A friend gave me a copy of the book "Season of LIfe" today. I had heard a little bit about the man the book was written about, Joe Ehrmann and was excited to get a chance to read it. The book is sort of a biography written about Joe but it focuses upon his relationship with his high school football team and his belief that the most important thing he can do is teach them to be men. I read the book cover to cover today. It brought up a lot of feelings and emotions that I welcomed. I have two small boys and a huge desire to raise them and love them in a way that will teach them how to be real men. What Joe talks about when he says "real men" is very different from societies view. In the view of society men are first rated based upon athletic prowness then later in life by who they date/marry and finally by the size of their bank accounts and houses. Joe flips it to say that masculinity "first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of relationships. It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to love and be loved….life wouldn’t be measured in terms of success based on what you’ve acquired or achieved or what you own. The only thing that’s really going to matter is the realtionships that you had?" He adds the only other criteria of masculinity "is that all of us ought to have some kind of cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that’s bigger than our own individual hopes, dreams, wants and desires." These two criteria create a base for a man who is committed to all realationships they are a part of. There is a huge importance placed on relationships and they are critical to life. I read that and thought about my relationship with my dad. At this point in our life it is pretty non-existent. We talk about current events, the weather and other basic stuff but not really about anything that is significant. I want to do what the author of the book did and sit my dad down for a long talk to just get to know each other. The time is very short for that to happen because we are getting older. The idea of a cause is that life has to be about something bigger than us. Causes can be simple and ever changing but they are always about helping and standing up for others. When we get passed our own selfish desires and wants we get to a place of much greater health.
There’s a lot more to this book than I can write about at 3:30am Part of it terrifies me because it makes me really feel that I have to be so careful with my boys to shower them with love and praise while at the same time work on who I am so that it’s real and not contrived. I need to think through this more and spend a lot of time praying. Too early (or late) to think much more.
