A Mason's Work

[00:00] So imagine this, right? Go back to school, go back to your high school. And I know for a lot
[00:05] of you, that's like a horrible thing to try and do memory wise, but imagine just for a second,
[00:10] you were back in school and, uh, you were confronted with the, the math test, right?
[00:18] Now, what would happen on the math test if the teacher just gave you every answer? Yeah. Answer
[00:26] to question one is 28. The answer to question two is 35. If you went through life and every teacher
[00:36] in your life was like that, where would you be right now? You might have A's or whatever,
[00:46] but you wouldn't know how to do any of the things.
[00:54] The teachers that made a difference in your life didn't give you the answer.
[01:02] They gave you the question. They gave you the process. They gave you space to figure it out.
[01:11] They sat while you struggled to figure out how to solve the problems you were facing.
[01:20] And they let you know that if you had questions yourself related to how they might, how you might
[01:28] go around solving the problem, you had somebody here sitting beside you the whole way.
[01:34] This is kind of where we've been going all week. When you refuse to grab somebody else's hammer and
[01:43] chisel, you are actually protecting their work and your own. You're suggesting that it is important
[01:52] to you that you can be with them while they struggle.
[01:57] And even better, you can be there to take joy with them, not in the quick fix of solving the problem,
[02:11] which is a short but not sustainable pleasure for your ego, but the long-term joy
[02:18] of being with them while they learn something useful that they can then take back to their everyday life.
[02:27] And so one of the ways that this really, you can kind of see through this entire problem
[02:34] is if we break it down to maybe even a more obvious thing. And so I've been a scout leader
[02:43] for a portion of my life. And one of the things that you get to see as a scout leader is all sorts
[02:51] of different kinds of parents solving problems. So we'll take it back to watching or helping a child
[03:01] learn how to tie their shoes. Now imagine what would happen if every time the child needed their
[03:10] shoes tied, you were just like, no, we don't have time for this. And you tied them anyway.
[03:16] What's going to happen over time, right? You're going to get upset that they never learned how to tie their shoes,
[03:21] but you never created space for them to do that. So what do you get? You get somebody who's perpetually
[03:27] dependent on you. You know, now that child's a teenager ready to go off to school, never had to figure out
[03:33] how to tie their shoes. And where are you at? Right. You didn't help build that skill.
[03:40] Well, we can say it's the shoe tying thing. You want to grab those, grab those laces and do the work
[03:46] and all that kind of stuff. You can tell them, you can point and say, do this, do that, do this.
[03:51] And maybe they'll successfully follow your instructions, but that's not the same as
[03:54] them learning how to do it. Right. When, when we really allow for agency to develop, where we allow,
[04:02] where we can allow to create space or allow space to create this opportunity to rise to the occasion,
[04:10] and do so in a way that's appropriate. Now, again, to be very clear, because there's some
[04:16] folks out there right now who's going, yes, well, I want to learn quantum physics and I have no idea
[04:20] how to get started. Awesome. Right. That's not kind of what we're talking about here. We're talking
[04:24] about, uh, helping develop problem solving skills, you know, responding to the emotional discomforts
[04:32] that come up in everyday life. If you're academically looking to pursue a subject, by all means, go get a
[04:36] book. Somebody else has already learned the basics and will happily teach it to you.
[04:40] But in the context of this kind of knowledge, this emotional response of being frustrated that you
[04:46] don't have agency in a situation where you'd like to have it, this approach makes the most sense.
[04:54] Don't solve the problem for them, be with them. And you get this huge, huge upside.
[05:02] You get a stronger relationship. You get a deeper and more meaningful ability to converse about the
[05:11] problems that people have. You get to build and celebrate as agency develops in other people.
[05:20] You get a sense of gratitude. You get a sense of gratitude. And you enjoy the process of them
[05:27] learning and growing as a process that mirrors your own learning and growth.
[05:33] That brings you together with other people in a way that creates a lodge or a family or a friend group.
[05:43] It's not having all the answers. It's not being the smartest guy in the room.
[05:50] It's not doing all of the work. And when you find a brother or you find somebody in your life who
[05:58] tries to lean in to that role, let them know. If you find yourself in an emotional situation
[06:07] and you don't know what to do, start the conversation with, I don't want you to solve this problem,
[06:14] but I'd like to talk about it some more. Maybe you can see some things or help me, in a way, share this load.