parents and mentors

I think i did not have much role modeling as i was growing up. i am not blaming my parents. they had my younger brother to care for, and also believed that the best lessons on what i should or shouldn’t do are best left for me to learn by myself. i will not argue the merits of this approach, which was pervsive in 70′s-80′s literature. but i think there are great issues that i still fail to handle well, as a result. self-restraint being one of them. but i think on some subcononscious level, i perceived some lack of development in me, which i often sought out with others.

i think i was feeling a need in this period for more direction, and ‘transferranced’ this need into seeking and accepting mentors.

i have had quite a few mentors. people who play a role that is way above the mere subject they are teaching, or the more regular role they would normally play. my first mentor, without a doubt, was my grandfather, who introduced me to the love of natural science, music and chess. i’ve written about him a few times, and think that i learned much from him indeed. curiously, his attempts to introduce me to religion is one of the issues i completely rejected at the time. i was very much an atheist growing up . only much later in life, i began to have some kind of a spiritual side, but by then, i was mostly through with mentors..

at school i had teachers that i admired. i would never miss a chance learning from them, and even took time to go to office hours. other students thought i was just brownnosing, but of course it was nothing of the kind. i just had so many questions to ask. (oh, if only i had a math mentor...)

today, i don’t feel such a strong need for a mentor. at least not like before. but i definitely still appreciate some people who give very useful advice, and i think one of the ways i evaluate my friends is along exch

ange of knowledge.

i’m currently struggling to write a novel , where the main charachter or at least one of them, defines her goal in life as being connected to an alien, who mentored her in her youth. maybe one of the reasons i’m struggling to complete this project so much is that my relation to mentors is not fully realized yet.

i hope and pray, that as a parent i will both give my girl sufficiant guidance , but also that she will have the good luck of finding mentors, as i had.