Lost Boys - Follow the new adventure
On December 1st I will step off a plane onto Kenyan soil for the start of a new, awfully big adventure. Like most adventures I have no idea where it will lead, just as when I stepped off a plane in Lusaka in May 2005, I had no idea that Emerging Leaders would be born. It’s a new chapter in a story that continues to seek to find ways to invest in the lives of young people to learn to lead their lives, often out of poverty, to a place of becoming authors of a fruitful, new life story. It’s a new chapter in seeking to inspire middle-aged/aging people to become elders in the lives of these same young people. The difference is that this time I am going to focus on one aspect of a global crisis – young men. J M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan called them the Lost Boys. The name has modern ripples. In the past two years in the UK we have seen it through the lens of the Netflix series Adolescence, through Gareth Southgate’s Dimbleby Lecture and recent TV documentary and through the research project by the Centre for Social Justice titled Lost Boys – State of the Nation. When people ask me what I am talking about, I point to Donald Trump and say, “The world is currently being held hostage by a Lost Boy. If you need an illustration of why this issue is so important you can see it there, writ very large. Trump was once a young man, who didn’t address this issue.”
So, after a journey over the past few years, I have partnered with two wonderful young Kenyan men, John and Peter, who frequently tell me in our planning meetings, “This is personal”. John’s story is of a Lost Boy, and his brother’s life was recently claimed by the devastation of the Lost Boy’s deep wound. Peter’s story is of a Lost Boy and when I first met him the life expectancy of a young man in his community was only 21 years old. And it is personal for me too. That’s where the journey began. It started in my own Lost Boy story, but it came to life when I finally admitted to myself that I am one of them. That began the search for an answer. Something that could help towards healing, self-leadership, hope, love and leaving something different behind in the world than they inherited. In a recent meeting online with 40 young Kenyan men to discuss this new project, one guy said he worked on behalf of the US government on the issue of youth in Africa and he said,
“I’ve just got back from 10 days travelling around 8 African countries and this issue is huge in every country”.
Who is a Lost Boy? A Lost Boy is a man or youth, who has lost, or never had, a good, positive, emotional attachment with their father, leaving a deep unattended wound. The CSJ report[1] shows that in the UK a young man is more likely to have a Smart phone than have a dad at home. These boys, young men and adult men carry the pain of an absence of what should have been given from the love of a father. Inside they feel a hole, a gap, a void, something missing. A deep loss. An unattended grief. They have a vulnerability which they had to protect, defend and armour up against, because it was too painful to face. They have a deep sense of shame leaving them feeling there is something wrong with them, that they were not good enough. They never felt man-enough and they’ve spent their life unable to fill this aching hole. They missed out on one of life’s key rites of passage.
Why does it matter?
A Lost Boy gets separated from themselves. Cut off from their full true self, their calling in life and as a man, their wounds, their resources of kindness and their legitimate needs. This impacts their own mental, emotional and physical health. They feel angry, depressed, anxious, driven and defended. They feel they are not enough and have low self-esteem. Left unattended it can result in crime, substance abuse, not being able to get work or hold down a job.
An adult Lost Boy gets separated from intimate relationships with their own children, partner and peers. Fathering their own children, intimacy, a need to have power over people, control, aggression, co-dependency, sexual overdrive to feel good, sexual anxiety for fear of revealing their feelings of inadequacy, abandonment fears, and jealousy.
An adult Lost Boy gets separated from their communities at work and where they live. Their leadership, work ethic and bonds of connection can all be affected.
So, what’s the plan? We are going to pilot two 3-day programmes. One in Nairobi County and one in Naivasha County, for up to 100 young men. Over the three days we will inspire them about their potential, help them make friends with their wounds and then integrate both of these into their life, going forwards. Both the training delivery and its scalability are based on the same model as Alcoholics Anonymous, so that the small group support and small group evolution, ensures the best container for keeping people safe in the long term. Following the event, we will take the content and create the next version of the Youth Compass Projectonline, to ensure both the scalability and the quality of content is maintained to the best of our ability.
How will it all develop? Who knows? It is a great adventure. And it starts by taking a step…I’ll let you know what happens.
If you are interested in seeing the concept note, feel free to contact me. trevor@trevorwaldock.net
[1] https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/lost-boys