Finding mentors

Longhofer

Based on a draft about mentors: 25.1.19

Unless you are resourceful and resilient enough to learn something new entirely alone, and perhaps those people might want to question their relationship skills, the mentor  - mentee relationship is the best path to independence, compared, to say, a class. A mentor is the same as a guide but mentor I think suggests more commitment.  Guides are maybe more free.

I guess you are either allocated a mentor, you sign up to one you see advertised or maybe one is recommended.  I can't imagine that I would pay for a mentor except out of curiosity.  It smacks of prostitution.  I don't think you can buy a good mentor.

Corporate mentorship is a curious animal.  I knew, briefly, a guy who was a corporate mentor.  We hit it off straight away.  I liked him, respected him.  He was interesting.  He admitted he boned up on a topic in order to respond to what a client wanted.  I understood, but that ain't wisdom. I suppose corporate wisdom is very different to traditional sense of the word. He seemed to me like the kid standing in the middle of a seesaw, trying to keep the balance.  He wasn't glib but I sometimes wondered if his profession was.  He was deep and light hearted, fun-loving, serious, observant, patient, a learner and a teacher. 

I once tried to discuss the integrity of 'buying a mentor'.  How can that really work? I understood, to an extent, but there has always to be an element of self-interest, of sales potentially at the expense of, well, something else.  It was a difficult topic and he skated right off it.  

He was also, I came to discover, serially unreliable in our meetings, being busy and not so organised. We had begun in roles of reciprocity, learning from each other.  Soon, he invited me to be hired by him to deliver a service.  I wasn't sure.  I liked the way things were and suggested a professional I knew instead but he wanted me.  I was new to that role and eventually, after being messed around for the nth time put in clear boundaries. He understood, responded well and respected these but the relationship faded away and not on bad terms. The whole experience was interesting and instructive.

In terms of finding a real, personal mentor, the other way is you come across them by accident, occasionally you are thrown together by circumstance or your shared interests bring you together. You discover that they have more knowledge, experience, skills or some combination of these and they are willing to help and to share.

Perhaps you sense them out in a way, although this, in my case, has been an unconscious process. It's not that you sniff one out and set them up as your mentor. That isn't how it works. You just  come to realise that this person you have connected with now seems to be your mentor.  The realisation, at least for me, is later, after the fact.  The luck involved in finding a good mentor is phenomenal.  If society were differently organised, these relationships would be at the heart of it and gratitude to the universe would feature strongly.

I think mentors tend to be older than mentees, perhaps by at least ten years. In my case, all my mentors have been men. I have chatted to many new people in the milongas but a mentor isn't quite chat and is there over time, there is an endurance to it. 

In my mid twenties I knew someone from whom I learned a lot. But love was involved. That isn't a mentor.  A love affair on its own is complicated enough. Something between the two is bound to end in shipwreck.

Also in my twenties, I had one of those rare creatures, a relaxed, intelligent boss who let you get on with the job. He assigned an experienced laid back and good-natured colleague as a mentor at work. This man helped me, with infinite patience, even inviting me to dinner at his house to meet his wife and child.

At another job a more experienced colleague evolved, unspoken into my mentor and became an invaluable support, defending me at a politically motivated internal trial, but he was primarily a free spirit in all senses - and he had his own work to do.

Later again I came to know a neighbour with many talents who was kind and anarchic and helpful and from whom I have learned many things mostly to do power and politics. I saw him in the street the other day and introduced him to my mum.  This is my neighbour, P_____, I said. 

And friend, he said, pointedly, gently.