Waterpeople Podcast
Stories about the aquatic experiences that shape us.
Listen with Lauren L. Hill and Dave Rastovich as they talk story with some of the most adept waterfolk on the planet.
Waterpeople is a gathering place for our global ocean community to dive into the themes of watery lives lived well: ecology, adventure, community, activism, science, egalitarianism, inclusivity, meaningful play, a sense of humour. And, surfing, of course.
Waterpeople Podcast
Arne Rubinstein: Rites of Passage
Rites of passage, once central to marking life’s transitions, have faded in modernity. As we navigate rising anxiety, social fragmentation, and a world where technology permeates nearly all aspects of our shared human experience, what role could a revival of rites of passage play in reclaiming our resilience and our capacity for social cohesion?
Dr Arne Rubinstein is the CEO and Founder of the Rites of Passage Institute. His goal is to make Rites of Passage mainstream once again. He has over 30 years experience as a medical doctor, counsellor, mentor, speaker and workshop facilitator.
He has developed programs, seminars and camps attended by more than 350,000 people globally and has effectively implemented rites of passage frameworks into some of the largest schools in Australia.
His work emphasises the importance of recognising and reflecting on key moments in our lives and pausing to understand them deeply before moving forward.
...
This episode is made possible by our generous partners:
Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.
Its unique ownership structure reflects that Earth is its only shareholder: Profits not reinvested back into the business are paid as dividends to protect the planet.
...
Primal Water, by Alkaway, is an at-home water filter that mimics nature and is boosted with molecular hydrogen. It's a game-changer.
Head to Primal-water.com and use the code waterpeople for $100 off your purchase until June 30th, 2025.
...
Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich
Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander
Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll
Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander
Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast
...
Get monthly musings and behind the scenes content from the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter.
You'll get water-centric reading and listening recommendations, questions worth asking, and ways to take action for the wellbeing of Planet Ocean delivered straight to your inbox.
You can stream every Waterpeople episode from your desk.
I can still go for power and not take responsibility for my actions and want a mother. It's all in me, but I now know when I'm doing it. So my aim is not to pretend that I'm the perfect man. My aim is to be spending more time in man energy than boy energy.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Water People, a podcast about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, lauren Hill, joined by my partner, dave Rastovich. Here we get to talk story with some of the most interesting and adept waterfolk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bundjalung Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders, past, present and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet mission is to use business to save our home planet.
Speaker 3:Today we are in conversation with a good friend and an incredible mentor to many around the world, dr Arne Rubenstein. Dr Arne is an internationally recognized expert on childhood development and rites of passage, his programs, which are incredible. I've attended a teacher's training workshop with Arna many years ago and it really did impact my life in the most wonderful way. And Arna's programs have reached more than 250,000 people in more than 20 countries around the world and are now part of over 50 schools throughout Australia.
Speaker 3:Arna's work is so important and so needed and we've seen in our local community because Ana just lives up in the hills from where we call home we've seen that he's taught so many locals how to take a moment and realize that this moment in your life is worth reflecting on, pausing and understanding deeply before you move into the next moment in your life.
Speaker 3:And that rite of passage, mindset, that ability that anna has to take you through a moment where, previous to this moment, you're a different creature. And now, moving through this moment into the next, we will be different, we will have changed in some way, and my experience with Anna centers around the rite of passage of becoming a man, basically growing out of being a boy, growing into being a young man, and all of those challenges and opportunities that lie within that experience. And as a young surfer, I just wish I had known of Anna's work and known Anna when I was a young kid. But it's never too late. And so here we are today having a chat with an incredible human who is really working hard for the betterment of other people, especially our young people in the world. We got a lot out of this conversation and we hope that you do too.
Speaker 2:We always begin the podcast by asking about a time or experience after which you were never the same. Are you willing to share a story like that with us this morning?
Speaker 1:Very happy to Thank you. It's a very rite of passage question, because a rite of passage question afterwards you're never the same and I was actually thinking about the answer to this. And for me that story I'll share is actually about leaving Melbourne and moving up here into the Northern Rivers, into Mullumbimby, and I've never been the same since I've moved up here and I've actually been able to live life the way I wanted to live on the land, to live in a non-conventional house. I lived in a bus for eight years. I lived in a teepee for three years. I live in a shed now and it's completely different from the life that I grew up living in Melbourne in a nice but conventional house, I sort of say. Nowadays we do life non-conventionally but really well. So, yeah, just moving up to this area and finding my own spirit and allowing that to come out and seeing lots of other people doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:What was it about convention that made you want to choose something else?
Speaker 1:I think I just saw convention as one option rather than all of the options. And I've had this saying for a long time why be conventional when there are so many other great options? And for me, I didn't want to grow up, become a specialist doctor, live in a certain house in a certain way, in a certain community. For me it was actually important. I wanted to find my way, that I wanted to do it.
Speaker 3:And yes.
Speaker 1:I did become a doctor, but then I left medicine, which is actually quite a hard thing to do, and went deeply into the rites of passage work and I really feel that's been my calling, like I feel I'm one of the lucky ones I'm doing what I believe I'm supposed to be doing in this lifetime, and being up here in the Northern Rivers really allowed me to find that and I think if I'd stayed in Melbourne I probably wouldn't have found that. I would have had a very different life path.
Speaker 2:Who taught you how to take those big risks, found that I would have had a very different life path.
Speaker 1:Who taught you how to take those big risks? I don't know if I was necessarily taught. I think I was just drawn to that. You know, I went overseas for a year when I finished school and I just saw there's a whole world out here and I want to explore this world. And part of exploring the world is going out into the world. And I didn't travel to sort of easy, conventional places like England or, you know, america, which were quite similar to Australia. I went to out of the way places like the Middle East and parts of Asia where they didn't speak English, and it was that stuff which always interested me the most different cultures, different ways that people lived. It just went on from there.
Speaker 3:It sort of snowballed were you practicing medicine in melbourne before you left?
Speaker 1:uh, I graduated in 1989 and I actually went and did my internship down at geelong geelong hospital because I wanted to surf and I went and I lived down at jan jack up on the cliffs above a break called Steps and lived down there for a couple of years and then I moved up here two years later and worked up here and started practice, opened up a practice here.
Speaker 3:I've always enjoyed remembering when you shared with me years ago about just that experience of being in medicine and being in the system and working in ER spaces or first responding units, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Was that down there also before you came here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, In Victoria. I worked in hospitals, general practice, emergency medicine, delivered babies for a while, and I always say that medicine is actually one of the noble professions and I am a doctor, my father's a doctor, my uncle the noble professions and I am a doctor, my father's a doctor, my uncle's a doctor, my brother's a doctor, it's in my hands. So the profession is noble. But unfortunately the system is not noble and I became very frustrated with the whole system. That was, you know, for what I saw a lot more based around volume of patients, you know, running an effective business so you could make more money, and, you know, overuse of pharmaceuticals and interventions, and I was like it's not actually quite what I want to be doing and we're not even quite what I want to be doing. And then, when I started doing the rites of passage work, you know, I could see how it really changed lives and so I actually consider I'm still a doctor, except instead of working in the system doing curative medicine, I'm working outside the system doing preventative medicine.
Speaker 1:And that's something that really appeals to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember you speaking to that when you'd say that you were seeing, you know, young men and older men coming in having, you know, attempted to take their life or self-harm in different ways, or really struggling in different ways, and you having kind of a, an epiphany or a moment where you saw that you were working at the like, the symptoms and the the other end of this process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's an over representation of young men in emergency departments and whether they've self-harmed deliberately or just done something completely stupid. I mean, there's that thing where young men anything to do with wheels, speed, jumping height, they just can't stay away from it. And where it gets really interesting is if they create a jump or a ramp or whatever they do, and they land it immediate. Next thing they do is go back and make it bigger and higher and harder and it can only end in one way and eventually they end up hurting themselves. You know, and can do that very, very seriously, and I used to ask myself, you know, what are they trying to do? And I also worked up here during schoolies for many years in the emergency department and you know, I just saw legions of young men and young women coming through the emergency department and I actually realized that they are trying to move into the world of adults. But there's no boundaries, there's no facilitation, there's no support. So give them access to alcohol, they'll get blind drug. Give them access to drugs, they'll take way too much. Put them in a party mode, they'll get stupid and go and jump off the roof somewhere or get into a fight. You know, put them in a car and they'll bloody, slide around the corners and have accidents. And I was like, wow, this is. There's something really fundamentally wrong here. And you know, our young men are doing things that are going to impact them for the rest of their lives. And even looking back on my own life, I did lots of stupid things when I was a teenager and they're so stupid when I look back on them that I cringe and I'm like what is that innate need in young men to actually be pushed to actually find their limits, find their boundaries, actually even face death. But they shouldn't be doing it on their own, creating their own thing. It's actually something that we as a community, I believe, have a responsibility to bring into their lives in a way that they grow and learn from, rather than something that has disastrous lifelong consequences.
Speaker 1:And similarly with girls, by the way, I saw so many girls coming into emergency as well, and especially during schoolies, girls who'd, for the for the first time, been away from home, you know, in an apartment, no supervision, access to alcohol, access to drugs, and they'd get drunk and often they'd do something they'd never done before while they were drunk, with someone they'd never met. And I'd see them the next morning in the emergency department and they were going to regret that for the rest of their lives. So you know, I also identified there was a difference between the behaviors of the boys and the girls. The boys would go out and do the stupidest thing they could, whereas the girls would sort of internalize and then get into the most trouble that they could.
Speaker 1:And what was also really interesting in that was, I would say to the girls did you know before whatever you did that it was not a good idea? Did you know it was going to go badly? Was there any sort of voice in there? And the girls did know they had that voice, but they did it anyway. And so I believe if we did one thing for girls which was teach them to listen to that inner voice, that inner knowing, that would be extraordinary. And I'd also say to the boys you know, did you know before you did whatever that was not going to go well, it was going to end badly. The boys would look at me and they'd go no, they didn't even think about it, they just saw glory. So that's also worth Can you relate.
Speaker 2:Is that why the deep laugh?
Speaker 3:I don't know what you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's also worth knowing. So if we think about how do we work with our boys and girls, we need to take those sorts of things into account for what we can do to support them through this such critical time, those teenage years when they've hit puberty, and those next five or six years. If that's managed well, as opposed to if it's a disaster that completely can change the trajectory of the rest of their lives yeah.
Speaker 2:It's such an interesting time, such a tricky time, to be bringing up teenagers. Maybe it always has been, but right now, like in universities for example, we've reversed the gender performance gap since the 70s. In the 70s it was 40% women, 60% men, and now it's the opposite. Men are underperforming, historically speaking, in academic settings, and I feel like that's symptomatic of the way that women's roles have expanded. Opportunities have expanded in really wonderful ways. Expectations have expanded, but maybe that hasn't happened in the same way for men and boys and maybe there is not a lot of clarity around the expectations of masculinity at this particular moment in time. Are you seeing that?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Boys are lost. It's such a difficult time to be a young man. They're being told that the old model doesn't work. And then they've got multiple algorithms on their social media that they're all completely hooked on that. You know, range everywhere from you know Andrew Tate to you know be sensitive and so on. You know it's a complete confusion.
Speaker 1:I went into Coles recently and I was looking for some Epsom salts and there was a boy behind the counter. I said to him, do you have any Epsom salts? And he goes uh, I'm not sure. And then there was a girl. I said you know, do you have any Epsom salts? And he goes yeah, they're halfway down aisle five on the left below such and such. I'll go with you and I'll show you where they are. And I was like, wow, you know.
Speaker 1:You know, in some ways girls are doing very well and boys are really struggling. But even that, you know, there's this whole thing. They talk about toxic masculinity with boys, which is all the influences and I'd love to come back to some of the sort of the roots of that but with girls now we're talking about toxic perfectionism, where the girls are believing they have to be perfect, they have to be perfectly made up. They have to look a certain way, they have to act a certain way. They have to be nice, they have to be good. They have to look a certain way, they have to act a certain way. They have to be nice, they have to be good, they have to know everything, and that is creating so much stress and anxiety. That's off the charts. So you know, the research has shown that the mental health of young people is by far the worst it's ever been.
Speaker 1:And it's very hard for me to find out the exact figures because schools won't give it to me, but somewhere between 30% and 45% of high school students are on daily medication just to go to school, and in some schools in America it's over 50%. Now what is that about when 30% to 50% of our kids have to have medication just to be able to get to school each day?
Speaker 2:I was looking into Dan Cox research. His work highlights the growing social isolation and loneliness for boys and men. In particular, One of his stats 15% of men under the age of 30 say they don't have a single friend. So I feel like that just speaks to the way that boys and men are feeling lost. Boys and men are retreating. Boys and men are falling into these algorithm traps and everything is just.
Speaker 1:But you don't have to have friends anymore because you can just do the whole thing online. You can create an avatar so people just see you the way you want them to see you, not who you actually are. And you can have 10,000 friends 50,000 friends on social media platforms, can have 10,000 friends 50,000 friends on social media platforms and you can spend your evenings killing people and letting out your anger and playing games that have you know sex woven into them, like Grand Theft Auto. You know it's quite extraordinary, and so boys are just getting lost in their rooms on their computers.
Speaker 2:Why are boys especially susceptible? Because we know girls obviously are using this technology too. The mental health impacts are happening, but just maybe in different ways. So what is it about where we're at with masculinity and manhood that makes this yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it's always going to be complex. But these issues didn't start when computers and phones came around, but it's definitely accentuated them. And so we've thrown into the mix. Every boy you know over the age of about 11 now has a mobile phone with social media and access to anything and everything. And so they all access anything and everything, and those devices are completely addictive. So no matter how beautiful and wonderful your boy is, he has basically a highly addictive drug in his hand. So that's definitely not a helping thing. And then on top of that, you've got the whole breakdown of what healthy role models are.
Speaker 1:And boys need older men, I believe, to be in their lives, to teach them, to show them, to talk to them, to share stories with them, all these things.
Speaker 1:But nowadays, if an older man pays attention to young boys, we look on them suspiciously. So you know, men are a lot less likely to say to a kid who lives next door hey, come, and you know I'll show you how to do woodworking in the shed and how to use power tools and tell you stories about when I was growing up, those things that used to happen. I used to go over the road to the old man over there and we used to call him uncle, you know, uncle Laurie, and he was just a beautiful man and most men are. But because of the tragic actions of a few we've lost that whole mentoring thing and instead of, you know, having community where we recognize that elders are as important as the young, we're a much more isolated community. So the young tend to hang out together, the middle-aged hang out together, the elders hang together. It's not actually a healthy ecosystem. Everyone in the ideal scenario is mixed together.
Speaker 2:We see that, the microcosm of that in school, how we group kids by age, and what you see play out sometimes is everyone in the class trying to compete for the like to occupy the same niche, and it becomes very competitive correct in the way that mixed age classrooms operate very differently yeah, so you know I I talk about.
Speaker 1:It's like there's a staircase and each step on the staircase is a different stage of life and when it mixes it's the same in nature. When you get a big enough mix, then it actually creates a healthy ecosystem.
Speaker 3:When you have only one product, like all sugarcane or all salmon in a net, that's when you get disease, that's when you get the salmon actually starting to eat each other and all these problems that occur by not having a healthy ecosystem so I feel like we've been on the diagnosis, you know, acknowledging what the problems are, in the last 10 minutes of chatting, which is really important to do, but I would also like to dive into where we're getting it right, before we go right into your work too, because right now we have one of our nephews who's here.
Speaker 3:He's in his early 20s and he was curious to know, from your perspective, I guess, where we're getting it right in some spaces to a degree, and he comes from Tassie. He's an avid sailor and we love our Finn. He's just a champion of a young man and he he grew up in a heavily sport-centric culture Tassie, victoria, football and he was wanting to know your perspective on sport and the role sport is playing in this country, and perhaps from there we can illuminate any other areas where you feel like we are getting it somewhat good or somewhat right.
Speaker 1:Great, somewhat right, great. Well, we're getting it right by the fact that your 20-year-old nephew is here staying with you and can hear your stories and can go sailing with you and can go surfing with you and can just hang out, you know, with you and Lauren and Minua and be part of a healthy family that's living positively. So, on a micro level, the more that we can be inviting our extended family and their children and friends into our spaces and just being with them is really good. I'm also seeing some really strong shifts in the education system where I work a lot, kids spend more time at school than anywhere else system where I work a lot, kids spend more time at school than anywhere else. And there is slowly a shift happening where the research is showing and schools are recognising that education has to be a lot more than just providing an academic outcome at the end of year 12. In fact, the research shows that your academic outcome is not the main determinant of your future success.
Speaker 1:So we're seeing more and more schools now who are recognising we have responsibility to teach our children resilience, to teach them adaptability, to teach them emotional intelligence, to support them to find a vision to support them, to find who they are, what's important to them, what they're passionate about, and especially with the sort of the younger generation of leaders and headmasters coming through the schools, there is definitely a shift there and I see that as being a really, really healthy thing and I think there is a growing awareness also slowly, but it's happening, because I'm sort of slowly seeing the uptick that the sort of the antidote to technology and the huge influence of technology is human experiences.
Speaker 1:So just spending time together, having dinners without the mobile phones at the table, being in the car and sharing stories, I think there is definitely an awareness and an interest. You know, I think it's been recognised that the whole social media has been a failed experiment and I don't want to go back into the problems, but more and more people are genuinely looking for the solutions and come to the conclusion that we need to be spending time together, we need to be checking in, and when you ask someone how they are, the answer good or not bad is not sufficient. You ask someone how they are, the answer good or not bad is not sufficient. You're properly checking on how you are and people sharing stories, spending time in nature. I think that's where the great opportunity lies, for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've often fantasized that when our nephews and nieces see their grandparents sort of generation sitting on the couch watching TV with an iPad on their lap and an iPhone next to them, there's like three screens in front of them and they're addicted to Facebook, that that is enough of a deterrent for the younger generation to be like I don't want to be doing that and maybe there is a swing of the pendulum that's going to happen because of seeing those older generations addicted to facebook and that kind of daily consumption of that world correct, and we are, in our work, hearing from more and more young people who are talking about wanting to restrict their time online, and so the early adopters and I'd say that's the stage you're at are seeing that they will actually do better if they spend less time, you know, with screens open in front of themselves.
Speaker 3:Is surfing something that you feel is getting it right in some ways. Like you know, it's naturally got what you're talking about inherently in it. Where you're in nature, you're moving your body, you're shoulder to shoulder, you can't take out the tech in the lineup. Well, actually, funnily enough, I saw a guy the other day just down the beach here who had ear pod things in and he was going to surf seven mile here, not a soul around, and he was dealing with whatever it was he was listening to and and dealing with while he was surfing, which tripped me out. But most of us are going out and we're in the lineup with each other and sometimes that's healthy and sometimes it's not. And I know, lauren, you had some questions around this and maybe, because we are all surf rats, we can dive into that for a moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to hone in on surf culture and the sort of like aggressive, patriarchal vibe that we've had in the culture Lineups of the past. There would be a guy, an enforcer. He would punch out fins, he would send people to the beach, he would threaten people with violence if things weren't going the way he thought they should be going in the lineup, and so we've mostly moved past that as a culture mostly, but I feel like we are still in a place where another story, another narrative of respectful order and taking responsibility for our shared spaces hasn't emerged, and so I wanted to ask you, arna, about that space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you two could probably answer the question about the surf culture a lot better than me. Unfortunately, I see the surf. It's extremely crowded these days and very competitive.
Speaker 2:Chaotic really the best.
Speaker 1:Surfers tend to take as many of the ways as they can, and I mean at least one of the things about Byron Bay. I definitely find when we're out in the surf and there's a good number of women that the vibe is very, very different. I still find them, especially the male surf culture it's pretty aggressive, pretty competitive. You know a guy will get a wave. I might be sitting there waiting, but if he can paddle around me and get the next wave again, you know, he's going to do it.
Speaker 1:So it's a shame, because there is a great opportunity in the surf culture to be sort of there are some places where people will take turns and share and acknowledge when someone you know surfs well or a kid does a good turn or something. But that's my feeling I don't know, what do you guys?
Speaker 3:think you could do better because the way and you you hinted at this us perhaps knowing more intricately how that space is going, and I often talk with friends when I'm surfing around here, when we're just in a quiet corner of the coast and there's only a couple of us and you can yarn between waves and give waves to each other and hoot and holler and everything I speak about with them how in other parts of the world, like hawaii, you don't get not all of hawaii, but in a lot of the lineups you don't get that kind of hooting and hollering and support, overt supportiveness of each other, where you're like yeah, man, that was a great wave, how great that you got so barreled, and there's a lot that is lost when we don't do that. And so I'm just thinking of like examples that might come to your mind where or how we could do better. Because I see that as one way where we can do better in lineups when we we cut through any tension in the lineup by hooting someone when they go past you and being stoked for them, and then they'll probably be inclined to do the same for you when you get a nice wave. And there are other ways where you've seen in your work, where you you understand through.
Speaker 3:So much of your work is about sitting with people and like acknowledging each other, and in a lot of lineups what we don't do well is acknowledge each other, and I'm a shocker for that. In crowd lineups I usually paddle really wide. I don't acknowledge anyone, I just want to get a few waves and then get out of there quite quickly. But surely there's got to be a better way for us to do that. Have you got any ideas on?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean, I personally, every time I see a kid who gets away when they're paddling back out, I'll say that was really good or what you know, just acknowledging the kids first of all.
Speaker 1:And the other thing I've learned this thing that when there's a guy who's trying to paddle around me, when I'm clearly, you know, should have so-called priority, and they're trying to paddle, we're both paddling I'll turn to him, I'll go hey, how you going today? You got a few waves and it's extraordinary I see them. Stop trying. So just creating that small connection of hey, I'm a person, you're a person, I'm asking you how you are, and they'll say something then, all of a sudden they're not trying to paddle around me.
Speaker 1:You know, like if I'm a complete stranger you'd probably try and paddle around me, but if we're out together and we know each other, we're not going to try and paddle around. So creating that connection is a really big thing. But I'm also I've been long time interested in how back in the sort of 60s and 70s where people were on long boards, it was about how far could you go on the wave and at the end you'd turn around and they'd sort of bow to the wave and then the whole short and you know, listen to that sort of music and the whole short board culture which is pretty rah, rah, rah, and you get a wave and you slash back against the wave as hard as you can and if they make it to the end of the wave, they sort of they make it to the end of the wave they sort of give it a.
Speaker 3:It's like a fuck you sort of thing. Yeah, I know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:And so you know that's the actual who says fuck you to a wave. That's just done that. But you know, I do think there are some inherent issues in there and it's quite a hard thing to do, I know. For me personally, my main priority when I go surfing now is somewhere that's not crowded Quality. My main priority when I go surfing now is somewhere that's not crowded. Quality of ways can be way down, but if it's not crowded and I'm with a few mates, it's like for me that's totally worth it.
Speaker 2:In your book, arna and also I've heard you speak about this in a few different places you clarify the difference between boy psychology and man psychology. I feel like we see a lot of mostly one more than the other at play in the lineup. Can you talk us through the difference?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. Well, boy psychology is where I'm the center of the universe. It's all about me. I just want to get as many ways I can. I don't care about anyone else. You know I want power and if I'm a better surfer, I'll just take as much as I can. I take no responsibility for my actions. I'll drop in on someone and then tell them to rack off.
Speaker 1:Boy psychology is I want a mother to do everything for me and I often look at the ocean as sort of like is the ultimate mother energy and can be quite abusive towards the ocean. That's sort of directly into a surfing analogy. And healthy man psychology is I'm actually part of the universe, I'm part of this community and my actions affect others. And if I'm in that space then I'm going to be sharing waves and encouraging others. And if I have power, it doesn't mean more for me, it means I can do more good in my community. And, wow, I could actually teach and support some of the people who are coming up in the whole thing and I can still get plenty of waves.
Speaker 1:Man psychology you know, if I do something wrong I have to admit it. Like if I drop in on someone I need to say sorry, not not be angry with them because I've dropped in on them. And also, you know, I'm not after a mother, I'm after a relationship. So surfing is all about having a relationship with the ocean. It's actually a lot more about than just the waves being out there, seeing the birds, looking at the beauty, you know, hooting other people who do well. So you know, I see a lot of boy psychology out there. I see, actually sometimes there are guys sitting in the lineup and they're just angry. They're just angry and they don't even want the whole wave, they just want the steep takeoff and a few turns and then they're off and leave the rest of the wave. Who cares? It's like they're just going for that thing. They're not making love to the wave, they're just taking what they can get and then go for the next one.
Speaker 1:We see that played out a lot in young men's behaviours. And because we've got now online dating and things like that, the whole dating thing is no longer about how can I meet someone who I relate to and have a relationship with and maybe end up having sex with them. If it's really right and even better, making love, it can be now just get on your phone, swipe, left until you find someone, go out with them, have sex, never see them again.
Speaker 2:Transactional, Transactional. It's extraordinary I found this stat 51% of men aged 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person. How does that change social dynamics? When our boys are going to forget how to be with someone in person. I mean our girls too, but I was just really shocked by that be with someone in person.
Speaker 3:I mean our girls too, but I was just really shocked by that. Yeah, well, thankfully we got surfing. That's how we've met and how so many great relationships we know have started. Anna, I really have quoted you for years. When I am sitting with a nephew or younger grommet or someone my own age too, we're having a proper talk, and I love your line about the difference between being a man and a boy is that when you're a man, you know when you're acting like a boy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that just cuts through the crap so well. Is there more you can speak to when we say that to each other? Because I feel like I've said that to friends over the last decade since I came up to the land and was with you with one of your training courses, and I just have found that so useful.
Speaker 1:Well, the model I talked about earlier about the difference between a boy and a man. And what I say is that now that I am technically a man, I actually do know when I'm behaving like a boy and I can't pretend I'm the perfect man. I can still act like I'm the center of the universe and I can still go for power and not take responsibility for my actions and want a mother. It's all in me. But I now know when I'm doing it. So my aim is not to pretend that I'm the perfect man. My aim is to be spending more time in man energy than boy energy, and be spending more time in man energy than boy energy, and more and more time in man energy and less and less time in boy energy. Yeah, it's still with me, but I do know. And because I know, I then have the potential to choose to not stay in that behaviour and move into the man.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing I've done since I saw you there on the land and been working on now that I'm 61 years old, if I is I've extended the model from boy to man, to elder, and I would say that elder is as different from man as man is from boy. So, for example, where boy is about power and man is about building empires. Elder is, I don't want to build empires anymore. It's much more about being peaceful, mentoring and supporting the next generation as they're coming up, and it's no longer about being right or wrong as an elder, it's about just being present. So that's something that I'm really exploring, this whole thing about how to be a healthy elder.
Speaker 3:That's fast. That's really fascinating. Is there an age that you, like, can generally look at where that starts to emerge, that elder role?
Speaker 1:well, I actually think it starts to emerge somewhere in the mid 40s and I think also a bit technical here that there is a stage between man and elder. And it's that time between you know, let's say early mid-40s, to you know 60, early 60s, and I call it magi, which is the Sufi word for wizard, and in that space you've got one foot in elder and you've got one foot in man.
Speaker 2:So you know, Is that why the crisis? Why the midlife crisis?
Speaker 1:well, it's definitely part of it. Yeah, but in magic I'm still strong enough, but I'm not strong like I was when I was 25 and I've got some wisdom, but I don't have the wisdom of a you know, a great grandfather. So it's actually a really beautiful, powerful time and we can do a lot of good in that space. But once again, one of the roles of the elders is to keep those in the middle ages and in power kind of in check. And when we don't have healthy elders, the ones who then get into positions of power actually end up becoming megalomaniacs and it becomes all about them. And I've got power. So now how much power can I get? And you know, once again, that for me, is what we see with the breakdown of having the healthy stages and the entire community together.
Speaker 2:If you've enjoyed listening to the conversation so far, consider also subscribing to Water People on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It'll help other people find the show and, if you're feeling inspired, leave us a review. We love hearing from you. And now a word from the folks who help make the podcast possible.
Speaker 2:Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Founded by Yvonne Chouinard in 1973, patagonia is a surf and outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, california. As a certified B Corp and a founding member of 1% for the planet, the company is recognized internationally for its product quality and environmental activism, as well as its contributions of nearly $230 million to environmental organizations. Its unique ownership structure reflects that the Earth is its only shareholder. Profits not reinvested back into the business are paid as dividends to protect the planet. Learn more at patagoniacomau.
Speaker 2:Our ancestors drank natural water from streams, rivers and waterfalls, but most of us don't have access to readily available natural drinking water anymore. Primal Water by Alkaway is an at-home water filter that mimics nature and is boosted with molecular hydrogen. It's a game changer. The team at Alkaway are on a mission to reduce harm caused by tap water and plastic bottled water. They're currently working to protect World Heritage-listed Springbrook Falls just up the road from us which is under threat from water mining. Feel alive with Primal Water and support the work to protect precious places like Springbrook. Head to alkawaycom and use the code WATERPEOPLE one word for $100 off your purchase until June 30th, or $50 off after June 30th 2025. Primal Water by Alkaway. Primal Water by Alkaway. You've said that the world is currently run by uninitiated men. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not allowed to say any names because people get upset about it, but there's a few around.
Speaker 1:They think they're the centre of the universe. Even this thing about our country, it's just about our country. Make our country the greatest country and ignore all the other countries. I mean, we are one world. You know that's a behaviour of an unhealthy leader, a leader who can never admit that they're wrong, who's happy to you know, prepared to just lie publicly and defend that and then attack people who disagree with them. You know a leader who would think that there's just unlimited resources in the earth, or don't worry if they're unlimited, but we need them now, so we'll just take it now and not worry about the future. I think leaders who are prepared to go to war you know how is it in? You know these days that we can still think it's okay, when we've got a problem, to go out and kill the other person or to kill as many of them as we can that to me they are boys running the world them as we can, that to me they are boys running the world.
Speaker 2:What you're saying is really radical, though You're saying in the past we very much equated masculinity with a kind of aggression, violence. It's very. Masculinity has been, in a mainstream way, woven into militarism and powerful leaders who take a particular way of managing the people around them. But what you're saying is maybe that is counter. Those things are actually counter to this emerging idea of what masculinity should be, what it means to be a man now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, one of the things is we, and you know, rites of passage are about what's needed now, not what was needed, you know, 200 years ago. So 200 years ago, if I lived in a, in a jungle or in a forest or whatever and I was a man, I was probably going to end up becoming a hunter or a warrior and I needed to defend my, my family and my community and I needed to go out and catch food and provide, and it was a pretty clear thing then. And so what they would do, the rites passage were, you know, appropriate to that.
Speaker 1:I think our biggest challenge today is how are we going to keep this world alive, how are we going to not destroy it and have major catastrophe? How can we make it so that we don't have a half or two thirds of the world's population, you know, not having access to sufficient medical care, clean drinking water, safety? You know that's what we should be doing. We have all the resources and all the knowledge and all the capacity and all the technological capability to have the most incredible, beautiful, peaceful, loving world, and yet we have major wars raging in multiple parts of the world. It's just extraordinary.
Speaker 3:To me. That leads me to the start of this. So the rite of passage as a boy to man and for people listening because we jumped forward to the elder sort of rite of passage. We didn't really dig into that yet, but I'd like to backtrack to what we look for in our young boys at that age where they're about to transition from being young boys to young men, what to look out for and then what options. We have to do something in that moment where we need to acknowledge that time in their life so that in a couple decades, when those kids who are now 10 years old are in their 30s and 40s, we don't just have another wave of megalomaniacs and boys trying to run the world. So what do we look for and where can we go to bring our boys to a rite of passage?
Speaker 1:Well, look, I've always believed the interesting thing is that every Indigenous community recognised you have to do something with your boys to support and assist that transition from boy to young man and it had to be appropriate to the community then. And if they were going to become warriors and hunters, they would do something which would include a challenge where the boy had to face severe pain or potential of death. Because that was appropriate then. And I think today there are differences but there are strong similarities. Our boys are still going to move from boy to man, but we live in a very diverse community and what we can't do is say if you're going to be a good man, you have to drink lots of beer or you have to drink no beer. We can't say you have to dress a certain way. We can't say you have to dress a certain way. We can't say you have to have certain beliefs. It is very much about who are you and one of the big things, by the way, in the Indigenous communities was that they believe that every boy and girl is born with a spirit, or you can call it natural gifts and talents, and the role of the elders and the carers and the parents is to help that child find their spirit and find their gifts and bring that out into the world, and I believe that doesn't change over time. So we have to be looking at ways that we can support our young people to find out who they are, but also to live by values rather than directives. So a directive is you know how you have to dress, what you can drink, what music you have to hear. I believe that's very unhealthy. A value is you know, an understanding that you're a part of a community, being respectful to the people within your community, having awareness about what's going on with you. So I believe the work has to be based on values and that there is actually a model and a framework to create healthy rites of passage, whether it's for boys or for girls. That model in involves taking a period of time to actually acknowledge that this transition is occurring and taking those young ones out of their everyday life, away from home, away from school, and it probably happens around puberty or in the couple of years after puberty, so somewhere between 13 and 17,.
Speaker 1:Having a dedicated period of time to put them through a transition and say, in this period of time we're going to acknowledge the fact that you've moved from a big child to a young adult and you're going to be, you're starting your journey as an adult and then in that time, for them to be in the presence of elders and to have an opportunity to hear the stories of the elders, so it can't be the elders aren't there to lecture the kids about how they're supposed to be. The elders need to be there to share their stories and let the kids hear what went well for them, where they mucked up and got in trouble and failed. You know all of those various stories. They have to hear stories about relationships and sex, you know. Otherwise they're going to learn it from porn online and believe that what they're seeing is real and that's how they're supposed to be. So the whole sharing of stories is really important.
Speaker 1:We have to create healthy challenges for the young ones so that they're not going out and creating their own in cars or drugs or fights and things like that. We have to do a process where we actually support the young ones to create a vision for what sort of adult they want to be, what values are important to them, what sort of relationships do they want to be? What values are important to them? What sort of relationships do they want to have? And, by the way, when you get young people in this sort of environment, take away their phones for a period of time, ideally do it in nature, share stories, do a challenge and then ask them what sort of adults they want to be. The answers they give you are beautiful, are profound, are incredibly deep. It's in these kids. We just don't see it when they're in this ultra competitive, mobile phone driven, whatever environment.
Speaker 1:So they're the first three things a story, or sharing stories, an appropriate challenge or challenges, creation of a vision.
Speaker 1:And then the fourth one is the elders recognising and naming the gifts talent, genius and spirit that they see in each of the young ones. And when we do that, when we get a teenage boy or a teenage girl and then, in front of a community, their parent and other elders and even their peers, tell them what gifts they see in them, what they're proud of, what they love about them that changes their lives. And what we're actually saying is we admire, are proud of and love you, for you, for being you. We don't want you to pretend to be like you're something else. We actually see you have these gifts and we want these gifts coming out into the community, and when we do that share stories, create a challenge, make a vision and honour their gifts and their spirit, that creates an incredible transformation. And then the only other final step, which is critically important, is that the wider community knows that they've been through this and is involved with it, and is able to actually recognise that we're now dealing with a young adult rather than a child.
Speaker 3:So amazing. I remember back to being on the mountain there with a bunch of men and being led by you, Anna, and specifically that moment where you sit down and you have someone being seen and the you know, the uncles and the dad and the other men sitting around and acknowledging those gifts and that person. One of the things that really stuck with me from that was how you would ask people to say nothing when they receive those comments and supportive comments from everyone, and I really latched onto that because I've noticed that I've always done that in my life where someone might say something complimentary to me and I will try and avoid it Basically yeah basically deflect it through thinking I'm being humble, but what I'm actually doing when someone says hey man, I really like that.
Speaker 3:You did that thing for me the other day and I'll say oh yeah, it's nothing, no worries, don't worry about it, or that kind of thing Off the cuff statement. It's so subliminal, it's so unconscious. You just say it thinking you're being humble, but actually what you taught me was by saying nothing, just hearing it, or even just saying thank you at the end. It gave me the experience where I was hearing people say something kind to me and acknowledging that they had perhaps opened up and been vulnerable enough to share a feeling they had, perhaps a deep feeling they had with me, instead of saying oh no, worries, don't worry about it, and just dismissing their moment of being vulnerable and kind and considerate. Just hearing people and actually taking a moment to stop and look at them in the eye and say thank you, thanks for that kind word, and then just moving on. I found that really helpful and I really hope that this conversation will leave people with those kind of tools.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many boys have spoken to me at the end of that in the work I do and said I've never had anybody say that stuff to me. All I ever get told is how shit I am. You know, and we look at the problems. When kids are just being told all their problems, that doesn't bring out the healthy side of them. But when we actually can honor their gifts and their genius and their spirit and really lift them up, you just see a different kid. And there is one other thing I do want to go to. If we're going to be going to elders, I need to say it first, because I've been sort of, you know, exploring rites of passage and the different elements of rites of passage and particularly what happens when we don't have healthy rites of passage.
Speaker 1:And something I'm really interested in you know we talk a lot about boys but we can't, you know, the girls' rites of passage. They're part of you know, they impact very much and what I see is when we don't have rites of passage for boys or girls, I've come to realize that, you know, initially one of the key aims of a boy's rite of passage was to humble them. They were humbled by the experience and with girls, their rites of passage were different and they were empowered by their experience. And when we don't create rites of passage, when the boys don't get humbled, they end up entitled and arrogant. They end up thinking it's all about them, they all. They end up thinking that women are just for their use and pleasure.
Speaker 1:And when the girls don't go through a healthy rite of passage and don't get empowered, instead they become small and think that they're not as important or they're not as good or they have to acquiesce to whatever. And so you know, for me that's where we end up in a society that's ruled by boys and girls not having, you know, women not having appropriate influence, as opposed to what I believe is a world that's run by good men and powerful women together. And I guess you know I even extend that to you know we obviously have a lot of diversity now. We have gender diversity and much more recognition there. And the other thing about a healthy rite of passage is it helps a person discover themselves and be recognized by their community. And once again, when we don't have rites of passage, there's a whole percentage of our community who are struggling to be comfortable or to know who they are and are completely not recognized by their community, and that creates a whole huge set of issues for them as well.
Speaker 2:Maybe many of us are familiar with the concept of a rite of passage from the transition of being a child into being a young adult. What about the rites of passage that would have happened in traditional cultures at other stages, other phases of life? Can you speak to those?
Speaker 1:Yeah well, rites of passage are basically to support a person going through a transformation from one stage of life to the next, and so there are many rites of passage. When we leave home, it's a rite of passage. When we, if we get into a relationship, it's a rite of passage. If we become a parent, it's a rite of passage. If we get a new job or get a promotion in our job, that's a rite of passage. When we stop working, that's a rite of passage. When we stop working, it's a rite of passage. When we become an elder, when we're dying and in a traditional community, all of those stages would be managed in a healthy way through healthy rites of passage and when we don't do them, all of those things can instead become really traumatic. Becoming an adult can be traumatic. Leaving home can be traumatic. Getting into a relationship can be traumatic. Having a child leaving work A lot of people leave work and they're completely lost and feel like they're no longer valid or worthy and that can be traumatic.
Speaker 1:So the question is therefore around how can we be creating healthy rites of passage at all of those stages? And I've recently turned 60, or 18 months ago now. So I'm well into my 60s and there was nothing that I saw that would really support me in that transition into the early stages of elderhood. So I actually created my own rites of passage because you know for me and you know being who I am and the work I do, it's like, hey, I want to do this. Well, I don't want to just end up going, oh gosh, I'm old now and I'm gonna die at some stage, and getting really depressed and anxious about that and definitely.
Speaker 1:I believe that if we support people through those stages well, it makes a huge difference. You know, one quick story in one of the Native American Indian traditions in the communities was that the men who would often have ponytails and be on their horses out hunting or doing whatever they were doing and fighting that when they got to a certain age they would cut off their ponytails and stick them up inside the teepee and from that time those men would no longer go out hunting and fighting but they would sit in the teepee in the circle of elders helping to manage and support the community and do what the elders did. And I'm like, how interesting. And a lot of men have this great fear of stopping work and building empires and, you know, want to just keep on doing that as long as they can. But in doing that they'll often hold down the young and stop them from being able to rise up to their position because the men are trying to hold on.
Speaker 1:In my business right now I'm passing on a whole heap of the Rights of Passage Institute to the younger generation who I've known for many years and worked with and said okay, now it's your time, you take it on. I'm going to step aside and just do small parts of work, but I'm no longer going to be the boss and running the whole thing and in charge of it. It's your turn, and I think that's very healthy for me. It frees me up and it's also very healthy for them and gives them the opportunity to step up into a new and more responsible role.
Speaker 2:Most of us probably haven't had the opportunity to have an experience of a formal rites of passage being seen by our community in those other stages that you mentioned. Would you be willing to talk us through the rite of passage that you created for yourself, Because a lot of us are going to be responsible for stepping up and creating these opportunities? Sure Well.
Speaker 1:I sort of cobbled it together in a number of different stages and I went on a number of retreats where I really focused on what sort of elder do I want to be?
Speaker 1:What do I even just that, thinking about what is an elder, what would a good elder look like to me, what do I need to let go of? And that's when I started writing this model of elder behavior rather than man behavior. So that was one of the things I did. I went to a number that I happened to have in the six weeks before my 60th a number of events. I went to two wedding one wedding, sorry two 60th, a bar mitzvah and a funeral all in that period, which I sort of looked at and sort of really looked at how they were right of passage and made me realise that on the staircase everybody can be moving at the same time. It's like that's what's supposed to be happening.
Speaker 1:And the other thing I did is I did a vision quest on my land where I went and sat out in the bush for four days with no food and had some water but I only had three cups of water on the third day and just really went inside and waited to see what came up, and that was enormously powerful. And then the final thing I did was I had a big 60th celebration on my land where I invited all these different people from around the country and around the world and different stages of my life, and we had a three day celebration up on my property and all of those things. For me, you know, there was all the events I did, the personal explorations I did, the community involvement. I feel have, I really feel I'm in my 60s now, I'm in an elder stage and I'm excited about it, yeah, so that's really helpful.
Speaker 2:So, looking back from your entry into the sixties, if you were looking back into moving into your forties, which is what I'm about to be doing what processes or situations did you or would you have put yourself in to walk into this new season of life?
Speaker 1:It was much more about a growing stage with them. You know, teaching them things, showing them things, taking them sailing, listening to their day, you know when we're having dinner, so that was very much a part of it. And it was also for me about planting gardens and fruit trees. So I don't know that it was so much for me a rite of passage then, but it was definitely a strong stage in my life that's different from now. I don't know that it was so much for me a rite of passage then, but it was definitely a strong stage in my life that's different from now.
Speaker 1:I don't want to build any more empires. I'm trying to get out of them. You know I don't want to work big, long hours, whereas back in my 40s I was happy to do that. So yeah, I'm very aware I'm in what I call a different season of life now.
Speaker 3:Are there things that you would say we can look out for? Because a lot of the time we will have a moment like an illness that will tap us on the shoulder and be like hey, time to pay attention when we've been just running hot for a long time or not restful or whatever it is, or there'll be some sort of crisis or moment. Are there things in your experience that we can look out for that are in that preventative way where we can, before the shit hits the fan, we can know? Oh, maybe it is time for me to go and do my version of sitting in the bush for days and feeling inwards for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know I always talked about this idea of this staircase and we move up steps and Rats of Passage support us on those steps. But I also believe that at the same time as these steps are happening in life there's a spiral downwards that we will all experience and that spiral downwards involves disappointment, loss of dreams, betrayal, death of loved ones, aging, all of those things. And in the same way, those things can be managed well. A loss of a loved one can be really it's always sad, but we can actually face into it, deal with it and become more loving because of it and really honor that person who's lost, who's gone. Or we can just shut down, never talk about it, never acknowledge it, just internalize it and let it do its thing inside us, which I don't recommend. And same with an illness. You know, lauren, if I can say, I know you've had a mosquito-borne virus that's been bugging you for a while now and and you know that can be managed well or badly.
Speaker 1:So, managed badly, you try and deny it, you get angry about it, you get grumpy about it, you shut down about it, which you know in part will probably happen but also it's a great opportunity to think about what's important.
Speaker 1:It's a great opportunity to internalize. It's a great opportunity. If you're a journal, it's a journal. It's a great opportunity to rest and it's a great opportunity to think about what you really appreciate in life. So all of these things can be used in different ways.
Speaker 1:And then, on top of that, you know, I think, if, if we're feeling a calling like you've asked me a couple of times you've said to me hey, I'm, you know, I'm about to turn 40 and you know, and so clearly, if it's a significant thing for you, and then it's worth saying well, what do I want to do? And how fabulous that you're going away with a group of your besties to surf. But then how do you even take that the next level and go? Well, I'm going away and I won't have to do all these things. I will get much more time to rest, but it's also a great time for reflection and hopefully, with your besties, you can share some really beautiful deep stories and conversations.
Speaker 1:And all of you may at some stage when you're out there, you know, on the boat in the Maldives, you might somewhere go. Hey, what about this evening? We just sit for an hour and then talk about what's our vision. Where would we like to be in five years time? What are we wanting to do? Is there anything we're wanting to let go of and not do anymore? And then you may, even at the very end of the trip, sit in a circle and honour each of the girls. The women can just sit there quietly and not say anything for a few minutes, while the rest of you just tell them what you admire, are proud of and love about them.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I want to do.
Speaker 1:Oh, surprise, surprise, proud of and love about them.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I want to do surprise, surprise. That's why you've looped everyone into a trapped space.
Speaker 3:They think they're just going on a surf trip, but what you're doing?
Speaker 1:is you're taking an activities based event which is going on a boat, going surfing, and a lot of people just do that, get great waves, come home, that's it. They're happy going with the next thing and you're now making it a transformational process which is going away, not having mobile phones, sharing stories. The challenge will be there because you're away and you're in big waves and all that and also making a vision and doing an honoring and recognition of the gifts and spirits of each other. When you do that, something magic happens. That's actually the rite of passage framework, so I'd be very interested to hear how that goes.
Speaker 3:That's so fantastic. I love that, anna. I love that you've shared that and that people will be listening to this and thinking of their own ways to incorporate that into their life. And I can't help but think that every surf is a tiny version of that, is a tiny opportunity to do that, when we go to the beach and like, okay, why am I here, why am I on the shore about to go into the water? What is it that's brought me here? And, yeah, that there's those tiny moments, those opportunities every day. And then those are those moments where it's obvious we need a bigger a dedicated dedicated version of that, and making that happen is just great.
Speaker 2:It's really helpful to hear you reflect back from 60s to 40s. It's just so valuable to have a longer scope of time because in this season of life and I'm interested in 40s, not so much because it feels like a significant age to me, but because there are a lot of preconceptions about what middle age means much because it feels like a significant age to me, but because there are a lot of preconceptions about what middle age means, what it looks like, what it feels like, often very negative, often very busy and mired in monotony. Um, and so it's really. It was really great to hear you talk about how that ends and you feel very differently yeah, yeah, it's just very used.
Speaker 2:It's very useful, yeah, so thank you yeah, yeah, there are.
Speaker 1:There are stages beyond and you know it. I look at it, it's like each stage is a new opportunity and and how can we do each stage as best as we can and each stage will have its challenges. You know, I'm in, as I say, in my elder thing, death becomes a reality and I feel now death has me in its sights. That doesn't mean I feel like I'm going to fall over and die tomorrow or this year, but at some stage it's going to happen. But that gives me a choice. I can now be anxious and depressed about the fact that I now know I'm going to die, or I can go. Well, I'm going to die, so I'm going to have the bloody, best, most loving, you know, time I can between now and then, because I don't know when it's going to happen. So I'm going to live life to the fullest. You know we have those choices and each stage, you know, I know it's hard having young children. I've been there. It's incredibly hard. It's also incredibly beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The things they do and the things they say, and you know it's how it goes. Yeah, and I'd love for you to speak to rites of passage as regenerative community contributions. What does that word mean to you in the context of your work? Regenerative?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's such a powerful word. I'm great, so happy you brought that into it. So rites of passage are not just for the individual, they're for the whole community and they regenerate. They give energy and power to the community and bring the community together. So there's a group in America, the Mescalero Apache Indians, who run a rite of passage for their girls and they've been doing it for about 40 years again because they were stopped from doing it and since they've been doing it it's grown their community enormously and it regenerates the community.
Speaker 1:I'm doing a program with the bachelor community in Queensland, an Aboriginal community who approached me eight years ago and said, look, we've got a problem with our boys and we want to do rites of passage. We haven't been allowed to do them. We haven't done them here for 200 years. I'm like, oh my gosh. And we had this big talk and I agreed with Uncle Glenn the elder that we would talk about the framework, because the framework of a rite of passage is always the same. There's always stories, a challenge, a vision and a recognition of spirit. But they had to bring the culture and share it and do it in the way that was appropriate for their community and since we've done it.
Speaker 1:It's grown that community. There are bachelor men who've been living outside of bachelor country and never been back on bachelor country until now, and so the community comes in. And even the land where we're doing it, which is a 600-acre plot of land in a national park on the Great Sandy Strait, looking over at Fraser Island, it was a public piece of land. After we did that first rite of passage in 2018, they wrote a letter and I supported an application to the government, and the Butchella community now has a rolling lease a 40-year rolling lease over that land and only Butchella people can come there and it's for cultural use and they can bring people in to create rites of passage and different events there.
Speaker 1:And now we're talking about turning that piece of land into a national training centre for Indigenous communities from around the world Sorry, from around the country, to start with, let's not get too far ahead who want to be bringing rites of passage back into their community. So just by doing this work, it creates this energy of its own. Even one more example of a regenerative rite of passage is funerals. I recently went to the funeral of a good friend's father, and you think, how can a funeral be regenerative. Well, there were so many people there and I saw people there who I went to school with and haven't seen for decades, and it was so beautiful to catch up with them and to make a commitment to keeping contact. And you know, I saw all sorts of things happening, at even a funeral that was actually giving energy to the whole community.
Speaker 3:That's so true. I just was a part of the paddle out and circle that we did for Jack McCoy, a great surf filmmaker, one of the greatest, if not the greatest in the surfing world, who just left his body, is 76 years old and had a long battle with lung health the last decade or so, and we all got together at Scott's Head and and had a circle on land and then we had a circle out in the water and it was the same actually.
Speaker 3:it was great because it was an opportunity, people that let out their grief and bubble up those feelings of like, oh wow, he did mean something to me and in this particular way, and then for people to just hang out and share that with each other, have a laugh as well, because we we all had funny Jack McCoy moments, but at the end of the day everyone left with a rekindled sense of friendship with each other Correct and multiple generations. I got to sit with Morris Cole, who's you know such a figurehead in the underground surfing world, who was with Jack McCoy and Wayne Lynch surfing and making surf films in the 70s you know that's 50 years ago now and I got to sit there and listen to his stories and relate to him and be like, oh wow, we've got so much in common even though we're, you know, decades apart in age and I really hear you with that. It is an opportunity to regenerate yeah, how fabulous yeah yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3:I hadn't thought of that, and I think that's one of the reasons why we are sitting down and having these kind of conversations with friends and people who have so much experience like yourself, anna, is so that when we have these moments happening in our culture, in our communities, that are kind of happening unconsciously, like we do, like that, for example, we do a paddle out and we think, okay, we're going to go into the water and we're going to acknowledge that that person's gone now, but what else is actually happening in that moment? And having the language and the understanding that you are able to communicate is so useful, because I feel like we will now step forward into the next circle that we do as water people. This is a true ritual now among surfers around the world. Well, this is a true ritual now among surfers around the world.
Speaker 1:We'll go there with that idea that not only are we acknowledging that person, but we're also acknowledging each other and the role we play in each other's lives now and into the future, and their story and our own stories and the stories from before. And yeah, it weaves the community together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't help but think that that's such a common feeling throughout everything you share and everything you do is that you have this ability to be living and carrying out your actions while, at the same time, having an awareness that floats above and around and underneath those actions, and I don't know if that's something that you have consciously cultivated in your life or is just who you are. Can you speak to that in any way? Is that something you've worked?
Speaker 1:worked on. Uh well, I'd like to think it's a bit of both in there. You know I, my mother, was very community-minded. In fact, at her funeral was extraordinary how many of her old people employees had worked as a secretary or a cleaner, you know, 30, 40 years ago came to the to the funeral and shared with me about how much respect and love they had for my mother and how every time they would come and work she would give them lunch and a cup of tea and a biscuit. And you know that was my mother.
Speaker 1:And so on my land, anyone who comes, they get a cup of tea and if they're there for a meal we have a meal, and once a week we have a lunch with everyone on the land and just have a check-in. And so I do cultivate intentionally. I do also do it out of, you know, knowledge and respect and love for my mother who's now passed. And and I think you know even these things about I see that when we go away, if I'm in a car driving with someone you know, we can talk rubbish three hours. We can spend half an hour, an hour of that conversation actually having a check-in where we just listen to the other person and then they just listen to us and getting young people and asking them to share about their vision and who they wanna be, or honoring them. I just find it brings so much to them, but it also brings so much to me, and so, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:With my sons I'll start doing it and they'll go. Dad, we're not on camp now, but you know, I am going over to Vancouver and I'll be with my sons in two weeks time and my son and oldest son and I we're just going to go on a road trip and we're going to go wherever he wants to go and do whatever he wants to do. So I think you know this is something that's not just about what happens out there. It's also about how we are in our own lives.
Speaker 2:It's about marking moments, isn't it? It's about wrangling back our attention that can be scattered to so many things, especially in this middle season of life, especially when you're a teenager, with competing technological devices trying to steal attention. It's about knowing ourselves. This work is about knowing ourselves in the context of a community, and that strikes me as extremely radical at this moment in time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we need community. We sort of have been threatening to talk about elders for quite a while in this and I'll just go briefly there. You know our elders have such an important role and in many ways they've been discarded. And so what are they doing? They're getting in their RVs and heading off for the northern climbs or they're on the golf course, whereas I often talk about, you know, the role of the elders and the young, especially grandparents and grandchildren. They say that grandparents and grandchildren have a special bond because they have a common enemy.
Speaker 1:And it's so interesting when you get the elders together with the young, you look what happens.
Speaker 1:The elders or the grandparents can see the young and they have patience and time for them and they tell them how much they love them and how fabulous they are, and whereas the parents are busy and need to be doing their own thing. But also, when the young and the elders get together, it gives the elders purpose and energy, both of which they need. So it's a perfect relationship. Plus, it creates space for the ones in the middle, the parents, to go off and do their glorious things, and so it works all around. But when that community gets broken down, the parents are having to spend all this time entertaining and being with their kids, so these days they're defaulting to iPads and technology, and the parents are all exhausted and don't get a break, and the elders are nowhere to be seen, and the kids are not getting that fabulous knowledge and hearing the stories which are so valuable from the elders are nowhere to be seen, and the kids are not getting that fabulous knowledge and hearing the stories which are so valuable from the elders.
Speaker 1:So I strongly believe that, you know, one of the more important things that we can do is actually, you know, it's an education around the importance and necessity of elders.
Speaker 2:For those of us who have elders who aren't present or who have gone off in the RV and are having their own independent adventures, how do you recommend that we cultivate eldership in our lives if it isn't by bloodline?
Speaker 1:Well, I think once again it starts with the individual. I have a number of elders in my life who are not in my bloodline. Well, I think once again it starts with the individual. I have a number of elders in my life who are not in my bloodline and I chase them up. Yeah, you know, I know dave, you have elders, you know people like you know dick van stralen and you know elders in the surfing community and I have no doubt that they are a valuable input in your life. But I imagine you've had to, you know, you kind of follow them up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a pest. I'm a pest all the time with those guys, but you can see how it lights them up and how useful it is for me when I want to know their stories. I love like bumping in and hanging out with Rusty Miller in our area here and just peppering him with questions about what it was like surfing in the 70s in Hawaii or what it's like various stages of your life, and I see how much he lights up and then I realise, oh, it gives him energy. It gives him and I'm not being a pest, actually it's like it stokes him out and it gives me perspective.
Speaker 1:He will have gone home after seeing you and be saying to you know, he's like oh, I just had such a fantastic time with Dave and we just chatted nonstop and it was amazing, it's brilliant, I love it, I feel great, you know, because it is, it's healthy both ways. And so, you know, if we can bring grandparents in, if we can find elders who we talk to just spending time with them, I believe it's a really, really valuable in every direction.
Speaker 2:Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you, oh, we could go for days here. I know, I know we have to create an end point.
Speaker 1:The only thing I would add is that if people are interested in our work, it's the Rites of Passage Institute Rites spelled R-I-T-E-S. Rites of Passage Institute and we run camps up here in the Northern Rivers. We start with seven-year-olds. We have overnight camps called Young Warriors, with boys or girls with mum or dad. We have camps for 10 to 12. We actually have a father-daughter camp, which is a weekend.
Speaker 1:We have a mother-son camp for 10 to 13 year olds, which is two nights, and it's really about preparing and looking at the fact that these boys are going to become young men in the next few years. And then we have our father-son making of men camp for 14 to 17 year olds, which is five days, and we have a mother-daughter bloom camp, which is also four days, for girls 14 to 17 with their mothers. So anybody who's interested, that information's on our website, the rites of passage institute. We work in lots of schools around the country, helping them take their camps, which are activities based, and make them actually transformational by inserting the rite of passage framework, and we do all sorts of public speaking around the place. So our aim is to have a movement. Our aim is for healthy rites of passage to become mainstream again time is precious.
Speaker 2:thanks for spending some of yours listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented ben jake. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Sol Carroll, with additional tunes by Dave and Ben. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at waterpeoplepodcast, and you can subscribe to our very infrequent newsletter to get book recommendations, questions we're pondering behind the scenes, glimpses into recording the podcast and more via our website, waterpeoplepodcastcom.
