Questions from the Frontlines

I'll be traveling out to one of the two facilities I teach at to talk to young men about exercise and wellness. My goal is to open a safe conversation about healthy exercising and address the usual teenage concerns of body image and physical appearance. I want these young men to understand exercise as something done for the fun of it instead of "sculpting" a more "manly" body. I want them to confront the media influences and peer pressures. Looking those influences in the eyes and choosing a healthier alternative of self-care.

Body image is a subject with which educators need to be very sensitive. Because young people are working through all sorts of ideas about what is and what isn't attractive, this sort of conversation can turn ugly quickly. Make the foundation of the conversation composed of concern for the care of someone's body.

The prevailing question whenever I attempt to talk with these teenage boys about health is: how do I facilitate the conversation so that they continue to invest in it and remain interested? The key is putting them into a position to pull their background into the classroom so that we can safely look and talk about it.


I suppose this is an excellent depiction of the chance I take walking in there talking about health:

The resistance I envision on the road is nothing compared to my determination to open the eyes of the youth to their own potentials and then back away as they rise like the ash from the can you discarded. What else can I say. I know they will make a truthsayer out of me. I have pointed to them in a popular fashion with hands caked with honesty and integrity and they have seen the cracks of skin. Skin cracked by honest work is strange to them. They could barely recognize me. Now they can. It's the fire. Inside of you we can feel the heat.

Climb the stairs against all of the means to hold you back. Press on in the face of the feeling of failure and know that failure is death and rebirth. No action will ever lead you to nowhere but a new direction toward the peak.