Taking Young People Along for the Journey

When is it wise to choose the young or inexperienced to take on significant responsibility or to take them along with you on your journeys? That's today on the Firestone Files. You know, everyone at one time or another has the opportunity to pick a team. Uh I grew up, as some of you might know from other podcasts on the south side of Chicago. My dad used to um throw together ad hoc baseball teams and we'd pick up kids from the neighborhood and he would take us over to the park to play other neighborhoods. And uh you know, whenever you're picking a team, maybe it's a Sandlot game, um you're not necessarily going to pick the smallest or the youngest or whatever um for the team.

Sometimes you opt to make yourself available as a young person and everybody overlooks you or you're not taken seriously. But today on the Firestone Files, we're going to explore the idea that sometimes it's best to bring on to your team someone too young to be considered useful or ready maybe for the task at hand. But you see something in them. You know, typically we want to partner with people like ourselves because we're on a common mission. We're having a common vision. um you know people are readym made products and ready to go um and those are natural friendships to foster.

I'm going to do a podcast down the road here on friendship and with my uh uh I wrote a book once on friendship with uh with a good friend of mine named Alex Pierce. I would like to do that at some point. But one of the things I learned in that book is just how easy it is to make friends with people like yourself, but how hard it is sometimes to make friends with people not like yourself. And this is true in a number of different levels. Might have to do with uh um um place in life. It might have to do with ethnicity. It might have to do with gender. Might have to do with age. And uh that's really what I want to talk about today is the question of age and bringing young people on journeys with you to get things done or to have different experiences.

When is it wise to choose the young or in experience to take on significant responsibility or to take them along with you on your journeys? That's today on the Firestone Files. Well, the philosophy I have in mind when it comes to this question has to do with a philosopher Plato. Again, not sure why I often times begin with the Greeks. It seems like there are a couple of philosophers, Plato and Aristotle in the Greek world and maybe um philosophers like Augustine or Renee Deart or Emanuel Kant in more recent times who just sort of set the agenda and give us kind of catalog of good ideas to work with.

And uh today I want to talk a little bit about Plato in this regard. Uh once again a little different aspect of his philosophy um having to do with young people. Um you know and I know that the young are our future. They're going to be leaders in your family. They may take care of you in old age. They're definitely going to be leaders in the community and even leaders in the nation or even in the world someday. And so it's wise for a person or a people group to build into their young people. Um now not all young people are created equally. Some are ready to take on responsibility early on and some are late bloomers.

I was uh one of these late bloomers. uh you know in the philosophy world you got people like Saurin Kirkagore who was like a early bloomer wrote most many of his writings you know uh in his let's say 30s um and died relatively young and yet there's other philosophers like Hegel who didn't really come into his own until his later years that's true of Emanuel Kant as well it's true of uh in a lot of ways of people like Socrates um and others, you know, so there people develop and they're interesting in that regard. They develop at different rates.

I was definitely one of those. I was not the kind of young person you necessarily wanted to take on a journey or give any super responsibility to uh early on in life. Nevertheless, my grandmother, Luxie Bruno, uh she's now passed. She' been passed a long time now, but still had a formative influence on my early years. She used to take me and my brother on journeys. Now, I don't know if that's because she felt obligated or had to, but she did it. And um I'm forever grateful for that because I learned a lot. I grew up a lot with Luxie on some of the journeys.

She was a flea marketer. Um her husband, my my grandfather, worked in the coal mines when he was younger. Then he ended up uh working I think it was for GE uh in the boiler room area. So he's a definitely a bluecollar guy. But she was a collector. She and she went to flea market. She'd like to make pocket money and more than pocket money really. She was uh you know a I guess a professional flea marketer if there is such a thing. And when I was old enough and my you know I was I don't know when it was I was 6 or 8 years old and my brother's a couple years older than me.

She would take us flea market shopping. Sometimes it would to buy and sometimes just to set up a booth run the booth and collect you know money help set up to help tear down and that sort of thing. This may be familiar to some of you. That's kind of a way of life that has stuck with me ever since then.

I have made pocket money because of Luxiey's training of me for most of my life. Today, you know, in in more recent years, last 10 to 20 years, I've uh been a professor, but I've had a little side eBay business going. Love to talk about some of the lessons I've learned growing that business. Um, that's a side note, but it just shows you the resonance that that early training of my grandmother had on on my life. Um, I remember living on the south side of Chicago. She would grab us, put put us in the car seat. Usually my brother would sit up the front and I'd sit up in the front.

We'd all ride in the front seat and head down to PTO or head down to one of the flea markets that she wanted to go to. And uh, I remember one time in particular where it sort of exposed my lack of maturity, you might say. Um, when I was sitting in the passenger seat, my brother was sitting in the middle and Lxie was driving and I don't know if she told us or she let it be known that she's taking side streets down to the south suburbs because she didn't want to pay tolls. Now, I didn't understand really back then how much tolls cost or what the costbenefit analysis would look like. I just knew it was going to take a lot longer than it would to jump on the tollway. So I was, "Oh, come on, Grandma. Come on, Lexi.

Take us, if you will, you know, take us on the tollway. We don't want to be sitting in the car all day." I was a relentless little tyrant, I think, back then. And uh I think something I said, I don't remember exactly what it was that I said, but something that I said triggered her. And I remember her driving like this and she just reached over and whack caught me right in the cheek. I was stunned me and I was like, "What? What was that?" Um, I have no doubt in my mind that I deserved it and I was probably being disrespectful and um I had pushed one step too far.

Now, fortunately, my brother who was in the middle, he caught the sort of elbow, you know, kept it from being a a a flush shot. And uh that's going to be a theme of my early life by the way, my brother taking the brunt of things uh in one way or another. I'm certainly going to talk about that down the road somewhere. But for now, I just want to say that, you know, maybe it wasn't wise to even consider me. Um I wasn't ready and maybe I never would be ready. I don't know, you know. Um but that uh that was an experience uh I'll never forget. It was a formative experience for me. Um the Greek philosopher Plato, that's the person I really want to talk about in this regard was acutely aware of the significance of the young or the young person to the state or to the nation.

He felt that societies needed to be intentional about cultivating these young people. That is identifying those with promise, identifying the nature of the young people, getting them into an educational process that would enhance their natural aptitudes. um this word there's a Greek word udimonia that I think uh captures what um what Plato thought of when he thought of the state and its flourishing. If you have people in the wrong positions, you're not going to flourish. You want to have the best people with the best fit in the appropriate positions within the state. And that means um learning to find ways for them to blossom, for them to flourish, and for them to fit in to this overall social uh fabric, if you will.

What would it take for a city or state to flourish over time? I believe Plato thought that it was proper training of the young and in a sense taking them on an educational journey. Plato discovered that education at least this was one of his major insights of his philosophy. education was the way to help people in his thought contemplate or remember that to which they should become.

In other words, I don't you know, we I think I've talked about Plato's um cosmology and Plato's anthropology uh in the past, but just as a reminder, um Plato felt that people and their souls were the essence of who they were. And this body was a corruptible uh additional component of our essence that needed to be trained in order to remember its original source or its original place in the universal realm of forms.

So in other words, when a young a baby is born into this world, they have a soul as it were, but they that they're um in a sense blank slate struggling to understand or to remember the knowledge from whence they have come and education then becomes a kind of salvific component for Plato that leads to freedom that leads to a better self-standing that leads us to understand the world as it really is. And so education is really really important. This is why Plato develops the academy. And we still use that word the academy even today to describe the culture surrounding university life. Uh of course Aristotle one of his pupils comes after him and establishes another thing. That's the that's the beauty of having first movers advantage I guess because Plato's language is what we still use today. But Aristotle came up with it with the school called Lysum.

I guess if I ever developed a school, I might call it the Lysum just to be different. You know, I don't hear that word all that often. And anyway, uh you know, I love Plato, but I also love Aristotle. I think he sort of helps Plato in a number of different ways, but that's besides the point. Um I'm getting off track. Really all I want to say though is that Plato understood the importance of education and we can thank him in the west for the establishment of this seed of the university that's now blossomed into something far greater here um in the uh 20th and 21st centuries.

Um, one of the things Plato thought about individuals was that they were born into this world, but they have a certain kind of character to them. And he uses the the uh uh uh elements of gold, silver, and bronze to sort of give us a typology of the type of person who uh who has been born into the world. Those who have the proverbial gold in their souls are inherently gifted. They're inherently, I guess, virtuous. They have a kind of readiness for responsibility and for growth that is like a seed with great potential. They might be like an oak or another seed might be uh, you know, uh, a maple or something else, you know. And so Plato felt like there was a certain amount I don't know if it's predetermination exactly because those souls actually our souls actually persist in the universal realm of force.

It's just an identifier for the kinds of or trajectory growth trajectory a young person might have. Such people um should be set aside thought Plato and trained up and allowed to flourish untainted by the real world because remember the real world for Plato is is a corrupt thing. It's a thing that has temptations. It has distractions. It has other things. What society needs to do things Plato is identify young people with gold in their souls.

Bring them aside and train them with a pure kind of training in the uh you know um in the uh the art you know of um of uh rhetoric in the art of uh gymnastics in social life and in uh administrative affairs and in philosophy and other mathematics and so forth. these um these these components should be a part of their um educational process.

Now, one of the things that that brings to mind immediately for me since we ended up homeschooling uh our kids through 8th grade was we sort of I don't know if we were consciously aware of adopting a sort of platonic educational style, but the idea was, you know, you don't throw them into the temptations of the world while they're still malleable, while they're still trainable. You give them that training.

you get and they, you know, it's it's like it's like trying to get on top of Mount Everest. You get them up to that first base camp, you know, and then you can get them to the second base camp from that point. But if there's so many distractions and they never it take them forever to get to the first base camp, they're never going to get to the top of the mountain. And so homeschooling if done well I believe can be a real enhancement to one's education because of the focus you can give young people and a very formative time in their life and that I think Plato's philosophy um feeds into that and supports that kind of way of thinking.

Uh the other group silver in their souls. Now these are these kids would be identified as having some really important and character traits in droves. Things like strength and loyalty uh an intense kind of loyalty maybe to the state or to their families. um able to institute the the um commands or laws or findings of the people in control.

And so for Plato, those born with silver in their souls have an inherent kind of uh u loyalty in their souls that makes them more apppropo for the auxiliary life or what you might call the military or police type of life where they are willing to put into effect um the the um uh uh the judgments of those with gold in their souls who have been trained up to become the guardians of the society.

the leaders of the society. So you can see what Plato has in mind is this ideal state in mind. I don't know if you can see the picture behind me or not, but that's, you know, I just put those up there because it helps me think through uh you know what we're talking about. But for Plato, the ideal individual um which has the head, the heart and the stomach all in proper alignment with each other um and the state which has the head, the guardians and the auxiliaries or the military or the police in the center and then has what he calls the producers and those are everybody else who are actually doing the hard work of creating gross domestic product.

You know these are the lawyers and the doctors and the plumbers and the ship builders and uh everybody in between. They have bronze in their soul if they have been trained appropriately and brought into the vocations. you know what you might call the muscle disciplines or it's not necessarily that because some of them like becoming a doctor requires incredible intellect but maybe they wouldn't necessarily be the guardians of the city cuz that's the select few with gold in their souls.

Anyway, this is a sort of ideal state and ideal person and the sort of anthropology that Plato thought was at work in the raising up of young people. Now, I mention all of this because it's in partial answer to that opening question of should you take young people on adventures or on journeys or make them part of your team, whatever uh objective your team might have. And I guess my answer is going to be a qualified yes. Um, a qualified yes. Let me let me tell a couple of stories from my family that I think will help illustrate the point. As a parent, I would always strive to take my kids with me.

We had five kids and there was a pragmatic reason for taking kids with me because it would divide and conquer them. My wife would often times homeschool, want to put focus on certain kids, or she would have other kids she was watching in daycare or whatever, and I would have some time or maybe um maybe it's a weekend, a Saturday or Sunday, and I would be able to take him off her hands and I would take him on journeys with me. One of the places I would like to go, and I thought of this in the context of Luxiey's uh my grandmother's um uh flea marketing, is that I would go to Goodwill. And on the north shore of Chicago, where I lived for 25 years, Goodwills are pretty good in terms of finding good stuff. Sometimes I'd find stuff that I needed around the house.

Sometimes I just found stuff with a lot more inherent value than the people who put the prices on the items at Goodwill. And so I started going to Goodwill uh pretty regularly once, twice, three times a week sometimes, and I'd look for great bargains, things I could sell. And I got to a point with it, and I may talk about this in a different context. That's, you know, the side hustle. Man, that'd be a great podcast. Let me write that down. the side hustle. I'll do one on that because I think the side hustle is a really interesting topic and one that a lot of us find could find great value in.

But anyway, I was doing it partly because I enjoyed doing it from my days with grandma and my building up my baseball card collection when I used to go to flea markets with her and then going back to my own becoming a professor. I have flex time and I thought going out to lunch, let me stop at Goodwill. And I made it a habit that I would go in, if I would buy something for myself or for the home, I would always buy something else to sell so that my trip to Goodwill was a net zero. In other words, I would always make as much as I bought or maybe more and oftentimes a lot more, frankly, um, once I got good at what I was doing.

But I I got to a point where I double dipped and I wanted to take my kids on some journeys. And what better way to to share Luxie and my own passion for collecting than to take him to Goodwill with me. And uh my youngest son, Andrew, is the one who's freshest in my mind. I'm sure I did it with other kids as well, but he's fresh in my mind because he was a ready partner. Oftent times after a few times of going, he would go, "You know what, Dad? I think I'll just let you go on your own to the thrift store.

And I'm like, well, I don't know that he knows that it wasn't really a request as much as I really need to get him out of the house. And I kind of want to take him on journeys. And you know what? That's the thing about the journey is you can't always predict the teachable moments. You got to just bring them on with you and hope that something good comes out of it. I started taking to um bribing him. Now, when he was young, really, I don't know, up to what age it was, probably up to like 10 years old, I would use the gumball machine at Goodwill as my bribery cuz I knew he loved gumballs. He loved sugar as most little kids do and he loved these gumballs. And so, the closest Goodwill I called one gumball.

In other words, hey Drew, if you come with me, I'll guarantee you a quarter. Here it is right here. Got the quarter right in my hand. I'll guarantee you a gumball. Oh man, that worked for I don't know, six months. And the the gumball uh got Andrew to come with me. Man, it was so good. It got wise to me, you know. I I started using the one gumball and I would go to a different Goodwill because you'd run out of good things to buy at the one Goodwill. you got to go to another one. And now this one was an extra 10 15 minutes away.

And so we we had one that was in Northbrook, probably 10 12 minutes away. We had another one that's like 15 to 20 minutes away in Mundeline. And so he said, "I don't want to go to M. Let's go to the one in North." I said, "I tell you what, I got two quarters. Let's call the one in Mundelion two gumballs. Two gumballs. You want to do the two gumball one today? You kind of do the look around, you know. Okay. Yep. Let's go. Now, the other thing about it being a little further away, there was also a Salvation Army near that one. So, the two gumballs became a double stop for me. Man, I hit a home run there with the two gumballs.

So, it got to a point where um we started naming these Goodwills and these runs that I was making. One gumball and two gumball. And sometimes I say we're going to do a two gumball and a one gumball. So we're going to do a three gumball. Uh anyway, I had a ready partner uh for quite a while there. I don't know, let's call it another 6 months. I I really can't remember uh how long all of that worked.

Um, and uh, we got to be so regular with us that on our GPS, which he started figuring out pretty early in in in in uh, in our time together that we'd actually call the destination one gumball, and the other designation two gumball, another designation three gumball, you know, like the one with the two trips in it. Anyway, uh, he knew how to set them right away. I give him the quarters, he popped in two gumballs, and off we went. Uh, so that would go on for quite a while. Now, what's going on there? We have the social component, him hanging out with his dad.

We have the learning of this side hustle that dad has, the joy really of collecting. Um, he he started collecting Legos. We started there started to become niche things that we were looking for. And he started developing a certain kind of expertise of his own. He could walk in and he could immediately point to three different areas that would help me to sort of scan the room. You know, when you go in, there's a whole art to going into a Goodwill, by the way, which I could share with you some other time perhaps. But my point here is that my son learned a lot and he he did some stuff with his dad and it was a became a value to me.

He started, you know, he'd be in the car before me, have the GPS all set up. We'd get over there and he would even find stuff. I I wasn't necessarily looking for but he remembered from past experiences and became sort of an asset while I was there. I could have can you go get a person and ask him to come over here?

This doesn't have a price on it. You know, there was all sorts of things he could help me with and it became a kind of fun thing to do together. Um, now truth be told, the one two gumball it became more of nomenclature after a while. I didn't like gumballs as much after you've after you've had so many. Uh we upgraded it to uh to Cokes. Uh now I know that that's not the best thing to be feeding a young person is, you know, a large Coke or something like that, but you know, you got to up the ante a little bit if you're going to keep the tradition alive.

And fortunately, at the time, uh McDonald's had the $1 Coke, uh you know, on the app. And so we were able to go there. I say, "It's Coke trip. You want a Coke?" True. Um I would ask him to go. He would often go without anything, but if he had any apprehension about going, I said, "Look, I think there's a Coke in it for you if you're interested. It could tip the scales and often did." Anyway, uh so many goods were learned on those journeys and uh so much bonding and brotherhood was created and I just hard to express the uh the joy that we had in those early years doing that kind of stuff.

That stuff still resonates today, you know. Now it's a different deal now that I'm dealing with a teenager rather than a young kid. He's got his own app, you know, uh um goals and his own interests and everything else, but he's still willing to jump in the car with me because it's kind of second nature. It's been built into the family superstructure. And uh you know, I think the more recent one is like, "Hey man, how about we stop over at Sam's Club and get you one of them hot dogs and a drink." So I'm I guess I went up from the Coke to the Coke and dog.

Uh anyway, um his tastes are getting a little more sophisticated and he's starting to work out now, so he wants, you know, a protein shake. And I'm like, man, that's just pricing me out of the market. Anyway, all of that is a side note to my point here, and that is taking a young person on a journey has benefits for you. Now, he's my youngest kid. Um, the other one that comes to mind in these journeys, now all of them, I could tell some stories in this regard. Um, and you know, truth be told, I'm kind of cherry-picking here because, well, one's got to do that.

You know, I got a podcast and I got to kind of get through the material. So, I got to choose. Uh, so I'm going to go to my first kid, Hannah. And, um, she struck me as a great p person that I had many journeys with. Um, and, uh, she's the oldest kid, but she was precocious for her age and, uh, really gifted at several different things that I found to be really helpful at the time. Um she was uh really gifted in public. She would kind of blossom in crowds um or on camera and she did theater.

She took uh acting lessons. She even performed on radio and did a couple of TV commercials and that was just amazing that first 10 years of her life. I maybe was up to 12 years old or something before she went into high school. She just you you put her in a position of leadership and particularly if it involved some kind of performance, she was um she was just spot on. Um and I I mean let me give you I mean a couple of one examples come to mind. I'm not going to sort of dwell on these. I may I may flesh them out for different purposes later on, but I remember my I think it was my 35th birthday possibly.

I think she was like four years old at the time. And I had a surprise birthday party and she sang uh she sang for the whole the whole surprise, you know, the whole group that was there. Um that was truly memorable. Something I'll never forget because she worked the whole crowd. Like I I thought of her as Shirley Temple at the time. I couldn't believe it. I remember her memorizing an entire chapter of the Bible and reciting it at church. I remember her memorizing a 75page uh script for uh the uh a musical, not I guess it was a musical or or a play called Ann of Green Gables and she played an and she helped all of her other fellow actors learn their lines.

It was uh some kind of marvel for me to watch. And that sticks out to me because it was shortly thereafter around the same time where I was doing missions trips to east the eastern block countries in particular Romania. So as a professor, as a Christian professor, I tried to make it my habit to go on missions trips overseas and to bring students with me. So, I would often bring five to 10 students with me. I'd go and I'd teach at a at a university in Aradia, uh, apologetics usually or introduction to philosophy or something like that. And then I would preach in the churches there and help take some of the pressure off the pastors there.

Um, one thing about Eastern Europe is, you know, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And so I tried to make it my habit every year or every other year or so to go to Romania to help. I had a Romanian student who I went on a journey with through to Romania and preached and taught with him and that was that's what's sort of triggered this whole thing. His name is Varel Clint. I believe he's now a pastor down in Texas somewhere with a with a very nice church and uh great ministry there. But my point was I I started these missions trips and I was sort of new to the field as it were. Um but one year I thought my goodness I wonder if Hannah with all those skills that she has as a young person cuz she started taking classes at Trinity at 11 12 years old at college level. And I said I wonder if she'd be interested in going to Romania with us.

I know it's an unusual thing, but she's got a certain set of skills and I think could be a fine addition. Little did I know just how important she would be to that missions trip. She raised way more money than anybody else. I don't know how she did that. It was like some kind of campaign she put together. But people I don't know if they tend to get more money when they see young people like that stepping up to the plate to go on a missions trip. So I believe she raised a bunch of money and that money spilled over so some of us who fell short on our fundraising could still go.

Uh so that was one thing that she did. Um she memorized Romanian songs like really easily and so she was able to I think bring something special to our worship team as we went out on a regular basis to preach and teach in churches or in youth groups in Romania. We I think we spent about 10 days there. And uh I told the pastors and I told the pre the professors, "Use us as much as you possibly can while we're here because we're only here 10 days." And boy did they put us to the test. They had me preaching three times a day sometimes. Um it was exhilarating.

And Hannah was a great great team member to have along. She could sing Romanian songs that would get the people fired up, encouraged. it would also be a great witness uh to others who were there. And so um you know she made a few rookie mistakes along the way and you have to expect that some of time I'm going to tell the story of uh how Hannah on this trip um shut down the uh Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Uh, I'm uh yeah, it's really hard to to really fathom. Um, heck, maybe I can get her permission to cut and put it into this podcast.

It just dawned on me. And if I get that permission from her, I will cut and paste it and put it right here in the podcast. But um I'll give you the framework of it just in case she's okay with me putting it uh putting on the podcast. But uh we were in the airport and kind of minding our own business. We were at a restaurant and um our plane was I don't know if it was we missed our plane I guess as I recall.

And so they put us on another plane. It was a group of like 10 of us uh on another plane probably 5 hours later or something. And it was a little disappointing have to wait in the airport for this next plane, but we're fine and you know we're going to make it home eventually. So there we were. But uh what happened was uh suddenly a whole mess of police um or I guess they were military or some combination thereof came into the airport started shutting shutters and closing things down and ushering us to the other side of the airport and literally closed down every business in the airport until everyone who was in the airport was congregated o over in one area, you know.

And so I guess you shut down at least half the airport and uh like what's going on? They put this this tape out in front and we all did stand behind it and there was a bag a very small kind of a waste bag sitting there in the center of the airport and I'm like dang they shut down the whole airport for this thing. Suddenly, small Hannah um bursts forward, cuts under the tape, and goes running towards the bag. I said, "Whoa, Hannah." And I tried to go to get her and the police stopped me and there she is. She ran all the way to the bag and uh the French police were very, very kind, by the way.

And the French police said, "You own this bag?" She said, "Yes, that's my bag. I I I I thought I had it, but I guess I lost it. And the policeman said, "Do you mind if we open it?" And she said, "Yeah, you can open it." She opens it up. I guess her passport's in there and a couple bucks maybe or something. I don't know. And the and the French policeman patted her on the head, zipped her bag, and handed it back to her. And then they released half the airport, opened it up again, and uh that was the end of the story.

But they're very forgiving by the way of young people of of of um you know it was just I was truly amazed at how how they handled the whole situation. But so with young people there's going to be cost I guess is the bottom line. Um and yet the value ad I wouldn't have traded for anything. you know, I would go through it all over again. Just to see her in ministry and her traveling with me and so much that we learned together and such a value to the team, it's hard to express. She was truly u an inspiration and an encouragement to all of us.

Um she was one of those people who was ready for responsibility and opportunities far earlier in life than than I certainly was when I was her age. um you know she wasn't the perfect um firstborn but she was pretty close to it. You know she made mistakes but she kind of really there's a value in a family having a firstborn who is so interested in taking leadership so precocious so ready to go forward that she creates a pretty big wake and the rest of the young people follow in that and see that as a kind of legacy that they want to try to live up to. And so that that's incredible. You know, the golden soul like that shines through.

And we are wise if we're parents or we're leaders, we're social leaders, community leaders, church leaders to recognize that and to allow that to blossom and to allow them to grow into the stature and responsibility that they're capable of. Yeah, we're going to have to recognize some mistakes along the way, but boy, there's a value ad there. Those flashes of gold, you might say, in her soul resonated right through the Firestone Alliance. I use that word Firestone Alliance. I don't think I've mentioned that yet in the podcast, but uh somebody I think it was probably Hannah set up our text messages where everybody who's anybody in the Firestone family is included in the Firestone Alliance.

Actually, don't hold me to that because my dad's not included. He's 87. he doesn't really want to be, but for the most part it's full of everybody. Um, and uh, this Firestone Alliance has is is has got this cross-pollination going on. And, uh, it all is premised on the fact that we go on journeys together, we do things together, we do life together. It is encouraging. It is storytelling. It is um it tills the soil of the family life so that the next generation has fertile soil in which to grow and uh giving these young people responsibility and opportunity and going with them and in a sense showing how it's done is uh is truly invaluable.

And this is an educ educational experience that everybody should have in life, but not everybody has that honor unfortunately in life. It's a lifegiving sort of thing. And uh it's always in search of the teachable moment. It's always kind of just doing things and then suddenly stuff happens. you get a flat tire or you uh run into a circumstance you didn't expect and then you deal with it together and boy there's real growth opportunity. I remember a a student at Trinity of mine who comes to mind. His name is Dave Fields and he once honored me with a with with something. He goes, "Firestone, I really enjoy he was a history major.

Really enjoy taking philosophy classes, but I even enjoy more hanging out with you outside of the classroom." and he said, "Uh, I have learned more outside of the classroom hanging out with you than I've ever learned inside the classroom." And that I took to be a real honor because I I'm not trying in outside the classroom to be a teacher. I'm just living life. And I think it goes to show how we can better mentor young people by taking them on journeys with us and taking a chance with them and to do doing stuff with them. So, what does all this in a sense add up to?

Um, treat kids, I guess I'm going to argue, treat all kids like they have gold in their souls, knowing full well that it might take time for that to develop, maybe fool's gold early on, or at least seem like it. Um, I'd think girls tended to develop more quickly than boys. And um boys with gold in their soul takes time for it to show itself sometimes. And this is this is a little bit anecdotal. I get it cuz maybe other families have an exact opposite circumstance. That's just been my experience. Um it takes time to figure out who was able and willing to do what.

It's not impossible that the kid you thought had gold actually had silver. And there nothing wrong with silver. They may not be the guardian of the nation, but they might be the enforcer. They might be somebody full of loyalty or full of capacity to stabilize the community, the society, and so forth. You want to you want to be on the lookout for that possibility. Or maybe they have bronze in their soul. Or maybe they have a mixed soul with a little bit of each. Humans are complex. I guess I'm a little bit more Aristoilian than Platonic on this.

I don't Plato has a little bit a tinge, you might say, of determinism because you got the kid with gold in their soul and you raise him up. If if if if I were declared early in life, I probably would have had like lead in my soul, you know, or something or or uh you know, tin or something.

But America is a great place. My family was a good family. the the the the high schools and the schools that I went to were solid. They allowed me to till the soil of my soul and to develop some of those other metals, if you will. And I think Aristotle more than Plato has this notion of what he calls habitatas, the the the the training in virtue that you can actually improve and you can actually grow. And some people have that seed so buried in their soul it just takes time to come out. If you would have thought, you know, at eight years old that I would have a PhD and I'd be running this podcast right now, you'd probably think somebody's a fool.

That's not even that's not even a possibility. But it is. And I think Aristotle covers that. But there's also something true in Plato in this regard that some people have just are just marked. you know, you can just see it in them, you know, where they fall on the spectrum um of of of gold, silver, and bronze. And uh you would be best to identify that, to uh honor that, to to celebrate that, and allow them to become what they were meant to be. And so I guess I'm hovering a little bit between these two great philosophers that education's important and to a certain extent. You know, it's the old nature and nurture uh question.

You know, you probably have heard of this in psychology or philosophy. Is it our nature or does it does nurture matter more? And uh it's kind of a little bit of both. And Plato's right that there are certain sort of potentialities that you can make actual uh built into our very nature. But Aristotle is right that the virtues are not as I put how do I put it so exclusive that you can't develop them. And I think Christianity recognizes or maybe tilts a little bit towards Aristotle on this particular question because you can develop courage when one gives one's life over to Jesus Christ for example.

That is transcends your innate ability to do that. That's true of the 12 um you know disciples for example. is true of uh of um of uh a lot of historic saints as it were who in and of themselves they may or may not have had certain of these virtues sort of placed or built into them but they but uh they grew in stature they grew in virtue because of the change in disposition that was afforded to them by by their faith.

Um, it all begins I would suggest by taking kids on journeys with you sometimes it's just the educational journey itself and that we typicing then you've typically done that by proxy and that's a great journey to put them on and I think Plato's right the education is important to human flourishing human well-being um you see it everywhere Um, the further you get in the educational system, the more likely it is that you're going to be able to make money, support your family. Um, if times get difficult that you'll be able to maintain a job or others aren't able to maintain a job. No doubt education matters, but there's other journeys and the educational process isn't just a classroom thing. It's a holistic thing.

And so one of the things I'm working on right now with um with TurningPoint uh Academy is a holistic development of education where we focus not just on classroom head knowledge but stuff of the heart, stuff of the body as well because all of these things are interwoven into the nature of what it means to be a human being. And um you know I think we've been awakened at least in in in the 21st century to the importance of activating the whole person rather than you know brain on a stick. We're holistic beings and uh that that's important to our overall development.

And in order to get there, in order for us to pass on to the next generation, to my grandkids who I hope will one day watch some of these podcasts, you need to engage the whole person and you need to help them to form habits that lead to virtue that lead to growth. You know, it's one of the things we limit screen time because we want them to grow in their physical stature or their spiritual uh stature. We go to church. We have youth group. We have Bible studies. We have other things. Not because they're always infinitely valuable, but because they build in a kind of habit of growth in human flourishing that we know to be important to the human condition to become what we were meant to be. And I guess I'm advocating for two different reasons.

Number one, because I think young people can add something vital to a team that it otherwise wouldn't have. But secondly, it's wise to prepare the young people for the next for the handoff, for the next stage of life as it were. And that's wisdom. That's growth. That's um playing four-dimensional chess, you know, uh playing chess instead of checkers. I don't know what the right analogy is, but something like that when you're dealing with life, when you're dealing with education, where you're dealing with teams, and we're dealing with young people as a part of those team. All right. Well, I've got a lot more I can say on this topic, but that's enough to process for now.

Thanks so much for listening. I'll look forward to uh bringing up some new topic next time on the Firestone Files. See you then. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about.

I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions. And remember, the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.

It around. Turn it around.