An initiation idea for teen boys — with Traver Boehm

Hey folks, welcome back to the Uncivilized Podcast. This is Trevor Boehme, your host. Today I'm doing another solo episode on a topic that I get asked about a lot. And that is, how do we initiate young men when there is no real cultural initiation? And I should preface this by saying, there needs to be some kind of initiation between boyhood and manhood. That's necessary. If you look at the culture, especially here in the west of this idea, like, wow, we have all of these little boys running around in grown men's bodies, right? We hear that. We hear it all the time. We say it. We feel it. Like, oh my God, you're like a 35-year-old, 12-year-old. It's because we don't have any initiation ceremony. We have nothing traditional. We have nothing ceremonial. We have nothing that lets a boy know, hey, you've now transitioned from point A to point B. The old part of you that was boyish and childlike and immature now needs to quote, and I say this in quotes, die. And this new part of you needs to emerge and hear, oh, by the way, here are the new rules. Here are the new responsibilities. Here's what we expect from you. Here's what you get from us. We don't do that at all. And you can look at the culture and go, wow, no wonder why we have so many other problems that we do. Now, this is vital for men, vital, vital, vital, vital, vital. And we don't have it. And a lot of people think, well, we have the military. Like, and I've said, yes, that is an initiation. But to me, that's an initiation into warrior ship, not specifically into manhood and no offense to any guys in the military. But I know a lot of guys in the military who are out of the military who are still 14-year-old boys emotionally. So it's not quite that, right? It's not getting drunk on your 21st birthday. It's not getting your driver's license. It's not having sex for the first time. These are all perhaps many initiations in their own right. But they're not the big initiation from boyhood to manhood. Okay, so what do we do? I do not have a son. I do not have a teenage son. But I did get to be a part of an extraordinary initiation experience about six years ago. Now, eight years ago, seven years ago, that I'll share with you that I think is really important. And perhaps just a basis for anyone listening is like, wow, I have a son. That sounds like a really cool thing. Maybe I'll do that. So there was a gym member that I used to have. Amazing, amazing guy, part of an amazing, amazing family. His name was Augie Johnson. And Augie was the original uncivilized man. Like, this is a guy, you know, those people who've lived like 80 lives in their one life, who've made millions, lost millions, raised a family. He unfortunately, if you've read my book, it was his son who drowned at age 19 while he was a gym member. I mean, this guy has, he's the guy who pulled a toddler out of a mudslide that had rolled through his living room. A couple of years ago in Santa Barbara, like, this guy has just lived an extraordinary life of ups and downs of the deepest heartaches and the, you know, hitting of the highest homeruns. I think he signed up to be one of the civilians that goes into outer space. And he's going to do it because he's just that kind of guy. I digress. On one of his sons, 13th birthdays, this is what he asked of eight or nine of us men. He gathered us up and said, you are influential men in my life. You are influential men now in my son's life. You are men, I respect. And you are men who I want to have a part of this experience. So here's the experience. He was going to take his 13 year old boy on the night of his birthday. And in around nine o'clock, they were together going to go on an eight or nine mile journey all through Santa Barbara up into the mountains, into the ocean, as you'll hear all along. And each one of us was going to be positioned a mile away. And each one of us was given the opportunity to create a challenge and then share some wisdom. So I'll tell you my part. So I took myself and a eight foot surfboard. And I paddled out about, I don't know, three, four hundred yards out into the ocean. And his son got to me around 11 p.m. at night. So he had to swim out in the dark. And let's just just, you know, this is like a water polo family. So swimming that far was not in, it was not like he wasn't going to drown at the 50 meter mark. He wasn't going to have trouble at the 50 meter mark. This kid could swim for days. So he swam out to me 11 o'clock at night, freezing, shivering, and he got on the board. And we sat there for about 25 minutes. And I shared with him, what I thought it meant to be a man, what I thought was going to be coming for him into his own man. No, hey, when you become a man, when you, when you grow into this body, when you grow into this idea, here's what I think you need to be responsible for. You now got to look after your little sister. You have to be responsible for your sexuality. At some point, you're going to have to have a job, and you're going to have a family of your own. And by the way, you now have my number. I'm now in your life forever, right? Talked him a little bit about his dad, gave him a hug. He swam back, dried off, and then he and his dad walked the next mile to the next man. And that man, you know, positioned himself wherever, either like up, you know, 500 yards up a steep hill or up something where the kid had to climb yada yada, and then he repeated it. And they did this all night. I think it ended at like four or five in the morning. So there was some kind, you know, there's challenged to this. The actual definition of initiation is a controlled death, right? Meaning that like there's some part of this that's scary. It's hard. You're changed forever from the experience. Now, that's very different than like plucking him from his mother's hut. All of us taking him out in the woods, making him eat some peyote, kill a deer, like rub the blood on its face, sitting around in a sacred circle, explaining to him his new role, blah, blah, blah, and then bringing him back into the, into the tribe with a brand new name, but it's that's kind of hard to do in modern society. But I remember at the time feeling like, wow, this is a really powerful experience because it's just an experience period, right? It's not just like, hey, happy birthday. Here's some shit. Here's some free shit. Here's a cake. Here's all your buddies hanging here's some video games. It was at least something that this young man got to experience that was hard and it was also wisdom filled and it was also created and curated by the men who will now be in his life forever. So this is a short episode. I'm just going to hit you with that and let you think of those of you who have young sons, those of you who are raising boys, those of you who know boys who may be lost or may be challenged of just throwing some creative thought out there for you of perhaps this is something you can do, that perhaps there is something that you can orchestrate over the course of a weekend or over the course of a night that your son or your nephew or whoever it may be can then look back on and go, wow, you know what, that was really valuable. Maybe at the time I didn't quite understand it, it was just just like weird experience that I got taken on. But here I am five, six years later and I'll never forget the fact that these men showed up in my life and they told me that they'd still be in my life forever. Isn't that what the essence of what we're doing here in the men's movement? And in men's work, I was saying, hey, no longer are we just these like lone wolf solo silos out there doing whatever the fuck we want with no accountability, no responsibility, and no love from our brothers, no love from other men. So take this, do with it what you may, run with it, change it, use it, completely ignore it, recraft it, but do something. The lack of initiation in men's lives is the catalyst in my opinion for so many of the ills, so many of the challenges, the addictions, the acting out, the hurt, the confusion, the feeling of being lost that so many men are walking around with. If you like this episode, please share it with someone who has a young boy or please share it with someone in your life who is raising a son or has sons in their lives or again nephews or something like that. And if you wouldn't mind, please head over to iTunes, Spotify wherever you're listening to this, give us a positive rating, help me grow the podcast podcast is still such a pleasure. I love getting the messages from you guys getting seeing the shares on social media, meeting people. I ran into, I ran to someone in Guatemala who was like, I love your podcast. And it's like, are you fucking serious? So it's such a pleasure for me to keep doing these. And if it's giving you value. All right, guys, have a kick-ass rest of your day. Love you, cheers.