From boy to man
Nothing is more difficult than puberty for boys. Either your too-long arms flap down your thin, narrow body like uncontrollable polyps, or you're the only pale boy without a beard among friends who have all had their voices broken and don't have to show ID at the till when they buy a beer. And even worse - your feelings are going round in circles and your thoughts are chasing through the jungle like young chimpanzees as if there's no tomorrow. To make matters worse, you don't even know how to put what's bothering you into words, especially as your friends don't seem to be aware of your chaos.
So you're facing a difficult journey, a kind of anti-hero's journey from boy to man, and apart from you, no boy seems to have ever had a problem with it. And so you are facing this threshold like the boys from Sonogno who were sold to chimney sweeps from Milan. And that's a problem because we've simply thrown a lot of what we know about this threshold overboard, because the initiation from boy to man has taken care of itself. Early on in the peer group, in between on the internet and in the military at the latest, the boy became a man.
Indigenous peoples are quite different: the threshold between boys and men is still actively celebrated with a ceremony or initiation rite - in our modern world, this only takes place, if at all, in peer groups, stories, films and on the internet. Hardly anyone realizes what these changes are all about or that their son is becoming someone else. Sociologists fear that this is one of the reasons why we are increasingly developing into an "immature society".
From educator to mentor and friend
But it's not just the boys who are a little lost before this threshold and are already dawdling on the threshold. Their fathers also don't really understand what is happening to their son, but also to themselves. They may realize that the boys are getting stronger, eat twice as much as they used to, speak less or hardly at all and when they do, it's with this strange broken voice. Intuitively (for those who have gained access to their intuition), as a father you sense that something is going on that you should be involved in, only you know even less than when changing diapers what might be expected of you. And yes: where do you take from if not steal? Perhaps now would be the time to take a closer look at your own son and yourself. Because young men no longer need an educator, they need a mentor or older friend who is always there, who always has time for this strange and confusing time. And yes: you can learn that too, as a father. And with us, among others.
Guided initiation journey
The desire of boys for shared experiences with their fathers is great and yet so often does not take place ... time constraints, stress, work, self-realization? There are many distractions that prevent us from dealing with the essentials. And the essential here is the shared threshold, the shared initiation into new roles and a new understanding of ourselves as son-man and father-mentor.
Our invitation stands: come on an adventure with us, experience an anti-heroic journey together, get to know yourselves in a completely different way and experience the great significance of a shared experience of nature.