I was talking with a friend the other day on the subject of mentoring and he made an astute observation. He'd just seen "The Aviator" which chronicles Howard Hughes' life. (Apparently, he's been interested in Hughes "since before it recently became fashionable.")
His observation was that Howard Hughes had a lot of eccentricities as a younger man, but never had a mentor to help him "rub off" his imperfections. As Hughes grew older, those eccentricities turned into neuroses and there was still nobody to rub them off. Finally, those neuroses progressed into psychosis and he died a paranoid, phobic man (albeit a very rich one) with little contact with the outside world.
There are a lot of "parts" to mentoring - you have to be willing to ask for help, you have to be willing to accept help, and you have to find someone who's willing to give you help, etc.
I'm not sure which one of those kept Howard Hughes from finding someone to help him rub off the imperfections of his psyche, but I think we can reflect and take this as a challenge.
Learn from Howard Hughes. We may all have the potential to end up like him. But take heart - there are lots of good people who'll help, if you just decide what you want and ask for help getting it.