You Can't Get There From Here
The importance of Danger, Difficulty, and Disappointment in the development of your life's story
I love a good story.
I love hearing them, I love telling them, and I especially love sharing the discovery of a good story with others.
It’s why I have so many books (read and unread)
It’s also why I used to love going to the movies.
A good story can engage your imagination, elevate your mood, and temporarily transport you to another world.
A truly great story has the power to reveal truths, expose fallacies, challenge dogmas, inspire transformation, and so much more.
And that’s why some stories continue to be told after thousands of years.
Stories are how we orient ourselves to the world around us; how we capture the meaning in life, and how we share the knowledge and wisdom we discover along the way.
Stories can teach, encourage, comfort, challenge, and sustain us.
Children are captivated by stories of heroes and adventure, young people are inspired by the stories of their ancestors, and legends galvanize the hearts of men.
But lately, it seems there is a fundamental difference in many of the stories that are being told (especially the ones being told the loudest).
Gone are the stories of heroes who dare boldly, face challenges, struggle, fail, persevere, and ultimately succeed through a process of personal transformation. Instead, what we find are endless variations of a story where the character who persists and succeeds is actually the villain, and the so-called hero’s singular passion is the destruction of anyone who has achieved more than them.
Apart from any political, religious, or even ethical observations that could be made about such a profound shift in a fundamental narrative, please consider what I simply call the Basement Bargain.
According to the Basement Bargain, if a parent:
Actively encourages “anti-hero” behavior in their child by endorsing participation trophies, lowering expectations, removing obstacles, and constantly protecting their feelings
or
Passively allows their child to make excuses, shirk responsibility, quit commitments, and complain about fairness,
then
Not only should you expect your child to still be living in your basement at 30 years old (instead of being a productive and healthy member of society)
but
You aren’t allowed to act surprised or confused about what led to this because this is the bargain you accepted every time you let them believe that failing to succeed is actually heroic
Depending on geographic and/or economic environments, the Basement Bargain can also be known as the Spare Room Settlement, the Garage Giveaway, or even the extra insidious Family Plan Cell Phone Concession. And before you protest my use of adjectives, let me state unequivocally that I absolutely believe insidious is an appropriate word to describe these particular acts of acquiescence. By definition, something insidious is unpleasant or dangerous and develops gradually without being noticed.
If your son is out of school and you’re still paying his phone bill while simultaneously unable to park a car in your garage because it’s full of his “stuff”, then you failed to teach your son to be a man!
Which brings us back to stories.
One of the simplest and best ways that I have found to teach a boy to grow into a good man is to make sure he hears lots and lots of really good stories!
In case you’re wondering, I’m far from the first guy to figure this out. Looking out across all cultures and back throughout all of recorded history we consistently find that story is front and center in all of human development. In fact, it’s so central and important that I would say that the primary way you teach a boy to be a man is to tell him stories.
The primary way you teach a boy to be a man,
is to tell him his stories.
To hang a little meat on the bones of what actually defines a “good man” is going to require far more space than a single article and it’s something I plan to dive deeply into in future articles. (Hopefully with some participation from all of you as I give Substack’s “threads” feature a try)
For now, though, let’s return to the idea of telling a boy his story and see if I can sufficiently bring us back around to the beginning when I said “You can’t get there from here”. (history - his story, Huh, how about that?)
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to spend any more of my words or your time pointing out the current poor state of stories in our culture. Just take a quick look at the dismal box office performance of movies lately and it’s clear that the decline in quality and substance has not gone unnoticed. And that’s a really good thing. But there’s also a real problem on the flip side: Not enough people are stepping up to fill the void with good stories. And that is a really bad thing, because whether we read them in books, see them in movies, or just listen as others tell them to us, we all need stories. In fact, we crave them. So much so, that when good stories are hard to find, bad stories can capture our attention in ways they don’t deserve.
Whether we read them in books, see them in movies, or listen to them as others tell them to us, we all need stories
In this social media-driven, short-form video-based world full of “influencers” peddling fake success, it’s way too easy for our kids, and even us, to get tricked into thinking that somehow we can “hack” our way to success without ever having to invest the time or endure the pain. And why not? Gone are the days of having to drive to the video store to rent a movie, now you can stream it instantly. (But just in case you still want to rent one, you can where I live, because Bend, Oregon has the official “Last Blockbuster on Earth”) And now you don’t even have to wait for a movie to leave the theater before you can watch it at home. It’s just like Black Friday shopping which apparently starts the week after Halloween now. And that’s not hyperbole. Take a moment and list some of the things you used to have to wait for that are now available days or weeks quicker (if not instantly):
Remember the busy signal? Your kids sure don’t.
Remember having to re-wind videos? Remember video re-winders?
Remember hand-scoring for bowling? (No wonder our country’s math scores are plummeting)
Remember calling information to find out the movie schedule?
Remember pay phones?
Remember using the pay phone at the bowling alley to call and find out the movie schedule? I do.
Remember when you and your friends practiced constantly in the hopes that your team would win the trophy at the end of the season? Now the leagues order “trophies” for every team.
Remember when your uncles dared you to do something dangerous like race your cousin up a tree? Or when they loaded 14 cousins in a 6-passenger car to go get Slurpees?
Remember being led into the woods to go snipe hunting and then getting ditched in the dark and having to find your way back alone? I do.
Remember when a parent or a coach told you to suck it up and you couldn’t turn them in for “being mean”?
Remember when a parent or a coach told you to suck it up and you couldn’t turn them in for “being mean”?
I remember ALL of those things and then some. And I am so very grateful for having endured every last one of them. My capabilities today are the product of the work I’ve done to overcome the challenges I’ve faced to get to the place I am now. And I know that if I want greater capabilities in the future, I have to put in more work now. When it comes to competency, strength, or wisdom, there are no hacks.
You can’t learn something you won’t practice
You can’t build strength with shortcuts
Wisdom is found in struggle (not in a fortune cookie)
You can’t get there from here. You have to go through the valleys, the dead ends, the storms, the frustrations, and the failure. As Bilbo wisely says, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” But facing that danger is the only way to learn, grow, and become who you are made to be.
This is why listening to and telling stories has become such an important part of my life and my work. A few times a year Dangerously Good Men runs a Initiation Rite of Passage for fathers of sons between the ages of 11-15. It’s an epic 3-day event that transforms relationships and equips men to guide their sons into heroic manhood. And it’s filled with the sharing of challenges and stories. If you’d like to find out more about Rites of Passage or Initiating your Son, Click HERE and then find the Book a Call button, I’d love to connect!
It’s also why I started hosting Fire and Legends every Saturday morning in my backyard. Men of all ages and backgrounds gather around the fire, drink coffee, and share their stories. It’s incredible. You should definitely start one of your own. And if you happen to be in Bend, Oregon we’ve got a cup of coffee and a log by the fire for you.