Learning to Love Cigarette Smoke and Baggy Pants

My first leadership love is working with youth.

Why? Because they are, well, young.
As such, they have fewer fears, fewer preconceived notions, and more openness to ideas.
Youth have exuberance for life, and for possibilities that most of us have; that is, until those ideas and that exuberance gets squashed. One of the most important things we must understand about youth is that they crave affiliation and acceptance. Regardless of whether they do things the way we (as adults) want, or whether they do things contrary to our desires, they nevertheless want acceptance and understanding. Youth naturally begin to find their way into patterns of acceptance.

The sociologists call this a form of social lock.
That is, as a youth begins to find their affiliation group, there can be a stereotyping which never lets the person out. Social lock is perhaps one of the most dangerous phenomenon that exists because as the youth begins to change his or her way of believing about himself or herself, the social patterns may already be set.
Now, adults can actually contribute to social lock more than they know, and in some cases, more than peer adolescents do.

How do they do this? Let me first explain a few things with a couple of stories.
One day in a class, the teacher asked the class members what was their favorite smell? The point of the question was to help draw the students' attention to the power of affiliation with smells, thoughts, sounds, etc. That this power has both a positive and negative set of repercussions.
As it came to a certain boy to share his favorite smell he said: "I love the smell of cigarette smoke." The teacher stammered, the class was outraged, and nobody quite knew how to deal with that comment.
Unfortunately, the answer for how to deal with this comment was easy; but not used. Had the teacher probed a little he would have found the rest of the story.

For this boy was an athlete who cared for his body and lived a high standard of personal morality; which included not taking alcohol, tobacco, or other harmful substances.
But, diving a little deeper would have taught the class a valuable lesson that day. The reason the boy loved the smell of cigarette smoke was because his brother smoked cigarettes.

He loved his brother and that older brother and this younger boy had a connection that transcended this world.

The older brother had died a few months prior to this class incident; and though he battled mightily with trying to quit his addiction to nicotine, the older brother nevertheless smoked; and because the younger boy loved the older brother, and loved to be around him, the smell of cigarette smoke triggered for him a powerful affection memory.

It was a good memory - a memory of deep love.

I understand that memory because both of those boys are my sons.

I remember how hard the older boy tried to quit smoking.

I remember how he would buy a pack of cigarettes, smoke one, be disgusted with himself, and then smash the pack and swear he would never smoke again.
I am deeply impressed with the younger boy and his ability to love something that most people might consider an obnoxious smell, and to love it because it reminds him of a person whom he loved.

The younger boy taught me a valuable lesson.

He taught me to love the smell of cigarettes and indirectly, he taught me to love baggy pants.

How I learned to love baggy pants is a sad tale.
As a father and leader certain things can be hard to accept.
Smoking was always hard to accept. But, if smoking was hard, the baggy and saggy pants seemed even harder.

I am ashamed to say that it impacted my outreach to my own son at times because I just could not get over those baggy pants.

However, I have learned a painful lesson.
In the last few days of that boy's life, I did in deed learn to love his baggy pants.

I loved watching him walk, watching him sing, watching him play his guitar, and watching him just be who he was.
And now, as I have a position of influence among youth in my community I love to see the boys who have baggy pants. Do I sometimes wish they would pull them up? Sure. Will I ever say it to them? Probably not. Why? Because I wish with all my heart that I could reach out this very second and hold my son.

I wish I could see him right now in those baggy pants.

You see, we fail to celebrate the inside of a person because we worry too much about what is going on the outside.
What must be remembered is the Lord writes his law on the fleshy tables of our hearts, the Lord judges based on the inward parts, and in this we would be wise to do the same.
I learned from sad and difficult experience to try to see someone as the Lord would see them; and I now recognize that if the room was filled with people who smelled like cigarette smoke, or if they all wore baggy pants, I would be grateful for their presence and I should then do all I could to teach them all I know of the things that will bring them great joy.

As a youth myself, I had a number of men who inspired me and helped me see what leading was all about. I'm confident they looked past my imperfections and strange attire.
An important part of leadership is to understand when to accept people for who they are and to embrace them.

Perhaps Washington said it best when he said "make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish" (McCullough, 2005).
References McCullough, D.

(2005).
1776.
New York: Simon & Schuster.