So many times within the fall of past years and this year, Brothers have traveled near and far to attend C. Rodger Wilson Leadership Conferences (CRWLC).
CRWLC is almost its own rite of passage from the summer to the fall season. As a result of the CRWLC being held each fall, the Fraternity has essentially remained an undergraduate Fraternity in spirit although the vast majority of members are classified as alumni members.
Virtually no alumni chapter begins its calendar year of events away from electing its officers within the late spring and the planning usually continues until the first meeting either within late August or September.
But every chapter is typically expected to be in full swing by the time the various CRWLC are held within each province.
I have fond memories of attending past CRWLCs held within the southeastern province and they have usually been one of the best events in which to meet progressively minded Brothers and officers throughout the entire province.
I remember meeting for the first time in fall 1984 the late James B. Hardy of the Columbia SC Alumni who later was appointed Southeastern Provincial Polemarch and his first act of office was to charter Mu Theta Chapter of which I became the charter polemarch on September 7, 1985.
Brother Hardy conducted the CRWLC in Columbia, SC while Brother Mel Solomon of the Atlanta Alumni Chapter was province polemarch.
Brother Hardy was an educator and principal of the school where the CRWLC was held.
One of the sessions covered the traditions, etiquette, and protocol. I still get a hearty laugh from the variety of ways he demonstrated the correct ways Kappa are recognized within the community.
I mean that I still get weak to the point of crying and needing oxygen because he broke it down to the point that if you were not laughing, then he knew that you were the guilty offenders that needed further remediation.
I mean that the entire room rolled;))
By the time he became province polemarch, he was already a favorite Brother admired up close and from a distance within our chapter even though we were one hour away in distance.
This is how powerful the Bond can be. We may not see each other everyday or even only once a year or every other year. But when we get together, everything else gets held on pause;)
This brings me to the fundamental point of today's entry.
Where does the Bond begin and where does it end?
Is it not supposed to bring us full circle as we seek greater achievement?
I personally believe that the Bond has to begin and end with the individual Brother. We cannot seek to be the fulfillment of the dream of Elder Watson Diggs without recognizing that the primary input into our organization has to be an individual that seeks greater level of achievement period--not group achievement, not personal achievement, but achievement period.
The greatest challenge that Kappa has always faced is determining an appropriate level of individual versus group achievement or whether achievement exists at all.
Too many well-intentioned Brothers have either failed out of school and out of their personal lives while believing that the Bond would magically correct and erase all of their faults and lack of applying simple truths. I say this while remembering that there was a time that I stretched myself harder for group achievement versus the individual achievement that got me into the game in the first place.
The initial game that I am referring to is my attendance of college. The same semester (fall 1984) also proved to be my worst semester academically. I was a neophyte and just had returned from a summer job (the best summer job I probably ever had as a camp counselor of all things).
If you said the phrase "road trip" within the same time zone that I was in, I was down for anything after that. I remember even figuratively wearing out and burning up one of my mom's credit cards for gas which was too cheap as compared to today's prices.
We went anywhere rumored to have Nupes on the yard and we bought anything that had any direct or indirect association to Kappa Alpha Psi. Several of my Sands and I proceeded to buy matching outfits, gear, and could not wait to break them out for other Sands to see even though we were all initiated together and clearly did not buy enough for everyone;)
So we had an internal competition going on multiple levels. But this competitive nature got lost one semester on me and I pursued achievement at all costs on the collective front while allowing the individual component to fall behind.
The rules of the game of attending college means that you have to study and prepare for the exams and academic tests that will come your way even if the tests and quizzes are unannounced.
The rules of the game of life do not differ that much although there are less regulation and lower enforcement within life on the day to day and week to week levels versus college for the most part.
The fall season now means to me that I personally have to focus on the individual achievement even though there will be a degree of group achievement sought as well but not as intensely as the individual achievement is needed.
A home run is a cool thing to accomplish, but most baseball games are won from scoring runs from singles and doubles.
We can get the singles and doubles from focusing on our immediate strengths, environment, and the opportunities that we encounter. We may learn lessons that can be applied to our individual situations from having conversations and discussions with others within a group setting (large or small).
The conversations where Brothers share information man-to-man often can help another Brother make a needed correction not only within the classroom, but within the lifestyle that each Brother is living.
The opposite view of this post is to go all out for group achievement that leaves you repeating a class in the spring or experiencing a moment of failure that could have easily been prevented if the critical steps were taken when they were simple to accomplish.
You cannot burn the candle at both ends because you only have one end to light at a time. If your candle is being burned at both ends, then who is the fool and who is the tool and who is being used? Who is using who?
Our leverage comes from knowing what to do and when to do it and then doing so. It does not come from being one in 7, 10, a state, a province, or Bond overall. It does not come from being active and financial on the local, provincial, or Grand Chapter levels.
Our leverage and greatest strength comes from being the best individual we can possibly be. Then we have provided the basic input required by Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
Once we have individually accomplished the individual checkmark within our lives, then proceeding to the group level of achievement is easier to accomplish.
Too many times have chapters, provinces, and Grand Chapter itself been hindered by well-meaning Brothers whose personal lives were out of order. Kappa is not the only organization where this occurs daily either. It probably happens more often than we think and countless resources and even lives are lost as a result.
It behooves us to check whether each Brother is going to be available for the climb for achievement by checking to make sure that they are in full control and not denying anything on the personal level. Each Brother can essentially mentor and be mentored by each member.
We can lighten another's load and mutually benefit one another by solving our own problems by asking for and receiving assistance from other members.
But we cannot look to have the answers for the group consistently when we are in need of personal security, growth, and development. Locate and find the chart for Maslow's hierarchy of needs and make sure that each Brother you are fellowshipping with has the levels covered after checking your own levels.
When the situations arise that group achievement has been sought first, it typically creates a situation where it is a short term achievement versus a long-term one that will serve as a foundation for greater achievement.
Yes, there are seasons where one will rock back and forth between the two and this is good. But one cannot specialize in one form of achievement exclusively versus the other.
Once the individual achievement has been taken care of and after the group achievement has been accomplished and earned, then the experience that should come next is the improvement of the individual based upon what they learned as a result of being within the group.
This is the only way that it can and should happen. If it can happen any other way, I welcome anyone to share your suggestion or alternate way with me immediately.
One of the primary benefits of membership is being able to experience things that would have been too costly on the individual level. Pooling our talents and resources should produce enough assets to make the tangible purchase or intangible achievement possible.
When the group achievement is recognized, we as individuals should have learned something from the process and now will apply it to our individual lives for further achievements.
If nothing is learned within the group setting, more than likely we as members of a group are in the process of losing something collectively on the individual level and further erosion on the individual level is bound to happen quickly.
The lesson learned is often something overlooked, small, and minute in the eyes of the person who was the informal teacher, but within the eyes of the informal student, it turns a wheel that is so critical to the achievement of the individual's current and future goals and objectives.
As a result, the group now has an improved member ready, willing, and able to contribute more to the group's future achievements.
But unfortunately as I have personally witnessed and I really do hope that it was a one-time occurrence and not a future trend, a significant breakdown of this process can take years and decades to turn around. As much as I would like to believe that I can, I simply cannot point to a single administration as being the cause of our current Fraternal situation and status without holding the entire process that produced the administration at fault.
I simply do not know where it began, but I do know a bad administration or a bad GP when I see one. Not too ironically, it may be easy or difficult to see the same thing being produced nationally within America as well depending upon your willingness to look outside your current political affiliation or aspirations.
I currently believe that our current Kappa administration at the international level is in the process of slowing reforming the Fraternity even though it might not openly acknowledge this willingly. The scorecard is one method to reconnect with the customer and Grand Chapter's customers are the various provinces, chapters, and individual Brothers.
But with the Kappa Scorecard, reform is undeniable if the creation and monitoring of the scorecard is sincere. My greatest worry and concern is what is happening on the other levels as a result.
With the trend away from individual achievement and the rights of individual Brothers, we have collectively marched away from being able to see the value and worth of a sea of Brothers.
In some cases, it is almost to the point where an individual Brother may be demonized as being radical, a lone wolf, or loose renegade if one takes up the arms and case of providing for their family, career, and lifestyle versus becoming a lemming following orders blindly without question.
To say that someone has no intention of group achievement is clearly ridiculous when no one apparently wants to risk judgment on the entire system that has produced the situation, environment, and climate where nongroup achievement (versus individual achievement) is not only more possible, it is desired.
I know that this statement has to strike a nerve because inherently it flies into the face of everything that I have ever believed and learned as a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
At times I would have been the one hurling the accusation on the individual level towards someone within my own mind, but now I clearly see what I missed before.
I was once the type of Brother who would show up for meetings and stay late, but those days are gone forever. If I repeated such activity, it would mean that I had hit a homerun on one of the levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs or sorely needed to go home and take care of one.
It also shows me where I was when I was able to be this type of "meeting" Brother whose Fraternal opium came from attending meetings.
On the undergraduate level, there were no alternatives since we made up a small population of the campus body and the chapter was still within its formation stage.
On the immediate alumni level after college, I was single and my girlfriend-fiancee'-wife (all in one person) was either out of town attending school or out of state. I still had to move heaven and earth initially in order to attend frat meetings while being the lowest on the totem pole within the restaurant where I was a manager until I made the career move to teaching high school for two years. Then meeting nights (Sundays) were clear with smooth sailing and no potential repercussions at home.
But now that I have a wife and kids within the same household, being a "meeting" Brother is virtually next to impossible.
I was encouraged recently to attend various chapter meetings around metro Atlanta just to visit even if I do not become active on a local level. But the "meeting" Brother within me wants more than that. The nearest chapter that has meetings on the days and hours that I could technically attend has me wondering if I would be returning to the crackhouse after being "on the wagon", radical, a lone wolf, or loose renegade for the past almost 10 years I now believe;)
For the first time ever (within the same month--September) did I hear anything about being financial on the provincial level and directly to the province versus through a local chapter. It blew my mind and I will return to it at a later point in time.
Regardless, I do not have the strength, desire, or tolerance for being a "meeting" Brother myself. This is probably why I am so fervent in seeing virtual chapters become reality.
There are even enough of other Brothers who graduated from Mu Theta Chapter within metro Atlanta alone that I do not see for only once or twice a year unless someone comes to town. All of this are within 3 years of age of one another.
During a vacation in August and after being 7 to 8 hours away from Atlanta, I ran into another Mu Theta Alumni Brother who only lives on the other side of town (45 minutes to a hour away still) and we had not seen one another in probably 12 to 18 months at that.
But the pressure from older Brothers who are more established within their careers (a ton of near-retirement Baby Boomers I might add) or potentially those who have dropped the ball on more than one occasion within their personal lives is incredible and clearly not enticing enough to make me want to return to days of foolish yore (group achievement only).
I know that I have gotten off road a little bit here, but please indulge me as I bring this entry to a close.
There has got to be a better way and I know that there is one because I simply refuse to believe that the current way is the only way.
But to get Brothers who feel that they came through the ranks and are okay (when a deceased Ray Charles can still clearly see that they are not) is going to take more energy and effort than I can accomplish alone.
I can still see the glaze of intoxication of Brothers (both older and younger) who have succumbed to believing that the group achievement, or group-to-individual, group-to-individual-to-group methods are the way.
I can also see the path that Brothers who are recent graduates all the way up to married for a couple of years are on but they have not had their first child in this modern era of Kappadom.
But show me a Brother who between 35 to 55 years old, is married, has children under junior high school age, living a decent walk and relationship with God, and a stable career along with ongoing local participation within an alumni chapter and I will deem him personally worthy of our highest honor. I have not met or heard of him yet. Everyone else is lacking within one or more of the areas mentioned.
So what is the solution? I believe that the solution for the 35 to 55 year old Brothers is a virtual chapter or a hybrid between a purely online chapter with offline chapter scheduling and activity.
I would rather see the opportunity for participation within local Guide Right activities and daytime events versus anything that is going to keep me away from my kids especially at night. Even one night a month is too much to ask for when daycare or baby sitters seem to never be a consideration of local chapters. It never dawned on me in the years past that Brothers (and their spouses or not) may need baby sitters.
I apologize to any of you who were in this position years when I should have asked or known. It was a huge mistake since maybe I could have imagined or created a potential solution back then.
Now that I am in the situation now I wonder if and when someone will be creative and persistent enough to rock the boat for me and other Brothers within the same waters;)
I do not know if this blog entry will help anyone directly. But I do know that it should give any Brother who is not within the 35 to 55 age range something to think about:)
You should either praise God for reaching 56 or know what Fraternal experience you are about to face as you approach 35!!!
But praise God anyway and keep the 35 to 55 year old Brothers within your prayers!
Yours in the Bond!
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