don’t tell them how to do it.

Provide young men with men worthy of looking up too; heroes and role models they can emulate. Provide them with the support for them to fly on their own. Offer them the opportunity to be more, give them hope to be more. When we stop viewing someone as a problem to be fixed, they stop viewing themselves as a problem that needs fixing.

If You’re Destined To Be A Warrior, Be One With A Cause.

Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others.

His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and, above all, the children, the future of humanity.

Sitting Bull

Every so often I like to bring attention to Gentlemen who have taken opon themselves to make this world a little better simply because it’s the right thing to do. I have mentioned before importance of organizations like the Café Sospeso, the Brothers for Sisters, and That Suits You. Today, I bring you one that I learned about last year, one that exemplifies that a modern warrior scholar should be, Bikers Against Child Abuse.

Some men are forged by a hard life and become hard themselves. These men don’t shy away from the stereotypes that society places on them, but rather embrace it as an honor. Bikers are like this. Their badass aura and an even worse reputation sometimes don’t always reflect their gentle hearts and honorable intentions. But instead of trying to conform within society, some use what could be considered a social stigma, and use it for good.

Children who have been the victims of abuse live in constant fear, as usually their abusers were someone they trusted.  To them, that monster hiding in their closet or under their bed is more real than what it should be. Even if their abuser is no longer around, the fear is still there. So how do you handle a scary monster? By getting an even scarier champion.

Even kids know that nobody messes with bikers. Bikers look big, and strong, and mean, both in real life and in how they are portrayed on television and in films. They are easy riders, sons of anarchy, not afraid of anything and, more importantly, they take care of their own. A child who has been abused by someone bigger and stronger knows too well what it feels like to be small and vulnerable. BACA shifts that balance, by putting even bigger and stronger people, a lot of them, on the child's side.

If ever the child feels threatened, scared, or simply wants someone to be there, they simply have to call, and a couple of riders will come by. They are there to provide a safe environment, a place for the child to feel secure. This might be to scare of the abuser, to walk with the kid to school, or simply to stand guard all night in front of the house to scare off nightmares.

Not everyone is accepted within the BACA. These men train for their duty, as many are actual social workers and all are required to pass a string of background checks and training courses to deal with the emotional strain of their duty. But instead of trying to explain their ideology, I think their creed says it better than I could.

I am a member of Bikers Against Child Abuse. The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still.

My past has prepared me, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I dont have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by the faith in my works, and lean on the strength of my brothers and sisters. I love with patience, live by prayer, and labor with power.

My fate is set, my gait is fast, my goal is the ultimate safety of children. My road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are tried and true, my Guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won’t give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, and showed up for all wounded children. I must go until I drop, ride until I give out, and work till He stops me. And when He comes for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me, for He will see my BACA back patch and know that I am one of His. I am a member of Bikers Against Child Abuse, and this is my creed.

BACA Creed