ROLE MODELING FOR BETTER RESULTS

Who remembers their first experience with role modeling?

Did it come from a parent, a teacher, an older sibling?

You saw them and said to yourself, “That’s who I want to be like when I grow up.”

Then you grew up and understood the delicate balance roll models must keep to maintain their image.

You probably felt the pressure of role modeling.

Pressure? There’s supposed to be pressure?

Early role models are the hardest to hold onto. Why?

Because they change, or do stupid shit, or die.

Selfish readers like dead authors since they’ll never release a new book to change their opinion.

From dead authors to old movie stars and directors, there is a safe role model zone.

It’s safe until someone finds new material and link it to nefarious deeds we didn’t know about. Then it’s, “Oh those dastardly bastards.”

I used to feel good about Kirk Douglas.

A recent story changed my mind. It’s a ‘Me Too’ worthy Hollywood story of a big name and a young woman.

I still like Rock Hudson, but feel sorry for the guy forced to live a double life.

Rock and Doris Day movies were fun for us kids. Who wouldn’t want to be like Rock Hudson and find someone as wonderful as Doris Day?

Role Modeling In Real Life

Everyone looks up to someone in admiration for what they’ve done, or what they think they’ve done.

It’s usually what they think they’ve done since we only get a small sample of evidence.

That small sample is enough most of the time. Why get all detailed about someone’s life just to find fault.

Did anyone look at Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos as anything more than names on a richest man in the world list?

Apparently two people did: their wives.

Being super-rich in a needy world wasn’t good enough for the guys. Neither was being married and having families. (Says married guy with family.)

The big guys needed more, needed something they couldn’t purchase. Any guesses?

As usual, The Beatles had it figured out.

Say you don’t need no diamond rings
And I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of things
That money just can’t buy

I don’t care too much for money
Money can’t buy me love

Boomer Role Model

Raise your hand if you thought hippies were role models.

The hippie role model was one of kids growing up in neighborhoods with parents still recovering from the trauma of WWII and Korea.

The Korean War might be called The Forgotten War, just not by the people who participated and the families they started. My Dad and his brother were both Korean War Marines. Uncle Rex stayed in and went to Vietnam in the early days.

They were the sort of men who watched their kids grow a freak flag of hair and find a new way of life outside the small towns and suburbs they grew up in.

Except we didn’t have hippies in the family; some stretched out more than others. Overall we turned out to be a pretty standard bunch with a side of Trumpiness in some cases.

That’s because we were what’s considered Middle Boomers. The best hippies were Early Boomers. After them everyone more or less dipped a toe in the hippie pool.

What happened to the hippies? They got old, decided in old age (past 30), they wanted more than living on a borrowed futon in a one-time-garbage room of a college student house. (Shout out to John, Rob, and Lauren.)

The Self-Inflicted Suffering Of A Middle Boomer Role Model

I talked to a millennial about history, my history.

I call them a millennial because they protect their anonymity. Call them Millard the Millennial.

The point of it was to clear up a few misconceptions, and secretly cement my role model status forever.

After I’d finished Millard said, “Any suffering you had seems self-inflicted.”

Self-inflicted? I didn’t break my collar bone by myself, twice, didn’t pop a shoulder alone, twice, or tape my ankles before a high school football practice that crippled me for the year by myself. Didn’t drop out and comeback alone, caregive by myself, or parent in isolation.

I had help, which is one major ‘theme-reason’ for changing BoomerPdx: “From Me Generation To We Generation.”

Pundits, experts, and assorted Boomer morons call every younger generation, “SOFT.”

What they actually mean is they haven’t learned enough about the younger generations to understand the tests and challenges they face everyday, one of which is crusty old bastards calling them soft.

We know more and more about the older generations just like older generations knew more about certain things. Does anyone remember Latin class?

Trying to bring people together isn’t some grandstanding, look at me moment of self-adulation. When it is it sort of ruins it for everyone else.

Don’t be that person.

Instead, why not look at your social circle from outside the box for role modeling?