that first delivery, her friend Amy left Singapore, almost as
mysteriously as she had entered Ginny’s life in the first
place. It wasn’t the most traditional model for mentoring,
but it was the apprenticeship Ginny needed. And as we will
see, that’s usually how the process works.
Multiple Mentors
Mentoring is an easy word to throw around these days.
You’ll hear it tossed into conversation amongst friends or
casually mentioned between business colleagues over
coffee. But mentoring is much easier to talk about than it is
to practice.
Why is it so difficult to find a mentor? To begin with,
you’re dealing with people: flawed human beings who each
have their own expectations and agendas. We all have our
own issues, and one of the reasons it can be so hard to find
a good mentor these days is that so few people have been
mentored. We have believed the myth of the self-made man
and have given in to the illusion of self-reliance. What we
need is something to pull us out of our own independence
and arrogance. Which means the mentor that comes might
not be the one we were expecting.
Chances are, your apprenticeship will not look like you
imagined. Your mentor may not be the teacher you dreamed
of, and that’s the point. This is your education of what is,
not what you think should be. A teacher who challenges