Once upon a time things were simpler. Men, from my culture at least, seemed to know what they wanted. They were motivated to excel. My father's generation flocked to City College and other institutions of higher learning in droves. They were attracted to the professions like bees to honey and they, these children of immigrants from the storied tenements of the Lower East Side, Brownsville and the Bronx quickly rose to the top of their fields -- this one to medicine, this one to law. They did not dream of becoming money-making moguls or Wall Street titans but were dedicated to a kind of excellence or achievement -- and it showed, as the ranks of Nobel Laureates in all fields swelled with these kinds of men.
For a time, these children of European immigrants, seemed exceptional almost heroic -- making contributions to science, economics, medicine and the arts.
What has become of this desire to excel?
It is no secret that in the past 25 years Wall Street has captured the imaginations and dare I say "inspiration" of many young men. Unfortunately, Wall Street and its tributaries in the financial fields, as we have painfully seen, did not inspire much vision other than to "make money." Ironically, this "no-vision" this desire for wealth, has bankrupted the nation.
Don't get me wrong. Money is not a bad thing, but it is not a "vision" -- it is just a tool. It is like saying "I want food." Not something to base your life around. The Bible tells us that Esau was a man who eats and goes hunting. He hunts, he eats. "Give me that red stuff to gulp down," Esau says. Not exactly the highest life.
High profile events of the past year have exposed a lot of men behaving like Esau -- very badly to say the least. Men, who, with their already unbelievable riches seemingly sell their birthright for a pot of lentils. You would have to wonder, these men now disgraced, what did they want?
The other week a group of young male college students in my class were asked this very same question. "What do you want?"
Surprisingly, the answers did not come easily. They struggled. They stammered. A number confessed to wanting to become investment bankers. They said somewhat sheepishly, "we want to make lots of money." It was unclear, however, what they wanted the money for, what they thought enormous amounts of money would do for them or what they might have to give up in order to get it.
When asked about this, they became defensive. Why do we need a reason to make money, they asked, as though by simply being honest and open about it, they could no longer be accused of being shallow. "Hey, I want it, I want it all the time -- it's what every man wants..."
Yes, there is enormous hypocrisy when it comes to money. People act as though they are above wanting it, (or below wanting it) and that's bad. But the simple question "what do you want" gets predictable, pedestrian answers that are equally as phony, as though the desire for something, to be something, to contribute something, were irrelevant to the task of being human, as though it were not the locomotive of life itself.
Men: Come out with the full story: What do you want? If you have the courage to answer the question fully, you and the rest of us may be the richer.
