The Newcomer’s Comfort, the Old Story’s Erasure

There are moments in life when you get to do something that looks ceremonial from the outside but feels surgical from the inside - cutting through layers of time, memory, obligation, and yes, loyalty - to arrive at something that resembles truth. I recently had one of those moments. I had the opportunity to honor a person who, quite literally, made my life - as I know it - possible. Not in the performative, LinkedIn-endorsed, hashtag-gratitude sense, but in the inconvenient, historically verifiable, narrative-defining sense. The kind where if you remove that person from the timeline, the rest of the story collapses like a poorly written third act. In doing this, I was constantly reminded of the comment to an earlier blog from the pedestrian philosopher hiding behind anonymity, who offered this gem: “More like ‘Mentor’ is the bandage, notthe wound.” One has to admire the ignorance. Not the clarity, mind you - but the confidence embedded in a combination of arrogance and ignorance. Because to confuse a bandage with a wound requires a certain acrobatic indifference to experience. What fascinates me about such statements is not their content - it’s their origin. There is a particular genre of commentary that emerges from those who have either never had a mentor or, more interestingly, never had the wherewithal to be one. Mentorship, after all, is not a decorative title; it is a sustained investment in someone else’s narrative without the guarantee of return. It is inconvenient, time-consuming, and deeply unfashionable in an era that prefers transactional relationships dressed up as connections. So when someone reduces mentorship to a “bandage,” what they are really confessing - without quite realizing it - is their unfamiliarity with the architecture of growth that requires scaffolding before it can stand on its own. In the process of marking my mentor’s retirement, I had the privilege of honoring him publicly. And here is the inconvenient part for the erasure enthusiasts: retirement is not deletion. It is not a narrative sunset where the past politely exits stage left to make room for the new protagonist. He remains, as he always has, a guiding light - not because I am sentimentally attached to nostalgia, but because history has a way of insisting on its relevance. Increasingly, there is a peculiar arrogance among some who would prefer to believe that they arrived fully formed, untouched by prior influence, unsullied by inconvenient dependencies. In that narrative, the mentor becomes expendable - something to be quietly “sunsetted” so that the newly arrived can occupy the stage without distraction. It is a fascinating strategy: erase the foundation so the façade looks more impressive. The only problem, of course, is that foundations have a habit of making themselves known when the structure begins to wobble. Putting together the video  was not an act of obligation. It was an act of love. And more importantly, it was an act of narrative preservation. Because even if upstart newcomers arrive with their freshly minted importance, one does not get to ethically ignore the stories that made one who one is. The irony, delicious in its predictability, is that the very qualities that make one “attractive” to these newcomers - the competence, the perspective, the credibility - are often the direct outcomes of the mentorship they are so eager to erase. It is as if the fruit wishes to deny the tree while still enjoying the sunlight it was positioned to receive. In my own life, the guidance and support of the person I had the privilege to honor created precisely those conditions. And while others may find it fashionable to discard the “old” in favor of the “new,” I find that a hard-baked sense of loyalty is far less susceptible to trend cycles. You do not sunset a mentor because something shinier comes along. You do not redact history because it complicates your present alliances. And you certainly do not confuse the source of your strength with an inconvenience to be managed. So yes, I remain amused. Not offended - amused. Amused by those who so readily trade depth for novelty, who mistake glitter for substance, who believe that erasing a mentor somehow enhances their own narrative. It doesn’t. It merely reveals a certain fragility - a dependence on the new that cannot withstand the weight of the old. As for me, I will continue to do the unfashionable thing: remember, acknowledge, and honor. Because narratives matter. Histories matter. And mentors - contrary to some anonymous philosophical innovations - are not bandages. They are the reason the wound healed in the first place. And to those who are ready to erase mentors from their narratives, I remid them of Cohen's words, "Everybody knows it's coming apart."