Dear Boys

Jan 9

A letter to our sons, excerpted from remarks delivered at Parents Weekend.

Dear Boys,

Now that you are settled at your respective institutions, I thought I’d go old school and send you a short letter in hopes of providing a little guidance for you in the months and years ahead. I do realize of course that a letter seems quaint and old fashioned, but it offers me the space to think through what I want to say, and you the chance to read through my words at your leisure, so please humor me on this. To begin with, I acknowledge the clear irony that I have reached the age where I finally have some worthwhile information and perspective to share at precisely the time when you’ve each reached the age when you’re most likely to disregard that advice. This is a cruel paradox that has persisted across all of human experience, and is something that I take as further proof that God has a strange and abiding sense of humor. In any case, please bear with me as I offer you some perspective as you stand on the doorstep of the world.

As you have no doubt already noticed, high school and college can be really hard. So can life for that matter. Injustices abound, bad luck can spoil everything, evil people can go unchecked and sometimes are even rewarded. This is all true, and yet these things are mostly beyond your control, so don’t waste a lot of time worrying about them. Instead, make the world better by focusing on what you can control – the daily details of your life, and the attitude with which you choose to meet the world. With regard to the details of life, the bottom line is that you should expect to work very hard every day. There’s no way around this. Sometimes it will be a class that challenges you, sometimes it will be a relationship with a friend or a significant other, someday it will be a job or a coworker or a boss. Expect to work hard, no matter what, and learn to enjoy the struggle. Since you can be sure that something difficult will inevitably occur, I hope you will continue to focus on the one thing you can always control – your effort. In the end, you’ll find that things rarely turn out badly when you’ve done your very best.

You will each recall the now legendary episode that gave rise to our unofficial family slogan of “Stop hitting your brother with the shark…” As useful and sound as this advice might be, as an additional philosophy, I’ll remind you of the adage I heard first from a St. George’s student to “See the job, do the job.” We can talk about the philosophy of the task, the importance or meaning of the task, the ‘process’ we should use in the task, but ultimately what matters is that the work gets done, and gets done well. Quit talking about it, worrying about it, making excuses for it, and just get on with it. If it’s easier to visualize this from a sports standpoint, then consider family motto version 3.0. Last week, a reporter asked one of the Red Sox players about the way in which they had approached their lengthy and successful at bats against a talented Detroit Tigers pitching staff. The player replied, “We grind, then we shine.” That’s as good a plan as any for a successful life, so if you need more than just seeing the job and doing the job, then be prepared to grind, and shine when you have the chance.

Having said that, it’s fair to acknowledge that sometimes your best efforts to shine may still produce a disappointing result. When you find yourself struggling, be it in a class or in life, it’s really important to recall that life is hard for everyone at some point or another. It may look like someone else has it easy, but realize that there is often more going on than is evident to you. You don’t know, or may not be able to see their struggle, but you can be certain that there is one going on somewhere. There’s a famous quote that is often attributed to Plato, but is probably of more modern origin that says, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Whether ancient or modern, the quote is quite true, and it offers us two key points of reflection. First is the reminder that everyone is struggling with something, so you needn’t feel alone, or targeted by the universe when things go wrong. Second, and even more important, is the directive to be kind. This can be hard to do, but besides the need to do your best and get the work done, it’s one of the most important guide stars I can offer you. In any situation, and under all circumstance, being cruel is a choice. So is being kind. I realize that you have been raised in a world where kindness is often scorned as a form of weakness. Understand that this is not true and that kindness and weakness are not at all the same thing. On the contrary, kindness requires a level of courage and determination that cruelty never does. In fact, I can tell you without exception that the meanest people I have ever known have also been the biggest cowards. They use cruelty as a desperate shield to hide their own fear and vulnerability, hoping that they can distract themselves and the world from their own shortcomings. So don’t head down the dark path of petty cruelty, no matter how justified you might feel. Instead, I hope that you have seen enough examples of kindness that you will choose to follow the road of courage and grace.

Speaking of that, I hope you will work on being gracious to those around you. Again, this is tough, since you’ve come of age in a world that seems to not just overlook manners, but at times to actively campaign against them. Keep in mind that manners are not a way to make yourself look cool, or fancy, or to show off some perceived level of good breeding. That’s missing the point. Manners, and gracious actions are there to put other people at ease, to make them feel comfortable, valued, noticed, and appreciated. They are a generous, welcoming gesture, not something self-serving. Please treat everyone around you and especially those whom you someday come to love with the highest level of grace, and manners, and class.

I raise this question in particular because one of the tools the world is using to rewrite its sense of manners is technology. As you know and sometimes tease me, I’m kind of a tech geek. I love gadgets, and if I’ve largely resisted the urge to jump into the world of social media, it’s because I also have a skeptic’s eye for the perils of technology. You, on the other hand, have never known a world without the Internet, have never known a world without GPS, or texting, or Google, or smartphones. How you find information, how you connect with one another, and how you understand the world are all different from the way our generation did. We thought photocopiers and fax machines were cool, you’ve seen smartphones and Twitter feeds topple governments and redraw the map. As a child of the Cold War, I often look at technology as akin to nuclear fission. Harnessed carefully and well, both can produce important and valuable benefits, albeit with some potentially problematic complications. On the other hand, left unchecked, either force can run out of control quickly, and produce real devastation. And, God help us, if it is “weaponized,” technology, just like an atomic bomb, can be used to destroy people’s lives and the worlds they inhabit. So with this unpleasant metaphor in mind, I cannot urge you strongly enough to handle your on-line lives with great care. Don’t be cruel, don’t be reckless, don’t be an Internet troll, cowering behind a keyboard and lobbing snark at the world. That is beneath any of us, and should be seen as the contemptible behavior it is. More broadly, do not ever post anything anywhere that you’d be uncomfortable explaining to me or to your mother. While we are on it, that is another pretty good life guideline - avoid doing anything that you’d be uncomfortable explaining to your mother. But with regard to posting such foolishness online, keep in mind that it’s increasingly clear that anything and everything that you put online will live on somewhere, whether on a hard drive, the servers of Google, or in the files of the NSA. In short, the Internet is forever – be cautious.

I realize at this point that I have far exceeded my 140-character limit for advice, so I’ll close with one last hope. I hope that in all you do, in school and beyond, that in addition to being kind and hard working and gracious, that you will seek and find the courage that lies inside each of you. Your experiences in school and in life will test you, and perhaps they already have in various ways. But know that inside each of you lies an ember of courage, and you need only to find the right time, and the right ways to fan that ember into flame. It might come in a dramatic, public way, but my guess is that it will come in some smaller, subtle way, perhaps in one visible only to yourself. If you aren’t sure you can reach your courage, if you’re not sure you have it in you to do the right thing, or to give your best, you need only remember two things. The first and most obvious is that your family loves you. We always have, and we always will, no matter what, now and forever. The second comes from the Bible, and it’s the most common phrase that appears in the entire text – “Be not afraid.” Again and again in this sacred text as in so many others, we are reminded as humans not to let our fear own us. Instead, embrace your courage, bring it into flame and use it to light the way for yourself and those around you.

With that, I will sign off. Feel free to write, or email or text back, but no matter what, remember that we’re proud of you, and keep up the good work.

Love, Dad

Eric Peterson

Dear Boys

Marge and Aristotle