Steve Stricker

By Steve Stricker

Columnist

 

May – My favorite month, birth month, month of Mary, month of miracles and month of beau coup moving parts!

Are y’all ok?  How’d you feel when you read that? When’s the last time someone asked you that and genuinely meant it? How did it feel? How’d you react? Often this is just a part of a casual greeting and if you really begin sharing your thoughts and feelings, they did a double take, begin looking at their watch, and got away from you as fast they could.  Likewise, when was the last time you asked that question and really cared  to someone?

As a teacher, adviser,  counselor, behaviorist, therapist, that was my first question.  One day a student at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), began telling me his story, me locked in and focused, he suddenly stopped and said, “Steve, you are really listening to me!” “Duh.” “No, you don’t understand.  No one has ever listened and cared about me.” Whew.  I’ll never forget that.

Don’t ever ask that question unless you are truly prepared to respond to what you might hear, can be trusted, and have great listening skills – won’t interrupt.  When Ole Miss students, undergrads, MBA’s, Law, came to me for guidance, I zeroed in those who had great listening skills – looked into my eyes, didn’t interrupt, and truly listened to me.  This is a gift!  And I told them that and often encouraged them to consider being a counselor.  One thing I would ask them – “Do people talk to you/” “Yes, all the time.” Amen. Because they listened, could be trusted not to share any of what they heard, and cared.

Think about your true trusted friends who would stop what they were doing, focused only on you, cared, and listened to you. You know exactly who they are or were and can name them right now.

The only things about dumping stuff on your friends is that they might accept and take your side.  A true counselor will listen, care, and perhaps challenge what is going on.

Back to May and the here and now.  Wow!  There is a LOT going on. School is out, graduations, students, parents, siblings and friends behind the scenes, having to find a job, leaving a job, thinking about changing jobs, stressed finances, no finances, moving from a secure area for the first time, leaving loved ones to not knowing anyone, getting married, leaving a marriage, death, new birth, major health issues, retiring, SEC Baseball Tournament underway as we speak, Regionals next, fill in the blanks – now what?

To whom do you trust for help.  Straight up question – what is your relationship with God?  I’ve asked this in counseling sessions when I discerned that the student was a “faith” person. Often they would put their head down and say, “not good.” At that point I would ask, “So now what?” And they had the answer, for those who said they had strong faith – I didn’t worry about them.

In a foxhole in Vietnam, July 1969, one week there, everything around me exploding in a horrific, VC attack that made all the news at home and where I should have been truly dead like so many others that year, gave my life to God and accepted my death – long, long year July 1969-July 1970 and I’m…messed up.  No one asked how I was then and now and I’m still majorly shocked when anyone says, “Thank you for you service.” Too much pain to write the book…..

But through the death of my dad two weeks before my freshman year in college at SEMO, almost flunking out, drafted, Vietnam, so much pain made me know death, love life – and truly have always cared about your student, you and your pain.