Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

We are in the early days of 2013, which means this is the time of the year when people will make all kind of resolutions they intent to keep during the year. Usually, those resolutions include losing weight, stop smoking, achieve some goals, or spend more time with our families. However, few people make the resolution of finding a mentor.

A mentor (male or female) is not a parent, or a spiritual guide, or a trainer, or a business partner. A mentor, of course, could be all those things, but above all other functions a mentor is somebody who sees our true potential and selflessly wants to help us to achieve and develop that potential.

A mentor does not see us as we see ourselves, but as the person we should become. That ability of seeing the future potential in somebody only develops after many years and with experience. For that reason, mentors are usually decades older than the persons they are helping.

I believe we live at a time when it is not easy to find true mentors and when mentors have been replaced by other equally important and needed functions, such as tutors for young students struggling in school or instructors for people beginning a new career or starting at a new job.

One of the reasons for the lack of mentors is, I think, that they are no longer expected to be part of our lives. I read some time ago –sorry, I do not remember the source– that around 90 percent of people 18 years of age or younger in the United States only speaks with other people their age and seldom with an adult. And when they do speak with an adult, it is usually because they cannot avoid it, such as a parent or a teacher.

Because of that attitude, young people miss the possibility of establishing an intergenerational relationship with somebody who can offer meaningful advice and guidance for their lives. You cannot get that advice and guidance updating your status on a social network or typing 140 characters.

Another reason why we do not have mentors is that society changes fast and constantly, so fast that many of the lessons that previously –not so long ago– were good lesson for a lifetime now are almost irrelevant teachings. The future is not what used to be and the present is difficult enough. For that reason, it is difficult to mentor others when we do not understand what is going.

From my mentor, the late Dr. Armando Vivante, I learned –among many other things– that the true questions are those questions that will keep us for years looking for answers. I also learned that you cannot look for a mentor or hire one. They just come. I do not know how that happens. I just know it does.

Therefore, to find a mentor is to live with such a disposition and openness that we will recognize a mentor when he/she comes to our lives.