My Business On Purpose

For six years Ashley and I coordinated the meeting of a group of young men who met weekly during the school year.  Some weeks there were four, and others there were sixteen.  All between 15 and 18 years of age and all at different stages of maturity.   We walked these young men through a variety of discussions, situations, and scenarios and even adapted a five stage growth pyramid for each to understand where they were at in their level of maturity.   For these young men we relayed the identification of those stages as  Boy Adolescent Man Mentor Patriarch Upon introduction many of the young men in our group presumed that age was the entry point to each stage.  Turn 13 and you become an adolescent.  Turn 18 and you become a man. One astute young man asked a resonating question around our communal fire pit, “at what age do you become a mentor?” It was akin to asking, “at what year do you become an expert in your field?” In 1964 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was providing an opinion on the use of obsce