Mark K December 6th, 2006
This month’s theme has to do with intuition and intention. We’ll also explore how ideas spread and people influence one another. There are two books by Malcolm Gladwell - “The Tipping Point” and “Blink” and the film “What the Bleep Do We Know”.
Mark K November 30th, 2006
The November meeting took place after I returned from my wanderings in Spain (see previous posts) so I decided to indulge my interest in the subject of wandering. Isabel Allende lives in our area and I had a chance to hear her speak a few days before the meeting. In one part of her book “Zorro”, the hero travels the Camino de Santiago in Spain, where I had just been a few weeks before. The film “Motorcycle Diaries” deals with the wanderings of a young Ernesto Gueverra and his friend, years before he became a Che Gueverra, the famous revolutionary. I couldn’t resist including one of my favorite films “The Terminal” even though Tom Hanks’ character is prevented from wandering by being stuck in an airport terminal.
I was particularly interested in exploring the idea of wandering or traveling without a plan or destination, whether that be traveling or simply the way a person lives his life.
Mark K November 30th, 2006
October’s theme had to do with finding a passion that can sustain you throughout your life, regardless of your age. It was a stretch asking a group of men to read Barbara Sher’s book “It’s Only Too Late if You Don’t Start Now”, but they found the films “Surfing for Life” and “The World’s Fastest Indian” to be much more accessible. We even talked about going surfing together - using an activity as a springboard for discussion instead of just books, articles, and films.
Mark K November 30th, 2006
The theme for the September meeting was “Men Who Crash”. I was intrigued by the opening dialogue in the movie Crash in which the Don Cheadle character, Det. Graham Waters, says “It’s the sense of touch. Any real city, you walk, you brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A. nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
I thought that it would be interesting to explore the themes of isolation, prejudice and mistrust. In addition to Crash, we watched the film Grand Canyon and read the book The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle. All three stories take place in Los Angeles, involve some sort of crash, car breakdown or accident, and deal with racial tension.
Mark K November 30th, 2006
Here is the copy of the e-mail that I sent to a group of friends, inviting them to participate in the men’s group.
Friends,
I’ve spoken with a couple of you already about the idea of having a monthly book/discussion group and so I’m sending you this e-mail to see if you might be interested.
My idea is that people - especially men - are kind of bad about getting together to share ideas and have meaningful conversation. We’re pretty good about getting together for sports, card-playing, drinking etc. but I, for one, find that I need a little bit of mind stimulation from time-to-time. I’ve had many discussions with each of you and find that I always leave with something more than what I had at the beginning of the conversation - that I had to think about something in a new way, learned something new, laughed about something that didn’t seem to be funny before.
What I’m proposing is that we get together once a month or so. My idea is that we have some kind of a theme and something that we can all read, see, or do ahead of time that relates to the theme. Then we’ll get together for dinner or whatever and have a discussion - not a debate or a critique - but a trading of ideas. The film, book or whatever will be fuel for the discussion and we’ll see where it takes us.
Here’s my idea for the month of August. The theme will be “living off the grid” and I have a newspaper article, a book, and a film which all deal with people who somehow dropped out of society for better or for worse. The book is “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer. (you can get used copies cheap from amazon.com. The film is “Grizzly Man” by director Werner Herzog and then there is an article from the Sacramento Bee about a couple who live “off the grid” in Nevada County and run a publishing company - I can e-mail you a copy of the article.
As my college friend Jim used to say, “You can have some of it, all of it, or none of it at all”. In other words, if you want to just watch the film or read the Cliff notes to the book, that’s fine. The important thing is to show up with some ideas and be ready for some rich conversation.
So…what do you think?
Mark K November 28th, 2006
Not long after coming up with the idea for a men’s group, I took a trip to Lake Tahoe with my family. I had some long-forgotten errand to run while my sister and wife were out for a hike and when I finished, decided that I would try to meet them at Echo Lake. I had been there once before and knew that there was only one trail around the lake, but that there was a boat that you could catch at the end of the lake for the return trip. As it turned out, they took the boat back, so I never did catch up with them.
The good thing about this was that I had plenty of time to think and I started thinking about what would be a good name for my men’s group. I had been working as a life coach and had decided that my niche was working with people to help them slow down their lives momentarily in order to take stock of what’s important to them. I was using the name Pause for Purpose and wondered how I could incorporate the name into the name of the men’s group.
Finally, it came to me - Men Who Pause. I thought that I was incredibly clever and chuckled to myself as I continued hiking. It seemed to capture what I hoped the group would be all about, while at the same time having a bit of the irreverent wise-guy in it. Besides, men can go through a mid-life crisis, so why not borrow a term from women as well as the idea of coming together with friends whose company we enjoy?
Mark K November 28th, 2006
My friend, Tucker and I were riding our mountain bikes up a fire road on Mt. Tamalpais last July when I asked him this question: “If you could organize a get-together with some guys that you would like to spend more time with, what would the activity be and who would you invite?”
Why did I ask that particular question? It’s probably for a couple of reasons. I had noticed that I was socializing with people who I had met through circumstances or proximity - families that I had met through my children, people I had met through our business, neighbors and so forth, and that this was enjoyable, yet I sometimes craved a connection with people who liked to delve into topics in a deeper way. I felt like I wasn’t cultivating my existing friendships that meant a lot to me and I wasn’t seeking connections with people who seemed like a good fit or were intriguing in some way.
I also noticed that women seemed to be much better at men at getting together with friends on a regular basis and talking about issues that were important to them.
My friend responded that he would like to continue his monthly poker game. I joked that he had the only Mensa poker night that I knew of - everyone that he invited seemed to be a genius except for me and I think I was there for the purpose of providing the coins for the winners. Actually, the poker night had been a lot of fun, with something more than the usual gambling-night banter, but I wanted to create something that was different from the typical poker, sports, drinking, hunting and fishing that men are most comfortable with.
By this time, we were approaching the steep part of the trail and I could barely speak. Eventually, I explained that I would like to get a group of guys together once a month for a discussion group. Since men sometimes have difficulty talking about things that are personal, I thought that we would need some materials to spark the conversation. It’s hard to find a group of guys who are avid readers, so we would use books, movies, articles, activities. There would be a theme each month and the members would be asked to do the reading and viewing ahead of time. The meeting would take place at my house, with food and drink to make it even more comfortable. The idea would not be to analyze or debate, so much as to see how the materials touch each of us personally.
Instead of whining and wondering, “Where are my people?” I thought that it was time to create something - a hub or magnet of energy and creativity that will draw others, a bit like the salons of Paris or literary communities in San Francisco such as The Grotto and 826 Valencia.
I didn’t have all of these ideas in place by the time we reached the top of the hill, but that was the day that the idea of the men’s group was born.
Mark K November 14th, 2006
In his bestselling book “The Tipping Point”, author Malcom Gladwell says that epidemics (not just diseases, but fads, news, trends, popularity of products) spread with the help of what he calls “Connectors” “Mavens” and “Salesmen”. Connectors are very important because they are the kind of people who know everyone and love to introduce people, make connections, and spread ideas. He talks about the idea of “six degrees of separation” - that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else through six people or less. He assests that there are actually a small number of people who are the ones who are making most of the connections. He tells us that there is an easy way to explore this idea.
Make a list of the 40 people who you consider to be your circle of friends (not including family or co-workers). For each name on the list, trace back through the series of connections to the person who was initially responsible for your having met that person. After you do this for the entire list, do you find that there are a few “Connectors” who were responsible for you meeting most of these people?
