Nerburn - Letters to my son: a fathers wisdom on manhood, life, and love

L ETTERS
to MyS ON

Also by Kent Nerburn

Small Graces

Neither Wolf nor Dog

Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

A Haunting Reverence

Simple Truths

Edited by Kent Nerburn

Native American Wisdom

The Soul of an Indian

The Wisdom of the Great Chiefs

L ETTERS
to MyS ON

A Fathers Wisdom on
Manhood, Life, and Love

Kent Nerburn

Foreword by Richard Carlson

NEW WORLD LIBRARY
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

New World Library 14 Pamaron Way Novato, California 94949

Revised Edition Copyright 1999 by Kent Nerburn

Original Edition Copyright 1994 by Kent Nerburn

Cover design: Jason Gardner and Mary Ann Casler

Cover photo of Kent Nerburn and his father, Lloyd:

Virginia Nerburn, 1948

Text design: Jason Gardner

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, or transmitted in any form, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nerburn, Kent, 1946

Letters to my son : a fathers wisdom on manhood, life, and love / Kent Nerburn ; foreword by Richard Carlson. Rev. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57731-031-4 (alk. paper)

1. Young menConduct of life. I. Title.

BJ 1671. N 48 1999

CIP

First printing, February 1999

ISBN 1-57731-031-4

Printed in Canada on acid-free, recycled paper

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Nick, of course,
and every fathers son

We are born male.
We must learn to be men.

W E ALL NEED ADVICE growing up and facing the big stuff life gives us. We all need the voice of a parent or a good friend who has lived through joy and suffering and has thought deeply about it. Kent Nerburn is an extraordinary writer who can be that voice when we are lost and in need of guidance. Letters to My Son written for his son, Nick, but true for all of us shows us that life isnt always easy or fun but that it is always a gift to be treasured and shared in all its richness with those we meet along the way.

We live in a time when no one wants to take the responsibility to say whats right and whats wrong when no one wants to be told what to believe. Kent is that rare individual whos not afraid to be vulnerable, to stand up and speak from the heart. He shares with us what he believes, and makes us look at the hard questions, but never offers easy answers. Like a wise and gentle friend, he guides us to the truths that emerge when you approach life openly and honestly.

Letters to My Son gives us Kents wisdom and experience, in beautiful, moving writing that speaks with amazing clarity and directness to the most important issues the big stuff! we all face in trying to live life happily, compassionately, and wisely. May you hear, enjoy, and prosper!

Richard Carlson

Author of Dont Sweat the Small Stuff and
Dont Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family

T HIS IS NOT A BOOK I INTENDED TO WRITE . The world is full enough of grand moralizing and private visions. The last thing I ever intended was to risk adding my name to the long list of those involved in such endeavors.

Then, in midlife, everything changed. I was surprised with the birth of a son.

Suddenly, issues that I had wrestled with in the course of my life and questions that I had long since put to rest rose up again in the eyes of my child. I saw before me a person who would have to make his way through the tangle of life by such lights as he could find. It was, and is, incumbent upon me to guide him.

For now this is easy. His life does not extend much beyond his reach. I can take him by the hand and lead him. But before long he will have to set out on his own. Where, then, will he find the hands to guide him?

I look around and I am concerned. The world is a cacophony of contrary visions, viewpoints, and recriminations. Yeatss ominous warning that the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity seems to have come to pass. Good men everywhere realize that the world we have made is also the world we have failed, that our brightest dreams and our greatest fears lurk just over the horizon. Acutely aware of both, we stand mute, driven by our hopes, silenced by our doubts.

I can no longer afford this silence. I want my son to be a man of good heart who reaches out to the world around him with an open mind and a gentle touch. I want him to be a man of belief, but not a man of judgment. I want him to have explored his own moral landscape so that he will not unwittingly do harm to himself or others. To be such a man he needs to hear voices that speak with empathy, compassion, and realism about the issues of becoming a man.

And so I take my place among those attempting to provide such a voice.

I bring to the task such skills as I have: a love of the language; a belief in the higher visions of the human species; a complex mlange of anger, wonder, and despair at the world in which we live; years of learning, miles of travel, a love for the wisdom of all spiritual traditions, and a faith in the inexhaustible miracle of the experience of life all around us.

But above all, I bring this:

One day last week a former student of mine methodically drove his car to the end of a street, pushed the accelerator to the floor, and catapulted himself off a cliff into a lake far below. On the same day I listened to a man speaking about his journey to India to study with a woman who could read his spirit by laying her hands on the sides of his head and staring into his eyes. That evening I found myself sitting with an old drunken man on a bench outside a store talking about the pleasures of catfish.

It is my gift to be able to embrace all these people and all their truths without placing one above the other. I can enter into their beliefs and give assent to each of them and learn from each of them. And I can pass their truths along.

This may not seem like much. But I value it above all else. The lonely old neighbor with her thirty-six cats, the shining young man at the door with his handful of religious literature, the good teacher, the honest preacher, the junkie, the mother, the bum in the park who told me never to take a job where I had to wear the top button of my collar buttoned and not to mess up my life like he did I can hear all their truths and I can celebrate them.

If I can take these simple truths and elevate them beyond the anecdotal, I can offer something of value to my son and to other fathers sons. I can offer a vision of manhood that is both aware of our human condition and alive to our human potential. I can offer the distilled insights of the dreamers and the doubters, the common and the rare. And in the process, perhaps I can reveal something about manhood to those readers, both male and female, who seek a compassionate place from which to survey the vast and confusing landscape before us.