“If you build it, he will come.”
In Field of Dreams, a movie that speaks to guys of every age, Ray Kinsella heard a voice in an Iowa cornfield. “If you build it, he will come,” the voice said. The “build” referred to plowing that cornfield and replacing it with a baseball park. The “he” was the ghost of his late-father, a man he’d struggled to understand in the latter years of his life.
(Their game of catch at the end of the movie is a scene sure to bring every man to tears.)
The solutions to our problems don’t arrive on our doorstep. We have to actively pursue answers to the world’s questions and then build something!
Here’s why I built Areena.
About five years ago I had a dozen of my guy friends at the house. All between 40 and 60.
A lot of wine.
Very little food.
These were all pretty successful guys but by the end of the night the truth came out.
Some loved their jobs, some didn’t.
Some had good relationships with their wives. Some didn’t.
Some got along with their kids. Some had lousy communication.
One thing they had in common?
They all wanted to be Derek Jeter.
When they left I thought about that the conversation.
All that skill. All that expertise. All that wisdom and experience. Just going to waste when the world needs it now more than ever!
I knew I needed to create a platform for these men to use all they had to offer to make a difference. And I knew that platform also needed to serve younger generations of men so conversations like the one in my living room would never happen again.
That’s what Areena is. That’s why I built it. And that’s why I’ll spend the rest of my life devoted to it.
Art Gurwitz
Founder, Areena
Author
