Three Lessons For Boys

a lecture

I believe that all human boys everywhere should be taught three basic lessons.

1. Respect yourself, and earn your self-respect.

2. Support and protect your people.

3. Comfort anyone who is in pain.

Of course we must teach love and beauty. Please do not believe for an instant that I doubt it, even though these lessons I propose are more mundane. Yes indeed, we must constantly teach love, beauty, joy, freedom, the thirst for divinity, the hunger for justice, and all the rest. Of course we must. Our highest revelation, that all things are one divine beauteous whole, this perennial shining revelation is the fundamental thing which can lead us truly into right behavior. But what is the best way to teach the universal high ideals to human boys? Like any individual, a boy must discover the truth in his own life while he goes about expressing his own nature. For you to believe any truth, it must hold good while you strive to be the person you were born to be, because that is the only kind of proof which will really satisfy your doubts. So how can we teach our sons that love and beauty are the truth? I believe these three lessons can do that.

The difficulty is human nature. Our male human instincts push us out into the world, and yet they push us home. They lead us into war and yet they lead us into peace. They give us madness and they give us sanity. Basically, instinct is simply an inborn desire to act in certain ways in certain situations. This is pretty straightforward for some beings but for us humans it is complicated by our survival strategy.

Our race has evolved with a certain survival scheme in mind, that we shall be very free in seeking understanding of the situations where we find ourselves and then very free in choosing a goal or object for the emotion which our understanding arouses. To carry out this scheme, our people are born with vague, contradictory and overlapping instincts. Thus we often find ourselves morally confused, searching down our inborn list for the proper thing to do in some situation where we are. Both sexes find themselves in similar states of confusion, of course, but the male's natural role has put a number of dangerous violent impulses onto his list. His emotions were evolved for a hunter, defender and master as well as a provider, healer and teacher. His contradictions are likely to be improperly and unjustly destructive to people around him. There lies our difficulty.

So the riddle is this: What principles can we teach a boy that will help him guide his natural manhood into good behavior? And the riddle's knot is this: An individual must learn the highest guiding truths by enacting their own nature; and a human male's inborn nature often speaks of violence; and violence is often too destructive. Please bring to mind all that you know about boys and men, then consider my proposal again:

1. Respect yourself, and earn your self-respect.

2. Support and protect your people.

3. Comfort anyone who is in pain.

I think these lessons can clarify a boy's understanding of the situations in his life, and then suggest good goals for the actions to which his understanding impels him. As the child matures, he comprehends each succeeding lesson well enough to test it and confirm it. Each testing broadens the hoop of landscape where he feels that he belongs. Each confirmation enlarges the compassion that he feels; first compassion for himself; then for his family or nation, then at last for everything. The boy learns high ideals through his success, by seeing that the lessons work and by looking for the larger truths that ever make anything work out for the best.

I think the phrasing which I offer here is pretty good, though it is certainly a thin outline. Serious questions surely do remain. What behavior proves a man has earned his self-respect? Who are his people and who are not? What comfort do we owe to those who have justly earned their pain? Boys must be guided through these questions by their elders, and men should seek guidance from philosophy. But too, as you struggle with each lesson, the coming lessons serve as a guide. You can earn respect by supporting and protecting. You can support and protect through compassion. Then finally you can let compassion bloom according to the highest guiding truths.

I know this answer which I offer here is nothing new. The question that we're asking is a hard riddle but not a new one. Our current culture is very strange but we are human nonetheless; we do not need a new answer for this puzzle, only a fresh statement of the answer. Most certainly, these basic lessons have been taught all through history by our kinfolk in countless other cultures, and I think the way I've listed them is a pretty fair rendition. In my own experience, I have seen each of the lessons very clearly demonstrated in a different culture.

First: "Respect yourself and earn your self-respect." This was taught me by an American Midwestern farmer. He journeyed off into the world and then, after many perilous adventures, settled down back home to raise a family. His main standard for respect was that you ought to be resourceful, useful and courageous.

Second: "Support and protect your people." I saw this danced by a Plains Indian enacting the meditations of a young warrior on the eve of battle. The youth finds comfort in the knowledge that his people need him. I saw this danced in a theater with an orchestra, and the contrast of new and old thrust an awareness on me that the lesson is timeless.

Third: "Comfort anyone who is in pain." I found this in an ancient story which was opened for me by the whispering of spirits. The story has been told and retold to our present day, and still it clearly echoes a very ancient time in a distant land. The old tale is British, but it ends with the hero crowned because he has shown compassion worthy of the Buddha.

I have heard the lessons from many other sources too, but for me these were the most compelling and vivid. I only hope these lessons prove to be some help for you.