Perhaps he will grow up to bend girders
My firstborn son turns twelve today, a significant milestone of itself, made all the more so by the hypnotic numerology of the calendar date: 12/12/12. This seems like as good a time as any to impart just a few words of wisdom to him as the specter of manhood looms large on his personal horizon.
Be your own man – Your friends, your television, your computer, random bloggers, and even your own parents will try to tell you how to be a man: how to grow up to be ethical, contented, well-rounded, well-grounded, and the like. Listen to them, take it all in, but please think it through for yourself. You can count on your parents (and only a few others) to always desire what is best for you, but only you can know what that ultimately must be taken to mean, and put in the hard work of making it come about.
Be a skeptic – Question everything, including the utility of questioning everything. Apply scientific skepticism to the sort of problems that science addresses, and apply methodological skepticism wherever possible. Do not seek merely to apply the formulae, algorithms, and methods handed down by your teachers and professors, but seek instead to understand why they work. Once you get the underlying concepts, everything else will flow so much more easily and you will find yourself able to quickly solve problems without an obvious analog in your textbooks.
Be a fighter – Someday you will find yourself in a situation where you are caught between people you want to impress and your own sense of what is right. When that happens, trust yourself and feel free to tell those people where to stick it, in as colorful language as you please. Taking this approach also ensures that your friends will like you for who you really are rather than whom you pretend to be. You may find this has the surprising effect of raising your social status, as your peers will come to see you as a leader rather than a follower.
When you see a group of people being bullying or hurtful to an out-group member, you will have a choice to run with the crowd or take a stand for the victim. This will happen throughout your entire life, but the circumstances will change and become somewhat more subtle and systemic over time. You should view each of these occasions as a chance to flex your moral muscles and thereby build your character. I’m confident that you can do this much sooner and far better than I did. There are few things quite as satisfying as knowing you’ve made the world slightly less miserable and unjust.
Be a lover – This is one of those few things. Find someone to love, once you are old enough to understand all that entails. I cannot say that I’ve been an exemplary husband, but I can say that nothing has brought me as much joy as marrying your mother and learning how to raise a family with her. I hope that we’ve done a decent job of showing you what it is like for two people to trust each other completely and put their children first. Also, please be careful whom you date when you are young, because once you fall in love you will not be able to rely on your own judgment and you won’t care to hear what others have to say.
Be a doer – The next decade or so will be some of the very best learning years of your life. You are at a point now where you can learn almost anything, from the basketball court to the skate park to the orchestra pit. You can get back to the couch and play console games all you like during mid-life, as your back and knees starts to wear out, but right now you have a unique opportunity to acquire real-world skills that will stick with you so long as you remain able-bodied. Don’t miss out on it!
