How Storytelling Helps Us Raise Men with Paul Kix

if we as men spend our entire time like I'm a tough guy I'm this I'm that if all you do is project that image man you are brittle right like you will yeah there is nothing you can withstand if you're constantly tense today on Raising Men I'm joined by Paul Kicks

he's a journalist a storyteller he's the author of you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live Paul's work has taken him deep into the heart of what drives people especially in extreme moments and some of those same things show up in fatherhood and in raising men Paul thank you so much for joining us it is just an absolute pleasure to have you it's likewise likewise

my friend thank you uh now your career has revolved around uncovering deep human stories how has being a storyteller shaped the way that you see fatherhood and the narrative that you pass on to your sons oh man that's such a great question uh I think probably oh wow I don't even want to be flipping with it let me think that through so um alright probably the best way to answer that is to say that I think a lot now about raising the boys not just with I guess what you would say

the traditional traits of masculinity you know strength boldness assertiveness but also I guess you could say for for a whole more holistic approach like make sure that they do so with kindness as well make sure that they realize that um they realize that actually what it means to be a real man is to lead a household yes but then also be kind enough to to everybody who lives in that household and frankly like I try to practice what I preach you know but it's not I

I sometimes find short I fall short like there are times where I'm yelling at the boys or our daughter or you know like I can be short with my wife and I think it's like I think it's something that I'll probably myself how to be a father is something I'll probably have to continue to practice until I'm yeah until they're well until until they're their own fathers right until my until my daughter is absolutely yeah I I uh I I recognize that in myself I did the same thing and part of that jury is

I mean obviously ideally we would never make any mistakes and we would never snap at our kids or at our wives

or something like that but it's just as important in those those moments are an opportunity to model the right repair behavior too yeah and and so yeah I think it's kind of important to have some Grace about well okay fine we all fall short but you know this is what we do when that happens yeah exactly like my wife came to me last week and was basically like my mother in law she has dementia and she's lived with us for about 10 years she's had the condition for the

condition has been pronounced for about the last two and she came to me and she was just like I need you to be more of a rock than you have been and what she meant in that moment was I need you to sort of like see me extend the sort of kindness that you know you used to do all the time to me uh cause I was concerned slash consumed with my own career you know our kids are all teenagers now and and there's a lot of activities that are constantly going on my days seem sort of busier than ever yeah

I'd sort of forgotten about her and that mix and so it's just been like a a conscious effort the last week or so to be like okay here I am what do you need um let's take a moment like check in with you you know and by the way like doing that you know she said to me I don't know that there have been times where I don't want to bring my own problems to you because I'm I see like you know concerns you have about work or concerns with the kids or whatever

and it's like why should I add one more thing and that honestly man like that was even worse because it's like oh my God like if you feel that you can't come to me then then this isn't like this I'm not doing my job right

so there is something fundamentally broken I mean that that is the the wing is off the plane at that moment yeah so then it's then it's a question of okay well it's actually I feel better I feel in some sense rejuvenated if I know that you can come to me right so whatever whatever concern you think I have which is she's a we've been together more than 20 years she can read me quite well yeah um just know that like if you come to me I can pivot from that uh and you know like I I so OK

so like what does it mean to be a modern man my dad my grandfather they were uh farmers they grew up in Iowa they rent the I'm the fifth I'm the sixth gen well that was 1 2 3 4 5 I'm the fifth generation uh farmer son of a farmer and I did not farm but everybody before me did yeah and so the men that I'm familiar with are guys who you know fix everything before them don't say a whole lot are are reserved and strong and I thought that that would be the way to lead my life

and to a certain extent it is right like for a long time I was in corporate media and I would always when I was used to bitch about where I worked my dad would be like I literally don't know how to help you here because like I've been haha right so he's like I don't know what it means to have all these this upper management I was at ESPN for a long time so it's like yeah you know just the the layers and layers between ESPN and Disney of management and navigating that anyway the upshot is

I've been on my own now for the past 5 years and a certain respect like what I saw as a kid was very helpful for me to like you know figure out how to do things on my own now at the same time my dad never saw a therapist you know I see a therapist I see it as almost like a physical check in right like why not talk to somebody about what's going on in my life um I think that's very healthy you know uh so something that would have been verboten uh in my certainly in my grandfather

I don't even think it was around right like 70 years ago right they didn't really exist right yeah yeah um and certainly like it you know my dad would have never done that but I talk with my dad about like what my therapist has told me and it's been incredibly helpful you know um so that's just it's just a I guess that's what I mean you know it's it's just a willingness to say okay where can I acknowledge vulnerability where can I acknowledge my own weakness

how by acknowledging that vulnerability or weakness can you sort of accept it which is it itself turns it into its own form of strength right cause you come to understand yourself better yeah so that's that's how I try to live my life these days and that's how I try to that's what I try to tell the boys too you know in addition to like trying to get them to come to my Saturday morning boxing class which I go to which is awesome right but like it's there's just it's just the Yin and Yang of

of life and and and from that change from boyhood to manhood yeah it's you know um one of the metaphors that that I like to use is who's the stronger boxer the guy who has an impenetrable block or the guy who doesn't have any block at all he doesn't even need it because you can just literally wail on the guy and it doesn't affect him yeah you know and that's the difference between putting all those walls up and and being vulnerable yeah

and they so so one of the I've seen a therapist off and on now for about six or seven years one of the things that he said that really resonated this is years ago is he goes you want the tactile strength of bridges and his own father was some sort of engineer I wanna say a civil engineer which is where he would have Learned about this do you know much about bridges Shawn like how they're actually no restricted OK so okay I didn't know this either until my therapist and I

I don't know actually I never fact checked this I just took his word at it so right if any engineer I think I'm sure people will chime in yeah I'll be like actually that's not quite so he's like imagine he's like imagine the Brooklyn Bridge right and I said OK I've been across it many times he's like OK what do you think that bridge is made of and is it made of just you know uh absolute like tiled in metal where you cannot turn a screw another inch or when you look at a bridge

and if you take an area or see me a side view of it as if as if from a drone were approaching it he goes if you look at it closely what you actually see is the bridge moving a little bit yeah which looks almost scary right but he's like that's actually intentional cause it's it's it's called you know it's it needs to have a little bit of flexibility without that flexibility uh what would happen is the the construction of it would ultimately just corrode it would collapse beneath itself

because you're constantly it's constantly so tense so it's that what he called the tensile strength of of bridges is to actually make sure there's a little bit of fallability built in yeah and it's so in other words like to extend the metaphor a little bit of vulnerability yeah and I just think that's so true like if if we as men spend our entire time like I'm a tough guy I'm this I'm that if all you do is project that image man you are brittle right

like you will there is nothing you can withstand if you're constantly tense but if you allow yourself to accept basically life and all your all the entire emotional range that comes with life I think I'll probably in your better spot and I don't want a man I hope that doesn't sound preachy because it's not as if I always knew this in fact again like fatherhood I would argue I'm still learning this day after day but it's something I've come to learn you know somewhat now yeah

I I think that that absolutely ring that absolutely rings true for me as well and it's like part of the definition of masculinity is being a protector yeah and the almost trivial version of being a protector is being a tough guy yeah right being willing to get in people's faces being strong you know I can I can beat anybody up all of that stuff and yeah I mean sometimes that's what's necessary in order to be a protector that's certainly what was necessary 30,000 years ago to be a protector sure

but in our modern world being a protector is about much more than that and in fact often times it's about not being that at all because if you're demonstrating this really tough facade to your to your boy and that's what you're modeling to them and that's what they think they need to do in order to make their way in the world and a lot of ways the world is not going to be conducive to that especially now and you're gonna I'm not protecting your kid yeah

I also think what you're doing if you constantly project that image that you run into conflict with people who are doing the exact same thing right you kind of attract it you attract that defensiveness yes uh and it just I don't know I I I don't wanna sound like old man shouting at clouds but when I see like when I go to the gym and I can see the younger guys who are you know teenagers or and I was probably this way too like when I was a teenager in my 20s and I can see the guys where it's like

it's all I'm the alpha through here right yeah and you can almost see man there's something that is probably broken inside of you for you to project it like that cause there isn't necessarily like a quiet easy confidence it's something that it's just it's performative it's posturing yeah and they don't even really understand how silly they look to everyone else I I used to have this trainer uh back when I lived in Dallas and and the trainer he owned this this uh kind of fancy gym in North Dallas

and he was training me one time and there were a couple guys in the gym who were who were who were doing that kind of making the performative noises and and and stuff and he told me this story about he used to train this uh this old guy this 74 year old guy but the guy was ripped and these when he first opened the gym there were these muscle heads that that were there and they were doing that making a ton of noise and they were um they were doing chest presses with bar

with dumbbells and you know hundred and ten pound dumbbells and just like no I'm pushing it up there and then dropping the weights and you know you're not supposed to drop the weights so so my trainer he takes this 74 year old man over to the bench where they are and he's very soft spoken guy very built and he says do you mind if we work in here and of course the guys are like yeah yeah no problem and you know here they have this 74 year old man who's now sitting down the bench

he picks up these hundred and ten pound uh dumbbells and proceeds to do a set of 10 chest presses using these exact same dumbbells and then sets them down very gently on the ground and then my trainer just goes just nods at him and walks away that is masculinity to me that is that's so good like I I love the NFL well uh I have actually a a a love hate relationship with the NFL cause I love to watch the NFL um and I also see like the CTE and I'm like oh god how many guys are gonna

when I watch Red Zone I'm like how many of these guys are gonna end up in 10 years you know like unable to move but what I tell my own boys is like what I remember from my youth do you remember this what what Barry Sanders would do every time he'd score a touchdown I don't know he just hand the ball to the ref why because it was expected like Barry of course he's got Barry Sanders is basically like of course I'm gonna score a touchdown why should I celebrate that yeah oh

that is so powerful I absolutely that's like I love it it was like the ultimate flex here you go I'm gonna go back to sidelines now yeah we we talked a little bit about your um your journalism your journalism career and and ESPN stuff like that

you know one of the things I just absolutely admire about you is um it seems to me and you can correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me you looked around and realized that journalism was collapsing yeah and and I can just imagine what you were going through and just like I gotta figure something out here and you reinvented yourself and you reinvented yourself essentially just by putting your craft out there and inviting the world to comment on it and and and experience it

and experience the world through your eyes and that gave rise in my view to some really really amazing storytelling what oh thank you what what did that season in your life and how did you think about that and how what did that teach you about courage and and failure and resilience and and modeling that for your kids well so I got laid off from ESPN when I was 40 I'm 44 now about to turn 45 and so what I could tell you is these I Learned far more about myself

the last five years than I did in the first forty yeah far more myself and like one of the first things you learn or I Learned uh okay so let me sort of set up the mind that like what what my wife and I were thinking we it wasn't it wasn't hard to see that the magazine style the magazine journalism I loved that I grew up adoring that I thought I would do for quite a while like come 20 2010 2012 certainly by like 2015 I was like I don't know so sure how much longer this is gonna be around

so I start to pivot at that point just thinking about like what else could I do and I thought well if I stay in corporate media I'm just gonna basically be like jumping from you know um thawing iceberg to thawing iceberg right um and I don't know how much longer I'm gonna keep myself from above water if I do that yeah but maybe if I try to go out on my own I'll be on a little bit like better Terra firma and so what I began to think about like was what what what would that look like

so I put I began to put in place what I really started to do is put myself through my own MBA like okay well what does it mean to like go out on your own and and and what I Learned and I would say this to anybody this isn't just relative to the creative types though I would say this is particularly true to to creative types you can take your existing skill set and figure out the ways in which it's applicable to the marketplace so I had for instance what what did that mean for me well um

it meant starting a newsletter first off just so people would start to know who I am and at first it was gonna be in promotion of my first book which was called The Sabbath Tour and I quickly realized that like like if if I if I just promote the book week after week nobody wants to read that nobody wants to tune in for the commercials yeah nobody wants that so then so then like around like week 3 I pivot to well maybe I could sort of like tell them what I had Learned

because I I had not only by that point been like a writer and editor but I had Learned from I had the good fortune be published in The New Yorker and Esquire and my my my agent was the former editor in chief of Esquire magazine David Granger who in the magazine world is like an absolute giant like he's on the Mount Rushmore of of giants in that field and so what I basically started to do in the newsletter was like okay well just like here's I was I was approaching for is like

here's what I've Learned right and it's just like little hints and tips and if you're doing this consider that like here's how you do interviews here's how you can consider writing an opening like here's how you consider can doing a structure and it started to you know I don't want to say take off because I don't have like hundreds of thousands of of subscribers but there is like a dedicated audience like there's people when I looked even today at you know most most of the time you'll get a um

you'll get an open I'm on substack now but like and it doesn't really matter what platform you're on you'll get like an open rate of something like 20 to 40% mine has consistently been above like 50% for years and it's again it's not a massive audience but it's just like the people who come to it like really do want to know this stuff and they want and they check in week after week so that was helpful and then from there I was like okay well that's cool

and then like I started to get emails from people like wait can you go deeper on this subject or that subject and so that created that LED me to think well what if I actually created like a digital course and so by the time I get laid off I'm like okay well what if I started this digital course and this course is called the storytelling you and we're I actually have to revamp it a little bit now um because it's like the idea of just like doing stuff for long

form journalism like that is itself like I gotta gear it more toward now like entrepreneurship and maybe like um book writing but be that as it may like it it launched it and I had cohorts and you were one of them you you took it at one point that's that's great thank you and but it was just basically like here's how to here's how to do the things that I've Learned right and then it's like okay how else can I be helpful to people um and I was like well I've I have published uh two books uh uh

like a couple of years ago and people were like how do you write a book proposal and so I started to help people with that and then because I had experience like I I was both writing my own books and then helping to shape other books um you know like the memoirs of like famous people and what not and couple of them have done really well you know on the times best seller list and so now it's like okay well I can help other people do that I guess my point here is that I never thought to myself

well actually I I never thought to myself okay

I'm gonna just like completely reinvent myself I thought how can I take my existing skill set and basically figure out like are there things that people would want you know like are there things that people desire are do I know something that's just maybe a little bit more advanced than what somebody else knows and if so would they pay for the privilege of learning more about that or me helping them directly with that right and I still like my my primary focus is still writing books

I've had a little bit of good fortune with Hollywood so now I also oscillate between writing books and like production and and uh and screenplays and whatnot but when I'm not doing that like the majority of my time these days is is spent either trying to consult people in a group setting like what the storytelling you is or consult people one on one with like books and you know I'm not gonna say it's easy but oh my god like that transition there was Sean like there were some times

especially right around 2020 2021 when it was really scary cause I didn't I never done this before it took so it took so much to figure out how can I how can I get past my own fear frankly like honestly I still deal with that I have this tendency to what if and and just and just throw out endless contingencies right um endless possibilities and the what ifs can go two ways the what ifs can go wow what if this really goes right and sometimes I'm on this high I'm like wow this could lead to

this could lead to this and other times like if if I get a in a bad run or like a couple of deals don't go the way I'm hoping they will couple of you know arrangements with clients or whatever or they back out or whatever um then I can start to catastrophize and even today five years later I'm like okay is that real or is that just a fear speaking so you know this is I'm sorry a little bit of a soliloquy but but like when you asked you know what is it like and I said well

I've Learned far more about myself than anything else these last five years I've really Learned what it means like to stare down fear and even leave aside that like look deep within myself and say what is it that is what is where is that emotion coming from what is what is motivating that emotion is it real can I counter that emotion if so how journaling prayer meditation sometimes a session with my therapist right like whatever the case may be and that's like

I think I've heard this from other entrepreneurs and frankly people who are more successful than me like you know um make more money than I do though no money shouldn't be the only marker and they say that it's a good way to keep score it's at least a number yeah um but what they talk about is something that I think is really true in the end like it isn't so much about creating the business as it is creating the sort of true self right like creating the thing that's like

able to stare past that thing that stare that really scares you and what's on the other side of that and what's it like to live out in that no man's land and you know how do you begin to navigate out there I I really I've for all of its tribulations and there have been quite a few the past you know five years there have been a lot there's been success too and I I've just really come to enjoy it I get why my dad has been a farmer for you know like 50+ years professionally right right yeah it

it's almost like you took you turned a career in in journalism into a career in authenticity

oh thank you man that's that's kind yeah yeah I I think I mean I I think if part of the reason you get such a a a great open rate on your newsletter is and I'm I'm a member I I read your newsletter and that's what it drips with authenticity you're just sharing your journey and it's you're the character and it is it is you have a craft a storytelling craft very good and you're telling your own story in that newsletter and it's really powerful and it's fun to watch and it's and you get good

information out of it too you can apply it to your own life wow I yeah I could see how I could do that too and it's yeah it's really fun it's it's it's really great it's a really great read well thank you if I could just say like there's something applicable here to anybody else who's listening and thinking about how do I wanna try to do something I think I'm a big fan of chronicling kind of your point Sean like you chronicle your own life and if you have the courage to put that on the page

not just the triumphs because honestly like like I've the the times that I've gotten far more responses from readers has been like the times where like I'm like I'm in a I don't I'm in a bad I'm in a sort of an uncertain spot right now and I'll put that in the newsletter right and I'll be like this is what's holding me up this week right and then the emails that those weeks are they've they're they're just like far more voluminous and that's amazing like yeah yeah yeah

and I'll bet you're really supportive yeah exactly and I do I think it's because like people want to come back the idea of authenticity it's so easy to say yeah I I had the good fortune of one of the story that I wrote this year a couple years ago was made into a movie this year and I talked about that in the newsletter and people were like oh that's great but then like when I also said like two weeks later you know what it hasn't like I'm the same guy

I thought it was gonna make me better and now I'm like oh shit like I'm the same guy with the same problems which I also wrote about like again somewhere between 2 weeks to 1 month later like that email got way more responses than I'm making this awesome movie yeah there is a lesson there yeah to close that thought out I think that it's because we are drawn far more to each other's flaws than we are our best features I think like when somebody actually says this is who I am warts and all

it just sounds true because the easiest thing to say is I did this thing and it's awesome right um it's much harder to say and I see and I don't even want it to sound self congratulatory but the thing I've Learned in like I when I've been interviewing others what I'm always trying to get to is what my good friend right Thompson who I who I used to work with at ESPN he calls the gripe and the gripe is the moment when like he in he's interviewed a lot of like very success

he's done like stories on Michael Jordan right but the gripe is okay yeah you're great but like what's the thing that's actually bothering you right now yeah and the gripe can be something external it can be something internal but once you get to the gripe then it starts to become real because now you're relating to somebody else on like an individual level where the pain like everybody feels pain everybody feels vulnerability in some way and so that's the thing that you wanna try to relay

as a storyteller and again like whenever possible part of the reason I don't shy away from that is because I know like I know the gripe works right so if I'm gonna if I'm gonna relay my own gripe in the in the in the additions of the newsletter then you know I know that like people probably relate to it yeah and we have this social media culture that is the opposite of that like it's all about showing your world in a way that is perfect and I guess that's popular too for a different reason

but but the authenticity is way more powerful yeah I think so yeah now you and your wife are raising interracial sons

in a world that I think tries to weaponize identity somewhat yeah um how do you manage that and I mean you know how do you think about that as a father and how do you make how do you keep your sons from becoming a victim of that well that's a great question I mean they have a lot of questions these days they're 14 the boys in particular and our daughter's 16 the boys are 14 so we've always told them Sonia's LED the charge here that you are biracial yes

but America is gonna very likely see you as black because they're going to see you as something that is other than white it's yeah not white is the is the yeah yeah and so like it's the it's the you know it's almost the antebellum era one drop rule right like one drop of black means you're black those there's some that thinking certainly not those actions but that thinking still exists like oh that's that guy's you know not so I don't I mean the kids can identify themselves however we want to

that's what I try to tell them but like I we've also stressed to them you know America's gonna see you as not white and you know you know I think in a like 10 maybe 15 years America will be a a not white majority I don't I'd have to look at the census data to to verify that but it's coming but they're gonna very yeah they're gonna very quickly feel maybe even less uh other than they do right now um what I would say that's kind of remarkable is so the identity thing has had its ebbs and flows

like we're married in Dallas in 2007 a former Jim Crow state nobody cares like when we were dating this is you know the Deep South this is Texas nobody cares who we are yeah now when we move from uh Dallas to Boston especially as we're going through like some parts of rural Tennessee and we I remember one day in particular where we were gonna stop to go get a burger we left within like 30 seconds of walking in cause it was just obvious the stares we were getting

that we were not welcome there wow so like there's been these but also like when we move out to Boston we're going through we're like oh we we go and we look at a place in South Boston um to rent and the real estate agent who's helping us she's like I actually wouldn't if I were you if I were you too I wouldn't rent here which is shocking because there was nobody in Dallas who said you know you can't live in any neighborhood but in but in Liberal most Boston

there were still it was still sort of this these con these enclaves where it was you know tribal and um yeah I so we dealt with that but like really like like oh gosh it's 2025 now so like 2017 after Trump's elected the first time there was definitely this divide between are you on the side of I I should say I'm just gonna state my identity like my political identity like I'm a moderate Liberal to sort of classic Liberal and there was this push among the left

like how are you going to identify yourself and we at first were like we're just gonna sort of hold the same values that we've always had but we saw how identity began to take more and more come more and more the fore and people that were to the left of us suddenly began to make identity like a core sort of feature to the point where it became its own segregation and that's where we didn't really like it you know like yeah um you would see I have to I don't remember exact I think it was Oberlin

maybe it was NYU who had segregated uh dining areas right in their cafeterias this is in like 20 2017 yeah yep um after George Floyd is killed and there's a whole George Floyd story that ties in with my own and Sonia's but after George Floyd is killed this white woman approaches me like of the progressive left and she's like I just don't know how you can raise black sons right now not meaning like like she's literally saying I don't know how you as a white man can raise your own sons

which I had to walk it was a dinner party and I had to literally like walk out of the room for because I was about to explode at her right so um so that was a thing but then also it has honestly like I felt that that sort of the peak woke era I feel like we're past it and I feel that there's I feel that there's the I don't see I don't feel myself and I don't think Sony does either such an emphasis on race and identity as we saw you know five years ago but you know

I wrote you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live for the kids in large measure because I wanted them to see that like there are people who look like you who dealt with situations that are far worse than your own and that segregation that they faced like you're facing a form of it today either from you know all right form like the the bullshit of like Nick Fuentes and all those people on the the edge lords on the rights like that's ridiculous and toxic

and I really hope that the conservatives really get rid of that cause I hope there's no home for that in American discourse but if there is then like my God what does that say about America but in any case like if that's if that actually is gonna run its course in the same way that wokeness has run its course on the left I feel I'm hopeful that in the future we can come to something that resembles kind of like the way that Sonny and I were again in the Deep South in like 2004

2005 through like 2015 which is just like nobody really cared you know like it was just kind of like you are who you are yeah it was almost like and I I was in Dallas around that same time and it felt like Dallas was aware of its identity as a former slave state as part of the Jim Crow South and all of that and celebrated opportunities to demonstrate that that isn't the case anymore yeah and that was been nice to get back to that yeah yeah I mean like the Dallas that I knew 20 years ago

was the home of an evangelical pastor like TD Jakes I think right after we moved from Dallas it had its first I know it had its first um uh Hispanic woman become the sheriff while we were still there wow and then I think it had its first black police chief I think right after anyway my point is that like to your point Shawn it it was fully aware of its past and seemed to try to move past that and you know it's honestly like there are still some Liberal enclaves where

at least that we see now that we live in the northeast where it's kind of still a little bit stifling and annoying but even then like on the whole it's not the same 2025 is not the same place as it was in 2020 yeah I totally agree with you there

okay so I wanna share a quick story about something that happened last week with my son and I wanna get your feeling about it cause I didn't man I did not know how to deal with it and uh so I'll share the story and then I wanna I wanna know what you think and then I'll tell you what I actually did OK um our school the my my son's school is it's a great school it's really close I can walk him to school it's great and they do this fundraiser thing and there's a private company that comes in

and it does this fundraiser and I actually don't know what percentage of the funds they take but I doubt it's small yeah and you know you're you're supposed to sponsor them on a per lap basis and if you sponsor them at $3 a lap then then they get this prize and if it's $2 a lap it's this prize and and they're supposed to raise money this way and it turns they create it turned into this freaking competition between the kids about who can basically convince their parents to sponsor them enough and

or shame their parents into sponsoring them enough and the whole thing was so disgusting to me that my wife and I decided that we just weren't gonna participate and I mean we've given money to the school we've donated money to school directly to school you want me to donate money to school I'll do that but I'm not gonna participate in this little charade and so this is a principal stand that we decided to take and my son came home last Thursday and he was very upset and he was saying to me

he was trying to convince me that it's not too late you know they ran the race that day and it's not too late you can still sponsor and all of this stuff it's only $3 and I said to him I said listen it's not $3 it's $3 a lap lake um how many laps did you run I ran 46 laps OK what's three times 46 and he told me and I said that's how much money you're asking me to sponsor you for and that's fine but the school doesn't even get all that money and I'm opposed to it and he got really

really upset and he says I'm so sorry and he ran out of the room screaming and then I I went out or crying and I went over to him and I said I sat him down and he said to me I go what why is this so important to you buddy yeah and he goes well the other kids in the class they all got prizes and they're kind of bullying me and they're making fun of me for not having a prize and I got absolutely livid and I don't I don't get that mad very often but I was really mad at this point

and of course I'm not mad at him I'm mad at the school and and I'm sort of mad at myself also because this my principal stance caused my kid to have to endure this bullshit yeah and uh so that's the that's the preamble what would you do what how would you think about that what would you do or what would you advise me to do in that circumstance

oh um well what immediately springs to my mind is a somewhat similar situation I was on our town's Little League board in large measure because there were some dads and maybe you've run into them Sean who took Little League very seriously oh yeah right uh and it's pretty easy to see why right cause they see their own success and failure in their son's eyes yeah uh and so I'm on that board and trying to act as almost like a counter agent and one day the head of the board is like okay

we're gonna do our raffle ticket and we want to raise this much money now the board that that literally like the league itself is actually separate from the town which I grew up in where like the town was kind of like the town and the school was kind of like one in the same with respect to sort of the extracurricular sports that they'd have so that was its first disconnect but I'm like okay whatever like our our town's bigger than the one in which I grew up so that's fine yeah um

but then I got a chance in the subsequent board meeting to say okay well they're like we want to raise $15,000 because we have to you know keep the we have to keep the upkeep to the fields we've got all this offseason stuff and I'm like at first I was like okay that makes sense we're gonna do this raffle and it's the same sort of thing as what you're describing kids having to go around it's just basically like you know you gotta spend 20 bucks here and you're trying to

each kid is trying to raise something like 300 400 bucks and I'm like okay that's you know it's whatever right that's kind of a lot but whatever um'cause you're already you're already you know if your kid plays baseball those baseball bats themselves even if the kids like in third grade those baseball bats run for like 300 bucks now it's ridiculous right yeah and then you're you're paying for the leagues and everything it's crazy there's league fees and now there's all this raffle stuff

and so it's just like for something where it's just supposed to be fun now you're dropping maybe 15 maybe two grand you know just and I have two kids too so you know always double the expense anyway I'm like okay I'm begrudgingly gonna go along with the raffle right until I find out that the league itself has a separate savings account that has something like 80 grand in it and they're just letting the money sit there and grow and I'm like we're not some sort of endowment

like we don't what are we what is this for if we're not like spending that money down like why do we even need to do a raffle like if the and I asked the I asked some I asked a guy I knew so how much is the upkeep for the field in the offseason he's like uh we could probably do it for like 5,000 I'm like well why are we why are we doing this to the parents we're we're looking to raise somewhere between again like 10 to 20 thousand dollars cumulatively like well

we just want to make sure we have enough I'm like we have enough right um and so I didn't I didn't have the boys participate even though I was one of the coaches yeah which set off its own sort of like between so now there's a riff between me and the other dads which had existed anyway because I like refused to run that line of I'm gonna make sure he starts and all this all this other stuff right um but now there's the other thing that oh you know

kicks his he's stuck up he does or whatever it is right he's not even gonna participate in the raffle and I and I took this stand and sort of was an I've ostracized a little bit from the league but the boys they had a rough go too they're like how come you know their own team is like how they're bringing the raffle sales and boys don't have any and they're like yeah we and I just I just said to the other kids I'm like yeah we chose not to do it this year

um but I know that there was a little bit of sniping that the boys had to deal with separately and they came to me like why did we do this like why did you have to take this principal stand yeah and honestly I didn't have a very good answer aside from I think it's stupid for them to do that even though I knew that like it was something that now they would have to endure yeah um socially right yeah and it wasn't there were prizes there were other kids on other teams and

and some of their friends on other teams and some of their some of their teammates on our own team like the top prize was like an iPad or something right for like selling the most raffles right so like wow it's a it's a it's it's not it's not like here's a pair of here's a wristband Timmy it's you know here's a brand new iPad so which was it so I felt even more principled in my opposition after that absolutely wait that's a thousand dollar prize give me a break so I how would I advise you oh

I still wonder today if I did the right thing what I can tell you is 4+ years later in ways large and small my boys I hope and cause I see this in them they seem to have a better bullshit detector than other kids and they seem to realize that oh there are times when like some of this stuff is just stupid peer pressure stuff and I don't need to do that if I don't wanna do it and they can take a stand against it now of course they're still teenagers

so like it's super hard to be outside a peer group and I'm gonna take a principal stand here you know I'm just saying that I think that in ways large and small like that choice then and a few other signing I've made has sort of set an example for you know like sometimes the crowd is wrong and sometimes you should be in opposition to that crowd and you know you gotta kind of state why it's wrong and stick by what what you believe even if there are consequences for it yeah

I don't know is that helpful in any way

yeah yeah no I think that's that's issue cause you and I ended up doing the same thing and I so at that that night my my wife had an event early in the evening and I had an event later and we were kind of doing a handoff from the kids and just meeting uh um uh on the go and it was actually in our cars and I rolled down my window and she rolled down her window and I was still very animated about this at this time and I said to her I said this thing just happened lake told me this um

and and this is what happened and I got I got really really upset um and I want you to go up there and talk to him about it and and you know hear hear what he has to say um I wish I had the time to do it but here's I don't want him to go to school tomorrow I I'll take him to Legoland or something I'll take the day off of work and I'll take him to Legoland and um and next year when this event comes around again we'll take him out for the whole week I don't feel like he should have to endure

bullying or even what he perceives is bullying um for my principal stance and so we just won't go to school while this is going on and everyone else can have it and and but I'm not taking him I'm not gonna make him endure it and I'm gonna I'm gonna take him out of school and he and I ended up uh going uh we got a little bit of a late start to the day but we went to Legoland got there around 11:00am and spent the day there and it ended up being just this magical day

between just him and me and it was great and he didn't have to go through that stuff and we had a we had a talk about um I said that I felt like this fundraising thing was a scam and we don't participate in scams and it's a gray area and some people feel that way and some people don't but this is the way we feel about it and I'm sorry that as a result of that decision you had to endure some hardship but that's life sometimes and I'll try to minimize it for you

yeah yeah how did he respond uh he was freaking thrilled because he didn't have to go to school he got to go to Legoland hahaha do you think it do you think the message you tried to relay resonated I don't know he's 6 years old yeah and so you know I mean it's hard to know what he absorbs I I I feel like the broad strokes are the parts that I can really try to get through now and um and I think maybe he got it yeah yeah they get more than you you think they do I think that's so true Jim Henson

said a line that I think about all the time he's like your kids will almost never pick up what you say but they will they are watching every single thing you do yes

yes that's that's exactly the deal yeah so I you know look as somebody who himself said screw you crowd like I'm like you did the right thing Sean but again maybe I'm biased here I think I did too and we'll find out I mean the we you can't just take your kid out of school in California they they frown on that and um and so you have to get an excuse for the absence and too many unexcused absences is a big problem and you know it's truancy and they'll come after you for that and it's a little it

I mean I understand the spirit in which it's intended but it also kind of creates some problems like this and um so we had to tell the school why we were keeping him out of school and were you honest with the school yes and my instinct was to just say he's out of school today we're taking a mental health day or something like that and my wife was like no we're gonna use the term bullying we're gonna say this and we're gonna we're gonna give him the principal I was like okay haha and that's

and that's what we did and uh you know they had they never responded to us and it's um we'll see what happens his uh today is literally the Monday after that and so there's no school today and there's no school tomorrow for Veterans Day and so the first time he's going to be at school again is gonna be Wednesday and I'm sure all this is gonna be died it'll be all forgotten by then and so and that's the by design yeah kids move on real fast oh yeah especially at that age you know yeah yeah

and that'll be an interesting lesson I I I might try to touch back with him and say hey listen you know remember last week the biggest thing in the world was this thing about the the prize and now nobody cares like there's a lesson in that yeah I think you're right yeah well I always like to close these discussions with uh the same question of everybody I'm gonna put you on the spot give me one principle that you admire or like to live your life by

uh on the uh on the subject of raising boys into men uh I like uh a line from Luke chapter 17 I don't remember the verse but uh Jesus says something like remember that the kingdom of god is within you and I love that because what it means to me is we are streaked with the divine and if we honor that divinity within us we allow we we lead not only our our our best life we lead out our life's purpose as somebody like Ralph Waldo Emerson would have put it but I think that that streak of divinity

that light starts to shine outward and hopefully people start to see in ways large and small oh I can do what I need to do with my life too and you know like that's that's what I hope the boys will pick up um from more than anything from from the way I've raised them you know like I have it within me to lead the life that I'm that is my purpose yeah I I think that's a relatively underappreciated aspect of Christianity that we were made in God's image

yeah and it doesn't say that we're just like God it says that we're made in his image which is by definition an imperfect image right and you know I I think the message of that is that you want to strive for that recognizing that it is the striving that is a value there as opposed to the actual attainment of it because the attainment is impossible yeah I think I think completely yeah yeah yeah I think that yeah it's it's to it's it's um if look

there are a lot of secular interpretations of that too and I think that of that line um but there was this uh but but that that has been increasingly something by which I live my own life and I don't really talk about my own Christian faith much unless people ask but yeah um but I just let it sort of be known you know like that's it's one of the that is like a guiding principle that I live by you know remember that remember that the kingdom of God is within you

that it just it just lights me up every time I think that anytime you're having a bad day anytime something's you know going good or ill just like okay how can I best respond to this moment with courage compassion everything else yeah I think that's uh that's amazing I think that's a wonderful place uh

to leave off Paul thank you so much for uh sharing your stories and and your perspective and your authenticity um I just I I love hearing about this stuff and about your journey I love reading your newsletter and uh it's just uh it's been an absolute pleasure uh to to speak with you today oh I wish you the best of luck with this with this podcast and and everything else you're doing and stay in touch for real man like I thank you so much I absolutely will you'll uh you'll definitely hear from me

uh Paul Kicks is a storyteller a journalist and just on all around Fantastic Man his newsletter about the craft of storytelling is absolutely amazing um you should definitely join it uh the link is in the show notes uh Paul again thank you so much for taking the time to join me on Raising Men awesome raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino