Raising a Modern Day Knight? Absolutely!

Raising a Modern Day Knight -- This book grabbed my attention one night as I was browsing the internet about fathers and sons. I was surprised at the popularity of the book in the search pages that I wondered why I never encountered the title in my previous searches.

I saw a site that showed the first chapter of the book. I read reviews about it. I read blogs written by parents who read the book, and applied it in their own families. Boy, I was really hooked.

The book was written on the premise that men of today did not have the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood that men of olden times had. The author was saying that many boys left their homes for college without really knowing--deep inside--whether or not they were already men.

That caught my attention. I could relate well with it. I left home for college and stayed away for good, except to visit, just like many members of my class. I left home knowing I was already a man, not just a boy, but I had a prayer a year before that, which made me relate with Raising a Modern Day Knight even more.

At 15 years old, I prayed "Lord, teach me how to become a man." Manhood to me at that time was more than just the physical changes in my body. I understood manhood to be something like knighthood, and for that I sought guidance from the Lord. After all, I was studying in a Jesuit school and Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a knight.

I could still remember the circumstances when I made that prayer. I was riding on a jeepney on my way to school. I was wearing the white collared shirt of Xavier University High School. My parents taught subjects in college. The high school was an all-boys school at that time (not anymore since more than 10 years ago and, gosh, even the campus moved uphill to a better location near the airport).

During that time, a classmate of mine was playing the role of Don Quixote in a stage drama entitled The Man from La Mancha. It was watched by students from several schools in the city, including the all-girls school nearby. That emphasized even more in my young age the values of knighthood in one's transition to manhood ... and in impressing beautiful girls wearing pink school uniforms.

There was even a funny twist in this high school memory. Don Quixote's helmet and lance were kept at the office of the Prefect of Student Affairs. One day, I and a few classmates did not listen well to instructions about the change in venue for our Chemistry class. We were marked cutting classes.

To discipline us, one of us was made to wear Don Quixote's helmet, hold the lance, and stand at attention at the door of the Prefect of Student Affairs. The rest of us stood at attention under the heat of the sun on the cemented area across the prefect's office. (This was when the high school campus was in the main campus. The place where we were made to stand was right outside the campus canteen where both high school and college students went to have some snacks.)

I stood at attention as everyone else did, proud that I was a man. A young man, yes, but a man nonetheless. I thought at that time, only boys would complain with what we were made to do. I knew we committed a violation (though honest-to-goodness I was simply misled to think the class was cancelled) and we had to pay for that violation somehow. In a man's world, that was how things went. No ifs, no buts.

Now that I have a son, I ask the same question. What is manhood? Again, the images of the knights that I saw in my mind in high school begin to reappear.

Most of the fathers that I know raise their boys with the assumption that soon, at the right age, they'll discover their manhood. Still, wouldn't it be great if there is a clear guidance from their fathers on how to actually go about the process of transition to manhood? Wouldn't it be great if all sons leave home knowing for sure that they are men?

Raising a Modern Day Knight was an attempt to answer these questions; and I couldn't wait to find out more about what it had to say.