Aspiration and Mentoring: The Child's Wonder

“Childhood did not speak out, but it did possess; manhood does speak out, but it is missing something.” Max Kommerell (quoted by D.F. Krell in Death of Empedocles; p. 278.)


From this quote we muse on the theme of aspiration. What a strange thing aspiration is. Here is a longing and a yearning that burns so forcefully as to take command of one’s life, and yet it can promise no assured outcome, can announce no assured goal, and yields only the urge to sustain itself, a life of aspiring.


Sources of Aspiration

That is why I find this quote so intriguing. Looking at aspiration from this perspective we can think of aspiration as flowing from exactly this difference between the child and the adult. Aspiration we can say, has three sources: childhood and family dynamics; genetic formations of the psyche; and adult trauma. None of these factors necessarily give rise to the inception of aspiration. Instead, aspiration arises when a certain attitude and orientation toward those events is taken up. This is an attitude, of course that sees in these circumstances not reasons for giving up or excuses that justify self-justifying abuses, but opportunity; then this attitude ushers to the forefront a great wealth of energy to engage those opportunities.


Whence the individuality and uniqueness of one’s aspirations, however? That is where this quote strikes me as most telling. As a child grows, what was once a fluid and open psyche, full of wonder, concentrates into an ego, dominated by customs and rules. This concentrating of the child’s psyche can be thought of as a “contraction.” The great and flowing expanse of the child’s psyche contracts into a “smaller” but more capable “mind,” constructed of concepts, categories directed toward social and professional skills, moral actions and specified ambitions. The ego of the adult thus leaves behind a vacated “space.” Where once there was a realm filled with energy and activity, there remains only dust, ash and remnants of now diminished energy.


For most, that realm is so diminished that it exerts no force at all on the dominating adult psyche; however, for some, the dust is kept in circulation by a reserve of energy that does not so easily dissipate. So, for these people, there remains in effect an “aural” realm that surrounds the functioning ego (and super-ego) that still exerts a pull and affects the functionally focused ego state of the adult. This aural realm still comprises and emits the feel that wonder once elicited, the naïve, dynamic, fanciful and dramatic ways it seemed the world worked, and also reprises the sense of powers of one’s living that cannot not be daunted by alleged impossibility.


Aspiration arises when this aura is allowed some leeway to affect the adult, making transformation possible and even desirable. When the aura is allowed such sway, all the events that promote aspiration take shape. One’s biography of a troubled or challenging childhood (and difficult parental influences) can become a story of the simple joys of daydreams, wanderings, experimenting excursions and burgeoning interests. One’s supposed weaknesses and confusions and difficulties at resolving seemingly impenetrable ambiguities can become gateways to one’s creative powers. Traumas have a way of loosening the grip of generalized convention and send a person into a deep self-examination for different sources of strength, into a resolute search for new pathways.


The Mentoring Moment


Here’s where mentoring comes in. The aspiring adult feels the pull of a great conflict. On the one hand, lurking in this person’s being a call to something more expansive and more encompassing in his or her life. Yet, as an adult, this person is no longer amenable to the naively open wonder of the child, and instead demands competence and effectiveness in the functioning social, economic and historical world. The conflict stops movement in both directions: no longing, but no advancing of competence either. The person is stuck, in a quandary. To leave the aspiration behind seems to be a deep personal betrayal; but to act naively and precipitously seems irresponsible, if not down right idiotic.


The mentor forms a bridge between the two demands so that a person can commit to aspiration in a way that is both competent and effective. How does the mentor do this? Not by offering advice, counsel or coaching. The mentor listens. The mentor takes the time to hear the yearnings that call out from that aura and validate them for the mentee. Then the mentor helps the mentee to envision a way of living that can viably answer the call. The mentor does not help the mentee form a career path or consolidate skills that will be necessary. The mentor does not dispense “life advice.”


Instead, by listening, in a lively and engaged silence, the mentor helps the mentee appreciate the role and way, the shape of a life that once again embraces that aura, now being heard as the adult’s aspiration. Only the aspirations of the mentee’s own voice are heard, and so, for once, that fragile and barely alive aural realm can have its way.


Note, it is not “strengths” and talents that are emphasized by the mentor. Paradoxically, those very places, ways and states that are often decried as weaknesses or distractions from attaining one’s goals and ambitions become the places where aspiration can take hold. In the mentor’s eyes, it is exactly the pulsing aspirations from this great aural realm that has not allowed the adult psyche to harden into imperatives. This still beating pulse from the enlivening aura has stemmed the "mind's" progressive hardening; the welter of energies that flow in the mentee’s life still can have some affect.


These may cause confusion and make for a person's "weaknesses," but peel away the crust of the ego's hard shell, and the mentors finds aspiration's faint voice straining to be heard. What in the eyes of the society at large can appear as “weaknesses,” as faults that prevent “success” can, when channeled into a vision of aspiration, become a vast field of deep energies that offer vitality, if not validity to one’s decisions.


The Companion to Aspiration’s Call


Aspiration thus responds to a call that is at once mystifying and unsettling, and also irrepressible and irresistible. It cannot be denied because it emanates from one’s own decisions. It is not the “shadow” or “dark side” of one’s decisions that so speaks. It is instead, the affirming power that lingers in the wake of abandoned wonder. It is not even the “light” of a revelation or insight or realization of meaning or mandate. Instead it is a voice, random tones that instigate longing in the most specific and yet obscure of ways. Aspiration has to respond to what no longer speaks in an intelligible language, but what only can be answered by setting out on a lifeway, setting into motion a commitment to being a person who has a calling, after all.


The mentor is the companion to this commitment as it is forming. The result of the mentoring engagement is commitment. The mentor supplies a gaze, not quite a language, in which the new ways demanded by the call gather together into an intelligible and sustainable way. It is as much the silence of the mentor, emulating the voice of aspiration itself, which is offered. That is, the mentee once again takes possession of a great sense of the spirit of aspiration and wonder. Together, mentor and mentee bring out a person of aspiration, one who speaks out, possesses and competently brings forth a vision of a more expansive and more encompassing human endeavor.