An Open Letter to Three Young Men
Dear Young Men Sitting Next to Me at Starbucks:
I do not know you. I did not interact with you in any way. But you sat at the tiny table right next to mine, and I could not help but overhear your conversation and notice your interactions, and there are some things I would like to tell you.
Because I must refer to you as something, I am going to call the one who plays football Jock Bro-Dude, the one who plays drums Musician Bro-Dude, and the one who wants to be seen as a leader and not as a bro-dude as Wanna Be.
Jock Bro-Dude:
You are annoying. Honestly, you are genuinely annoying. It does not surprise me that there is another young man in your Church/Christian school/extended youth group that is mad at you. No surprise what so ever.
At the same time, I am not actually certain any of this is consciously your fault. Your absolute inability to be still, your unawareness of your physical behaviors, your difficulty in settling down to concentrate, and your desire to not be bored all very much reminded me of some young men I have known in foster care, young men who had ADHD or other disorders that mimicked ADHD.
I do want to say, you had some pretty good self-awareness when it came to knowing you would have a hard time concentrating on the book on faith the group was reading. You were asked what you would prefer to do, and you responded with a more active type of faith study. I applaud you for that.
I also know that when Wanna Be chided you for disrespecting him because you did not stop flicking the crumbs after he asked you to, that you had no memory of flicking the crumbs before he asked you not to, let alone after. That was absolutely clear in your confusion about what he was talking about.
You need to develop some coping skills. I wish your parents would help you with this, but you appear to be a senior in high school and not have any. Now, maybe it was that you actually were really tired as you told the other two and therefore the mental energy it takes to keep hyperactive tendencies under control just was not there. Maybe you are in the midst of trying to go off medication or a medication change. I do not know. But I do know you need to find a way to get this under control.
Because you are genuinely annoying. And it will cause problems.
Musician Bro-Dude:
I think you have the potential to be an actual leader. You seem to be a good guy at heart. You tried to listen to Jock Bro-Dude, and you even broached the subject of doing something different with Wanna Be. But you were unable to stand up for yourself or Jock Bro-Dude. Instead, you found yourself going along with what Wanna Be wanted to do, and then trying to somehow tone down what he was saying.
I honestly think your heart and mind were telling you that the way things were going was not good. But you lacked the ability to stand up to Wanna Be. Listen, sometimes your elders are wrong (and Wanna Be is what, 2-3 years older than you at most). Sometimes your Church leaders are wrong. If your heart is telling you that what is happening is wrong, you need to listen to it. And you need to do more than try and soften hurtful rhetoric.
Because if you do not, you will be worse than the person spewing it, because you will know it is wrong and go along anyway.
Wanna Be:
If you want to be seen as a leader, you need to learn to act like a leader, not like a boss. And yes, as someone who is a boss and also works hard to be a leader, there is an absolute difference. And lesson number one is that you cannot treat someone with pure condescension and expect them to respect you for it. You cannot ask someone their opinion and then decide it is inconsequential if it does not match up to your ideas.
Also, the world is not black and white. There are plenty of shades of gray. When you asked Jock Bro-Dude if he would treat that other boy from Church differently knowing he did not like him, Jock Bro-Dude honestly said yes. To which you responded “So you’re going to be mean to him?” Jock said no, he would not, and you countered with “but you said you would treat him differently than if he liked you.”
I do not know if you were trying to trap Jock Bro-Dude into a bad answer through using a logical fallacy argument or if you honestly do not understand that it is possible to treat someone who dislikes you differently from someone who likes you without being mean. If it is the former, then you really are an ass. If it is the latter, then you have no understanding of nuance. Either way, you are woefully unprepared to actually be a leader.
Musician Bro-Dude and Wanna Be:
Neither of you acted like the leaders you claimed to Jock Bro-Dude to be. (Though I find it really hard in a group of 3 to see 2 people as leaders and only one as a supposed follower. And I am also pretty certain Jock Bro-Dude thought of this as meeting up with some friends to discuss faith, not “meeting with his leaders”. But that is not actually here nor there.) But honestly, the claims to leadership when no leadership was exhibited would not have bothered me if you could have bothered to behave like adults.
The two of you are obviously at least in college, and yet you behaved like 12 year old girls. (I know, I have a 12 year old girl.) Telling someone “We just don’t want everyone to hate you. We don’t hate you, but we just don’t want everyone else to hate you” is not a Christian thing to do.
Forget that. It has nothing to do with being Christian. It is not a thing that decent human beings do.
This idea that Jock Bro-Dude is required to treat everyone (including people who have been very vocal in their dislike of him) respectfully and as if they were his “leaders”, no matter how they actually act or treat him, while at the same time telling him he does not deserve to be treated with respect because of how he acts, is a massive double standard.
You do not want him to treat you as his leader. You want him to treat you as his “better” so that you are free to continue to treat him as “lesser”. Because that is what you did. The entire night.
Every action, every conversation with him and with each other when he was out of the room, showed a lack of respect for him as a human being. He was simply there as a prop, someone for you to lead, and when he did not nicely fit himself to the mold you had assigned him, you tried your best to belittle him, to cut away at his self-esteem until he tried to fit himself into that mold.
Honestly, I am glad he was tired. I am glad he did not have the energy to hold himself in check and try to conform to your ideas of who he should be.
Jock Bro-Dude is annoying. I started the evening on your side. But by the end, you were lucky I was able to keep my mouth shut.
One thing you told Jock Bro-Dude was correct. If you want people to treat you with respect, you need to try and show them some respect (and empathy, empathy is really helpful, too). But that is a two way street. It does not just apply to Jock Bro-Dude. It applies to you, too. So next time you feel the need to ask why he is not treating you with the respect you feel you deserve, maybe you should look to yourself and your own actions and attitude for the answer.
