One of my admirers once told me “please don’t fuck up my life.”
The request took me aback, but I smiled with the realization of where we stood in relation to each other. He was younger that I but not more confused than I had been at his age. He looked to me to give order to his life and to put him down a path of confidence, and it was my responsibility to change his perspective to teach him to look into himself to answer questions of uncertainty.
Without a smile I gripped his shoulder, leaned forward and looked deep into his eyes telling him “Trust me. I’m not going to fuck up your life. In fact, if you’re open to it this could be the best thing that ever happened to you.”
With that touch, the eye contact, and those words, his face softened just a bit. There was still fear in his eyes by which the elimination of was our unspoken agreement.
And with that he began to tell me that he keep a very high standard of himself. I told him to start keeping a higher standard of himself.
Any degression into fear or uncertainty is a mistake and it is the responsibility of the mentor to cut these thing out at the root. To foresee them before they manifest in any way. Trust is confidence. If you trick people into believing in a false sense of confidence you are leading them off a cliff and fuck you.
Much love.
premis3 