This is the newsletter version of Sara by the Season, where I explore what is piquing my curiosity as I try to lean into nature’s wisdom and rhythms. You can listen to me read you the newsletter by hitting play above - or you can click the little link above and to the right to play in your favorite podcast player. If you know someone who would like this sort of thing, I’d be so grateful if you would share it.
We are stereotypical Hoosiers who schedule our lives around March Madness every spring. The four of us get really competitive about our brackets, but Grant and I always end up rooting for the underdog anyway. One of my favorite underdogs in recent memory1 is Shaka Smart’s VCU team that made it to the Final Four. I love his coaching style. He now coaches for Marquette, and even though I don’t cheer for Marquette, I love watching him coach. He is always so into the game - jumping on the sideline, getting low in the defensive stance when his guys are on defense, hugging his guys when they come off the court.
We were watching Marquette play Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Sunday, and during the final timeout, Smart led his team in a breathing practice before getting back on the court. At our house, we commented on how cool that was since we do plenty of breathing practices over here. Michigan State, led by Tom Izzo who broke a white board in frustration after a timeout in the first round of the tournament, ended up winning in the closing two minutes.
In the commentary after the game, there was at least one comment on how Smart perhaps should have focused less on breathing and more on strategy, and then ESPN led with this headline the next day2:
When our oldest was younger, he had a TON of energy. He regularly got in trouble at school for not listening the first time, questioning authority, cracking jokes, and generally being a young boy. At one point at a meeting in the principal’s office, I told the principal that much of the stuff he was getting in trouble for was stuff that I would want to see in him as an adult: he didn’t go along with the crowd, he was curious about why he was being asked to do something instead of just doing it, he liked making his friends laugh and not at their expense. I asked her why we couldn’t figure out how to channel his energy instead of squashing it. We found a new school, and I haven’t been called in for a meeting in the principal’s office since.
This memory came back to me as I was thinking about the ESPN headline about Shaka Smart. You can’t expect a child to be independent, confident, curious, and to think for themselves as a teenager if you squash those qualities in them when they’re six. You can’t expect boys or men to value their own mental health when you see a top coach get belittled for caring for his and his team’s mental health in the final minutes of a big game. We’re incentivizing the wrong things if we want to live in the more equitable, just, and kind world that we say we do.
In this must-listen episode of the Ezra Klein podcast, Klein and his guest, Richard Reeves, discuss the crisis facing boys in light of new research and what’s been called the “friendship recession” that has hit men especially hard. The whole episode is worth listening to, but, at the end, Klein asks Reeves why he thinks men like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate have become so popular among young men. Reeves responds:
I talked to a lot of young men in my life “what’s going on with Tate?” And they say, well, a lot of it is obviously crazy stuff, like misogyny. But actually, at least he’s answering the question. He’s offering advice. He’s saying it’s difficult to be a young man, here are some answers. And my view about someone like Tate is that if we don’t like his answers, the solution is not to just tell boys to stop looking for those answers. It is to provide some better ones for ourselves, and it is to recognize the fact that there is a real search here, a real demand for an answer to the question of, how should I be a good man today, and remain a man?
I want to be a boy. I am a boy. I am a man. How do I do that? I’m in favor of gender equality. I want a world of gender equality. And most boys and men do. But look, I don’t want to feel like I’m the problem here. I don’t want to feel pathologized. I don’t want to keep being told how toxic I am. Can you help? And unfortunately, I think we — we as the mainstream institutions, and so on, because we haven’t acknowledged some of these problems sufficiently, or embraced them, we’ve actually driven a lot of this stuff….And so I think we’ve provided a lot of the market for people like Tate and Peterson to sweep up.
I’ve been married to my husband, Grant, for nearly twenty years, and I’ve had a front row seat to Grant doing a ton of work to deconstruct his upbringing, his privilege, his whiteness, his faith, his assumptions. He has grown exponentially in the time we’ve been together to be a more compassionate, empathetic, and more open human. If I had broken up with him at eighteen and somehow ran into him today, I would barely recognize the ways he’s grown and evolved into, what I would contend, he was always meant to be. This journey has not been an easy one by any means and is ongoing, of course, but I see a lot of men his age that I surround myself with on similar journeys of embracing their emotions, responding instead of reacting, acknowledging their privilege in humble ways - and trying to model that for their children. They are doing this with little, if any, examples to look to ahead of them. For the most part, at least in my experience, their fathers still don’t have the capacity to do this. They see very few examples of healthy masculinity in media, politics, and even among the elders in their communities.
They are largely making this up as they go along. And as Reeves said, we’ve created a vacuum for the Andrew Tates of the world to sweep in and spread their version of masculinity to boys and young men thirsty for any direction and guidance.
In our good and necessary efforts to increase opportunities for women, we’ve decided to let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction, leaving boys and men floundering on their own. But we can and must walk and chew gum at the same time. We can continue to work for equity for women (and we still have plenty of work to do obviously), while refusing to just leave the boys, especially the most vulnerable, behind. We can refuse the black-and-white dualism offered to us that says that, by creating equity for one group, it means that other groups must suffer.
When we praise Tom Izzo’s success despite (or because of) his tantrum antics on the sidelines, but disparage Smart’s mindful leadership, we’re creating a reverse incentive that the next generation picks up on. We parents say, above all, that we want to raise kind, empathetic kids but then we idolize academic and athletic performance above all else instead.
None of this is easy work; like the boys looking for healthier role models of masculinity, we’re out here trying to figure this out as we go along. We should offer ourselves loads of grace along the way, but we also have to do better now that we know better, as Maya Angelou reminds us.
Scattering Seeds
I’m always finding stuff that supports the thesis of the book I’m writing on the benefits of leaning into nature’s wisdom, so I thought I could start sharing those links and things here with all of you in hopes of some of the seeds I share germinating into something beautiful at your place.
I like to think of the spring equinox as my new year, so if that’s you too, happy new year! After reading this from Chris, I decided my spring intention is to be “downright hedonistic.” I’ll keep you posted!
Speaking of elders, I loved this short interview with Dani Shapiro, one of my elders, even if she doesn’t know it.
One of our garden beds is full of chickweed this time of the year. I always just trim it instead of pulling it, so that I can count on it every March. Now’s the time to be on the lookout and make something yummy with this so-called springtime weed.
A perfect poem for the spring equinox this week.
I’ve been playing with this Vagus nerve breathing practice this month if you’re looking for one yourself.
Here’s to considering what we’re incentivizing in the week ahead,
Sara
P.S. It makes a big difference in the world of measuring EVERYthing if you’d comment or like this post below. Or, better yet, share it with a friend!
I’m getting old because I swear his VCU run was two or three years ago instead of nearly ten.
This despite the guy winning the most games in Marquette basketball history this season, being named the USBA’s coach of the year, and leading his team to win the Big East tournament.
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