The other night I went to see a movie with my kids. I really wanted to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but my kids won out and we went to see Jim Carrey's Yes Man instead. 

It was crass, silly, and sort of entertaining. I admit I did laugh. Jim Carrey doesn't match his genius expressed in previous classics he's made. But my son got an important message. A very yogic message. 

"Mom, he said Yes to life and it made all the difference!" he exclaimed from the back seat of the car. It was a perfect teaching moment. To get into the flow of life with the good feeling of saying yes. Life is a choice. We can say no with our hearts and minds and actions and be out of alignment with the great flow of energy and goodness that we are, or we can say no and choose to be miserable. I emphasis that it's a feeling, an awareness of the thoughts that are influencing that feeling, and vice versa. As he is getting older and going into middle school next year (gasp!) I realize children need to be instructed in character. To say yes to life, to treat girls and others with respect. To be kind.

I see at his age the tendency for middle age boys to sink into that tough, reckless, treat everybody like dirt mentality that is very American. I think it's from our culture not having a sustaining myth to pass boys into manhood. (girls need it too, although they get it automatically with the onset of menstruation.) Our boys get stuck in neurosis at the age when they need to move into independence and power and manhood. I think our American Movies mirror this problem well with the infantile behavior Jim Carrey demonstrates, and just about every other popular male actor today. Boys are  stunted, never having that psychological shift that comes from an initiatory experience during adolescence that says, "You are no longer a child and dependent on Mamma. You are a man and independent." We lost it becuase there is no myth, no story, just consumerism and life as usual for boys. It keeps them dependent and stuck in authority. And we end up with backward caps and jeans falling off their bottoms. You can't get any more infnatile than that. Additionally I think that is where a lot of teen angst and suicide comes in. Their lives are void of meaning. And initiatory rites and mythic stories and passages give kids meaning and purpose. The meaning and purpose within.

We need to help boys in this new age to become men. A simple movie telling them the power they have in YES, is a start. I talk to my son about chivalry, being kind to girls and treating them with respect. I talk to him about what it really means to be a man, letting go of Momma and feeling secure.

But I also think he will need a more powerful experience beyond what I can offer him as his mother. I'm thinking of Outward Bound, or a rites of passage week at Shambhala Mountain Center that it offer youngsters. Landmark Education also offers a great forum for helping kids recognize the power of yes in their lives. The Mankind Project offers men this experience they may have missed as youth. Because it's a psychological, energetic shift that comes from a powerful experience. It's never to late to happen.

As my kids get older, I see more and more the importance of this stuff. One day I will have some summer camps!