Becoming a Man by
August
by
Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D.
author of
Raising Cain: Protecting
the Emotional Life of Boys
The boy sitting next to me on the
prop plane from Toronto to North Bay was seventeen years old, a
rising high school senior with a slight beard. He had the misfortune
to sit next to a child psychologist, a so-called expert on boys, who
would pester him with questions for the entire trip about how he was
spending his summer, and why. “This is kind of like a final exam,”
he observed, trying to get me to relent, but I wouldn’t let go.
After he had gamely answered a number
of my questions about the summer camp to which he was headed, I
sprang the BIG one on him, the question I have asked many boys his
age. “Do you consider yourself to be a man”
“Yes…” he replied immediately. Then
he caught himself, hesitating momentarily before declaring with
conviction: ‘Well, no…but I will be in August!”
What could a seventeen-year-old boy
do during between the last week of June and August that he could
anticipate would make him a man? American culture doesn’t have any
universal ritual that sees a boy through that psychologically
difficult passage from boyhood to manhood. Many boys, actually,
almost every boy, struggles with what it means to become a man. Boys
(or young men, if you prefer) of seventeen, nineteen and into their
early twenties wrestle with the riddle: what test do I have to pass
to become a man and who will be able to recognize that I have
reached that point? My young companion thought he had found an
answer.
It turned out that he was going to
embark the next morning on a fifty-day canoeing trip that would take
him and nine companions through lakes, rivers, rapids, mud and
ferocious mosquitoes, all the way up to Hudson’s Bay, a distance of
600 miles. He and his friends had been preparing for this by
developing wilderness skills for the last four years at their camp.
They would carry all of their own food, they would not shower for
weeks; they would take risks and they would suffer. Toward the end
of their journey they would see the Northern lights and would visit
an Inuit settlement. They might see moose and wolves, but, he told
me, they were not going to be tourists. “This isn’t about seeing
wild animals,” he asserted.
What was his definition of manhood?
“It’s taking responsibility,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s
taking responsibility and taking things you’ve learned from others
and creating your own self.
“It’s about finishing a grueling
portage,” he said, “It’s about doing work and getting a result.”
Didn’t he get that from school and
varsity athletics? No. Though he did well in school and had bright
college prospects, school didn’t address his hunger to be a man, not
even playing sports. “After sports you go home, take a shower and
watch TV.” When he was canoe tripping, he felt as if he made a
sustained effort that connected him to all the men who had canoed
before him at that camp, for more than one hundred years.
Could he find the experience he
sought among his friends back home? What were they doing this
summer? “Hanging out. They’re playing video games,” he said. They
didn’t get it. “It’s frustrating. You try to explain to them how
great it is. You tell them about paddling all day, and cooking your
own food, about the mosquitoes and carrying a wood canoe and they
say, ‘What, are you crazy?’”
This young about-to-be man described
his father as a “good guy,” his mother as a hardworking
professional, and his step-father as financially successful, but
none of them seemed to hold the key to helping him become a man.
American culture has no universal ritual for helping boys move from
boyhood to manhood. Jewish boys have their bar mitzvahs, Mormon boys
have their year of missionary service; other boys sign up for the
military. Yet every boy yearns to be a man, and traditional
societies always took boys away from their parents to pass an
initiation rite. We no longer have such rituals, but boys still
wonder: what is the test, where do I find it, how do I pass it, and
who will recognize that moment when I pass from boyhood to manhood?
We fail to provide a meaningful path, a challenging path that speaks
to the souls of a majority of boys.
The key to his manhood lay with the
counselors who would accompany him on the journey, and with his
companions whose lives he would protect and who would, in turn, look
out for him. Past the rain, the bugs and the smelling bad, he would
discover his manhood in community and in the kind of challenge that
only nature offers up.
Our plane journey over, I wished him
luck. And then I couldn’t get our conversation out of my mind. While
a demanding canoe trip is not for every boy, I’m certain that every
boy is searching for a test. You can find the test by taking on
anything that requires commitment and courage. However, there is
something that happens in the out-of-doors that strips you down to
the essentials: safety, companionship and a shared sense of mission.
You set aside all the busyness and crap of daily life, and then you
can think about what it actually means to be a man.
Michael Thompson, Ph.D, is a
psychologist and the author of “The Pressured Child: Helping Your
Child to Achieve Success in School and in Life.” (Ballantine Books,
August, 2004) and co-author of the New York Times bestseller
“Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” (Ballantine,
1999) Michael Thompson, July 2004
Copyright 2006 Michael
Thompson, Ph.D., all rights reserved
