Father and Son—A Hero's Journey (Without a Hero?)

From Boy to Man

Nothing is harder than boys going through puberty. Either your arms—which are way too long—dangle like uncontrollable tentacles from your thin, slender body, or you’re the only pale, beardless kid among friends who’ve all already gone through puberty and don’t have to show ID at the bar when they buy a beer. And even worse—your emotions are going in circles and your thoughts are racing through the jungle like young chimpanzees, as if there were no tomorrow. To make matters worse, you don’t even know how to put into words what’s on your mind, especially since your friends don’t seem to recognize this chaos of yours.

So you’re facing a difficult journey—a sort of anti-hero’s journey from boy to man—and it seems like no other boy has ever had a problem with this besides you. And so you stand at this threshold, just like the boys from Sonogno back then who were sold to chimney sweeps from Milan. And that’s a problem because we’ve simply thrown much of what we know about this threshold overboard—because the initiation from boyhood to manhood has taken care of itself. Early on in peer groups, occasionally online, and by the time they’re in the military at the latest, the boy becomes a man.

It’s completely different among indigenous peoples: there, the threshold between boys and men is still actively celebrated with a ceremony or an initiation rite—in our modern world, this takes place, if at all, only in peer groups, stories, movies, and on the internet. Hardly anyone notices what these changes mean or that their son is becoming someone different. Sociologists fear that this is one of the reasons we are increasingly turning into an “immature society.”

From Educator to Mentor and Friend

But here’s the thing: it’s not just the boys who stand somewhat lost at this threshold, already dawdling before it. Their fathers, too, don’t quite understand what’s happening to their sons—or to themselves. They may realize that the boys are getting stronger, eating twice as much as before, speaking less or hardly at all, and when they do, it’s with that strangely breaking voice. Intuitively (for those who have tapped into their intuition), they sense as fathers that something is happening right now that they should be a part of, but they know even less—than they did when changing diapers—about what might be expected of them. And yes: Where to find the answers, if not by stealing them? Perhaps now is precisely the time to engage more deeply with your own son—and with yourself as well. Because young men no longer need a teacher; they need a mentor or an older friend who’s always there, who always has time for this strange and confusing phase of life. And yes: That, too, is something you can learn as a father. And, among other places, with us.

Guided Initiation Journey

Boys have a strong desire for shared experiences with their fathers, yet so often these don’t happen… Lack of time, stress, work, self-fulfillment? There are many distractions that keep us from focusing on what really matters. And what matters here is the shared rite of passage, the shared initiation into new roles and a new understanding of oneself as a son-man and as a father-mentor.

Our invitation stands: Join us on this adventure, experience a shared anti-hero’s journey, get to know yourselves in a whole new way, and discover the profound significance of a shared experience in nature.