Virtue and Success

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Firestone Files. I'm Dr. Chris Firestone. Today I'm going to be talking about dreaming big, how to maximize your ambition, find success, and keep the risks of failure or fall back to a minimum. Have you ever thought about doing something you've never done before? Perhaps you um have decided to, you know, you've thought about something. You know, maybe it's a long trip or an an activity or an adventure and you know, you've had it in your mind and you want to be ambitious, but you're not quite sure if you want to take the plunge and go for it. Then you had to do the hard work once you decided to do it to prepare for it.

Prepare for the big event, for the big race. Well, when you're young, perhaps it would be something more ambitious, like a backpack adventure around the world or overseas. Maybe it's a super long bike trip. Um, maybe it's a canoe in camping adventure. Or maybe it's the completion of the marathon or maybe a half marathon or something like that. As you get older, your ambitions naturally become a little more circumspect. Um, you know, you're you're you're you're a little more soberminded. Maybe you realize that you can't recover quite as well or maybe you can't go quite as far or maybe you don't quite have the stamina that you used to, but nevertheless, you still want to take on these adventures.

Um, regardless of the age that you are, big events or races help us to stretch our capabilities. is they give us uh a goal, what philosophers call a telos. Uh, and I'm really kind of driven by the I'm a kind of a purpose-driven guy. This summer, um, I decided once again to try to do a 5K with my kids who are in much better shape than I am. But boy, it was a really awesome way to get myself back in shape because I had a purpose. I had a drive. I had a goal that I wanted to get to.

Um, you know, sometimes you just want to get out of the daily grind. You want to do something extraordinary. You want to be able to tell a story. Um, and uh, how do you stretch that ambition, find success, find it to be a a worthwhile goal that stretches you, that grows you, but also to limit the risks and overcome the obstacles that might get in the way. There are no shortcuts to success in this regard and there are really no limitations on age and fitness. It's just a matter of setting a goal that is a stretch but doable for you. I would say there's like four parts to this.

There's vision for it. There's decision to do it. There's a resolve to get there. And then there's a sort of dedication to get to the finish line. Now, today on the Firestone Files, we're going to take a closer look at preparing for something big, the big adventure, the big race, regardless of your stage in life, why do you do it? What goes into it? What are some of the dos and don'ts surrounding it? Why is it important to be truly virtuous in sort of the classical Greek sense of virtue in order to get to the finish line? So I'm going to discuss briefly some Greek literature and philosophy in particular the adventurer Odysius the soldier Fidipities and the philosopher Aristotle and see how they can help us understand the dos and don'ts of stepping out to go and do something extraordinary.

That's what we're going to cover today on the Firestone Files. All right. Well, in terms of the philosophy, I want to start out with a little bit of Greek history and mythology. Um, because it's full of valor and conquest and courage under fire. And, uh, although some of the stories almost certainly have developed, you know, to a sort of majestic level, you know, of hyperbole or or or or mythology, they're still inspiring and thoughtprovoking. Um and not always because of the great courage or you know uh wisdom or expertise that's involved but also the flaws that we see in these Greek characters.

Now, if you consider the Greek the great Greek uh uh character Odysius, he's of course famous for his campaign trip uh to Troy in the strategy and the cunning of developing the Trojan horse and overcoming um the city of Troy for the Athenians. And uh on his journey, his victorious journey home, he and his men find that the adventure is still beginning really. I mean, they had this great conquest and victory and so forth. And on their way home, they uh they get trapped inside a cave and they encounter the infamous Cyclops.

Odysius outsmarts the giant, as you may recall, by telling him that his name is Nobody. And of course, this kind of confounds the beast. Uh, and they end up binding him up while he's sleeping. And then they sneak out um on the unders sides of sheep. Now, all of that is kind of a fascinating tale, a you know, certainly an embellishment on the Odysius campaign, but uh I mention it not because of another great adventure and so forth. That is kind of a fun part of the story. But instead, Odysius chooses as he's fleeing to taunt the great Cyclops. As he's kind of getting out of his clutches, he can't resist to reveal his true name.

And this pride of Odysius leads the Cyclops to curse him with the wrath of Poseidon. and it ends up prolonging the journey home and causing all kinds of trouble for Adysius from that point forward. His burst of exuberance and his pride was great fun, I imagine. But uh on the other side, it ended up really costing him and his group quite heavily. Now it reminded me this story of something else that happened in my life long time ago. I I am going to tell this story at length uh someday. In fact, I'm going to interview my buddy John Ho who um was part of this story with me when I was about 23 years old and uh had a summer free.

My buddy John and I, he ended up, by the way, becoming my best man at my wedding some 3 years later after this story. But my buddy John and I um had a few bucks burning a hole in our pocket. We had a summer free and we decided to buy some bicycles, get an airplane ticket, and with the remainder of our money in our pockets, we're going to go to Europe for a couple of months and just bike around Europe and live uh at campsites.

And yeah, we got some tents and some sleeping bags and we got some food cookers and I mean it was basically spending every penny I had. I again I'll tell more of the details of this story down the road and uh if you're interested in it, just write to me and I'll uh I'll fasttrack it. Uh I'd like to get John on here and talk about these I think it was 54 days that we spent biking throughout uh Europe. But it came to my mind in the context of the great adventure, the great journey because um for several different reasons.

One, because we had the courage, we had the vision and we had the courage to do it and we had the conviction to do it. We we put ourselves in a position where we had to do it. We bought the tickets. We got the the bikes on the planes. We ended up end we ended up in a airport in Brussels and we started biking off into the city with not we don't have a ticket back home for 54 days. So uh on one level that's all brilliant. That's all you know fits right into the story as it were of uh you know of of maximizing your ambition and trying to find success and taking a big journey. All of those types of themes.

Um but couple of missing pieces that we didn't fully realize. We were, you know, basketball players, a little bit athletic and so forth, but not ready necessarily for biking with as much weight as we had brought through a city that we didn't know for the entire day long looking for a campsite. I mean, this went on for three weeks of just torture. And so first of all, our lack of preparation was astounding. I think uh uh in terms of biking, I biked one time about 25 miles from our apartment to Trinity for my job and then biked home afterwards another 25 miles. I had to stop and lay in the grass.

I was so tired. That was my training. one 50-mi bike ride which showed me I was totally uh not ready for this trip. Anyway, we went on it. After 3 or 4 weeks of biking, I became ready for the trip and John became ready for the trip and that was a harrowing tale in itself. So again, I'll tell a lot more of the details when I have John Hoy on with me here. Um but suffice it to say um that was quite the journey. Now, by the time we got ourselves in shape, we were starting to do some serious biking. We figured out how to find the campsites.

We figured out a rhythm for setting up the tent, putting it down, washing our clothes, uh all of that kind of thing, getting food, and uh by the time of week four or so forth, we we we started really coming into our own. and uh gave us a sense of confidence not unlike Odysius must have felt when he conquered Troy. You know, it's like, wow, we can do this. So, we biked basically, we're in Brussels, we ended up in Paris, we were heading south, we made it all the way down to the Lir River and uh just having a great old time uh biking through France at the time.

And uh this is where we got a little overconfident. I I'm just going to tell one story. This a little bit of a teaser because if when I get John, we're going to have a lot more stories to tell because we learned a lot of lessons on this trip, but this is just one that comes to mind because it kind of parallels the Odysius story in a in a kind of funny way. Um we were we stopped at some castle in the middle of France. It was a smaller castle on a river. It had some um it was closed and it had some locks. Yeah. I don't know if you know in France they have these locks or leveies.

I'm not sure where they can raise and lower the water to move boats around and put them into the river and then not take them out and so forth. And uh we're looking at one of these leveies in the early evening and we notice I don't know 5 or 10 ft down there's a big opening and it looks like it's aimed right underneath the castle.

And so here we are, a couple of young guys thinking, man, well, this castle's closed, but I wonder if we got down in that cave or that little hole. I don't know what you want to call it. And we went in, maybe maybe we could find our way into the castle. Not a brilliant plan as it turned out, but you know, at the time it looked to be just another part of the adventure. You know, we were a little overconfident. Uh, and uh, you know what? Let's go for it. Let's do it. So John was the one who wanted to go down there first. So we got some rope that we had, emergency rope uh that we had that was probably 20 ft long.

We tied it off on the railing up top and uh John grabbed hold of the rope and started to work his way down to the you know maybe 10 ft down on the wall in the levey. Another 10 ft down would be the the water. uh didn't want to go splashing in the water. Obviously, that's a mess and how you going to get out of there and all sorts of problems. So, he had his biking gloves on and his biking gloves were fingerless. Well, as he started going down the rope, the sheer weight of his body um became too heavy for him to grip. So he started sliding on the rope and I could hear him scream, "Ah!" He didn't let go.

He kept sliding on it and he got his feet into the hole and he climbed in there. And he's screaming out, "Oh, it ripped my skin down to the bone. I'm bleeding. Oh, it's gross." Anyway, um the fingerless gloves that he had on were not preparation for the thin rope. the, you know, 180 lbs probably or 190 lbs at the time, um, of John and he stripped his skin on both fingers, uh, both hands, you know, really badly. Well, he got in there and he said, "Oh, Chris, you got to get some help. I'm not going to be able to get out of here." You know, his hands are basically useless to him.

And uh you know I'm half laughing because I didn't know how bad he was injured and um he made it. So that was kind of fun. And I sort of disappeared into that hole. So I was like, "Hey man, what's in there? Can you get into the castle?" He goes, "No, I can't get in castle. It's blocked up down here. You got to give me some help." Anyway, we couldn't. There was nobody really there. It's like an empty area. Well, there wasn't anybody uh you know, significant that could help us. So, we decided to get we had tape, we had cloth, we had things like that.

So, I was able to lower down to him uh some cloth and some some duct tape and some other things that we had had with us for emergencies. And he was able to bind up his hands and strip them around and get his fingers and get his hands useful again. And he was able, believe it or not, to work his way and climb his way back up to the top. Well, the rest of the bike trip, which was a couple weeks to go at that point, um he had his hands like this on the handlebars and wasn't able to really grip anything and it was a it was a mess. It was a mess. Um but similarly, you go into these adventures unprepared. You're going to grow. That's first of all, I I guess my first thing I want to say is don't be afraid of it.

Even if you're not fully ready for it, you will rise to the occasion. We rose to the occasion. and it was a little bit of hell on earth. Um, but you're going to have to pay in preparation or you'll pay in the adventure or maybe even both. But that's what it takes to do um do hard things like that. But uh don't get overconfident. Continue to think, continue to prepare. If if we had been a little more savvy in our understanding of the situation, it never would have gone sideways like that.

It never would have quote unquote prolonged the trip and made it a little bit less fun certainly for John for the rest of the way home because he he was, you know, uh not able to use his hands the way he had been uh on the earlier part of the trip. Well, that's one story I remember. Uh there's a lot more to that one. Again, I'll tell more about that one later on, but I think it's important to see that uh we were able to accomplish things. We were able to do it, but it came at a cost. And without the kind of virtue that would have us to think things through, a little bit of wisdom would have gone a long way. Maybe we could have had the tape and the cloth on before he slid down those ropes, but we hadn't thought it through completely. We acted a little spontaneously, and it cost us uh mightily.

Um the next character I want to talk about in the Greco era, Greco Persian war era actually and this one is the um happened during the uh Greco Persian war. The Persian Empire invaded Greece in 490 BC and they were vastly outnumbered the the Athenians were by the Persians. uh and in a famous sort of uh military strategy, the Athenian general uh Miltadis um devised a bold strategy whereby he put his force together and this this again had a lot more wisdom at the outset of it. Um, and he had a soft middle where they had uh strategic retreats where he drew the Persian forces in and he had his best soldiers in the wings on the flanks.

And when he got the much larger Persian army barreling through thinking that they had were routing u the Athenians, they closed in on the sides and they surrounded them and um and and and really uh massacred them and the Persians were defeated. Now the reason this story is interesting is not because of the great victory. Um it was really quite spectacular. But but it's because a soldier named Fidipities ran with the kind of exuberance afterwards from a marathon where it was near the battle to Athens to announce the victory. So he runs the full length.

It's more than 25 miles and he famously comes into um Athens declaring Nike which of course is victory and then he collapsed and he dies of exhaustion. Today we still run what's called the marathon because of this great act 26. 2 2 miles based upon the famous uh the famous run from the victory um against the Persians. Um now there's something about that story which is uplifting, inspiring that the notification of victory and the celebration is so important that it's worth risking even his life to let the people know. Um, and yet he died. He pushed too far. He pushed too hard. Did he really need to get there uh in whatever time it took him to get there?

Um, that is an interesting question. It's one I think that Aristotle has something important to say and I've got some information on Aristotle behind him. I'm going to tell one more story before I get to Aristotle's answer to this question about how to prepare for these great adventures with virtue. Um, what I want to talk a little bit about is um the difference between two types of sport. one is what I would call athletic activities which are team sports and then those that I would call more lifetime sports. Now there's a sense in which every sports a team sport. I learned this from my kids was particularly the last two who are cross country runners. If there's any sport which I would have assumed is an individual sport it is track and field cross country.

But what I found in watching their careers with in high school in particular and then my daughter also in college is that it really is a team sport that they are working together as a team. They go there, they have seven runners who count, they're running together constantly, they're pushing, they're encouraging one another, all of those great things. Um, so in one sense, all sports are kind of team sports or social things that we do better doing together than we do individually. That said, I do think there's a distinction to be made between your common popular team sports and what I would call lifetime sports.

You know, I grew up um playing baseball and then I played football and then I played basketball and all of these things were great team sports. Um I could play them in my youth. They were encouraging. I learned a lot about life playing sport um and those sorts of things. But there's something that happens in that transition. I probably played basketball, you know, competitively or with teams or with some kind of um enthusiasm and regularity all the way into my mid30s. And I continued playing well beyond that, but it began to be more of a transition. your players are getting younger, they're getting faster, you're starting to get injuries in various places, the knees start not working quite as well as they used to.

I pick up other things like golf and tennis. I picked up uh you know, biking and and and most recently mountain biking I've been doing. And there are certain sports that you migrate towards which I would call lifetime sports. These are sports that you can do um on your own really or you know in in in uh without the sort of need for the whole team uh really the rest of your life and most recently like I said running and biking and mountain biking have kind of been that thing for me. Um that said, there still is a kind of uh uh um excellence and wisdom that surrounds doing these things well or thoughtfully. Uh one event comes to mind that the family's been doing for a number of years now here in Arkansas.

It's called the Lake Deg Gray uh freedom run. And uh my daughter has won the women's section on that I think three or four years in a row. And uh uh my son has won it before. Um he's kind of stepped out of running and so in the last couple of years he took like second and third place. And uh I've been starting to do it because hey I can and you know while I've still got energy and interest I've done it. My other daughter Emma is starting to do it. Uh this year they for some reason summarily cancelled the Lake Deg Grrey freedom run.

I'm not happy with it. Nobody was happy with that, but uh we ended up uh moving over to Little Rock, a little bigger uh little bigger pond than Lake Deg Grrey was. So that'll be a story for a different time. But the story I want to mention here in the context of wisdom is my attempt to run the 5K with the kids um in 20 24. Uh again this was late to gray. I was in the sort of I don't know if it was 50 and over category and I prepared well for that race. Um I uh you know I was in reasonably good shape.

Um I my uh second daughter Emma I thought she and I were kind of equals at the time and she was just starting to get into running so she had youth as her advantage but I had uh you know a lot of practice and I've done running in the past and I thought boy this is going to be a good race. So anyway, we got there that morning. We got ready. The race was run at 8:30. It's a little bit late to be honest to be running a Fourth of July race in Arkansas at 8:30 cuz it was like 85° and humid. And uh I started running and Andrew and Becca tore off and Emma and I kind of ran our pace race and I to be honest um I had a pretty good race.

Now, I want to uh to to bracket that for a moment because I ran well and uh but the night before we were over at my dad's house and uh this has now become, you know, an instant classic in the Firestone family. We're at my dad's house and one of the things my dad does, he's uh he's 87 years old at the time that we're taping this and uh he likes to have uh a Heineken with his kid, you know, when he comes over.

So, we were over there the night before the uh the big race and he cracks open a couple of Heinekids and he and I are enjoying one and Becca and Emma look over at me and they said, "Hold up, you shouldn't do that. You need to do hydration, not beardration." Uh I'm like, "Well, this is hydration for the Fire Stones." You know, I kind of brushed it off. Anyway, like I said, I only had one beer, but they were absolutely convinced that I should be loading up on water the night before, probably eating pasta, and very, you know, they had a whole strategy for pre-race stuff.

I was like, look, I've been doing this a long time. This one beer ain't going to make a difference. Okay. Anyway, that's a little preface to the story or a little bracket to the story. Now, we'll get back to it. I I'm having a pretty good rate. In fact, I'm doing better than I expected. I passed up a number of what I would call the better masters runners and I even think I passed Emma at some point in there and I was for me doing pretty well. I think I was kind of like on a 9-minute pace which I know for some of you runners that's pretty slow but for me it was pretty good at the time. And uh I was tired and I kept kind of saying to myself, "Okay, Firestone, you got this.

Just keep pushing. You can get to the finish line." Well, I ended up going about 3. 1 miles and I was within two to 300 yards of the finish line when suddenly I really couldn't feel my legs anymore. Although they were, you know, muscle memory or something, they were running, but they were running sort of detached from my mind. It's really hard to explain. Maybe some of you runners know what I'm talking about, but I was um I was uh trying to, you know, just finish the race. I figured I I started thinking to myself, I think I could win even if I just walked to the finish line.

But go Firestone, keep pushing. You got this. But as my legs progressively became more detached from my body, I realized I was in trouble. I was starting to kind of lose it a little bit and uh I was throwing my legs forward and my body was leaning forward, but I wasn't really in control anymore and suddenly bam, I hit the ground and it's the strangest feeling as I'm laying on the ground cuz I smashed into the ground with my shoulder. I said, "What is going on?" I don't think I tripped. I just fell. Just fainted or something.

So, I get up. I try to get up and I stumble like a drunken sailor over to the side and fall down again. And I'm having this kind of mental conversation with myself trying to figure out, Chris, get up, walk to the finish line. You've got this. I couldn't do it. Couldn't figure out what was going on. I get up against a tree and I kind of pull myself up and I said, "Okay, time to walk. You're still okay. You still can get this thing done." And I just spun around the tree. I couldn't get myself coordinated enough to go down the trail. And then um I folded I I I kind of let go and I said, "You know, I got to do this."

I let go. My legs start running again. My body's running. And then wham. I do a face plant right in the ground. And um my daughter runs by. Emma said, "Dad, you okay?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Keep going. Keep going. I'm okay." Well, I didn't know that I wasn't really okay. The park ranger ends up coming up. He says, "You're not going anywhere. Sit down right there." and he gives me some water and he says, "You're going to you're going to wait right here." He calls the uh the golf cart or whatever. It takes about 10 minutes or so. The golf cart comes out there.

He puts me on there and we make our way back. They call an ambulance. They have to do a full checkup on me and uh they hydrate me and I'm sitting there and uh to make a long story short, I become more coherent as I go and I never finish the race. I I didn't even get a medal. I had a probably one of the best runs of my life and I didn't even get a medal. Um it was really quite something. And I I don't know. Um I I learned something there. I learned about preparation.

I learned about overconfidence. I learned about the fact that our bodies do have limits. I've long had this philosophy and it's served me well through the years that the body and the human being in general are are just more capable than we ever thought they were. Um, and I think that's true, but age does, you know, maybe shrink the limits or boundaries of our abilities or maybe wisdom does. This is what brings me to, you know, want to sort of begin to wrap this up because um I learned something here. The virtues exemplified in these stories are legendary. Fidipities, you know, um his patriotic, courageous, remarkable resolve to get from a marathon to Athens with the good news of victory.

There's something just extraordinary about that story and his willingness to take it to the very end to get it done. I mean that just shows the best of the human the human condition, the human what what human greatness can really be about. Um and although it has really historic appeal, Aristotle I think would potentially question the wisdom of it. If it leads to one's death, it's probably pushed beyond what's virtuous to a kind of rashness and exuberance and enthusiasm that goes above and beyond the moment. It's almost like patriotism gone too far and it can go too far.

Aristotle's notion of the golden mean is what is brought to my mind. This is in his Nikamakian ethics. He says virtue is the mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. So if you think of the courage of fidipities to run that kind of distance to tell his people about the great victory that they had won, um cowardice wouldn't have set out at all. In fact, they wouldn't even have won the victory without the kind of courage that it took to do that. Um, but according to Aristotle, a dir of courage would be cowardice. But there's also an excess of courage. And that's where the mind isn't thinking.

It isn't processing the limits of the human condition. Um, sometimes when I'm teaching on Aristotle's virtue ethics in class, I think what uh I don't know why, but what comes to my mind is trench warfare. Because trench warfare, you know, like in World War I, is some of the most brutal type of war because, you know, you're living in squalor. It's it's basically, you know, mono among or I mean, they're very short distances between the trenches. Up you go. uh machine gun tear down, lots of loss of life, kind of needless loss of life in transfer warfare. But warfare is is war. It's hell. And uh in war there's courage and you need tons of it to have success. The lack of courage leads to cowardice. Means that you're going to be overrun by your enemies.

But who in World War I would have so much courage to just take their rifle, jump up from the trenches, and say, "I'm going to take them down myself." And just move out. Of course, they will be cut down in an instant. That's not courage. That's rashness. That's over-the-top courage. That is kind of a a a vice of exuberance. And uh Aristotle doesn't recommend that. Instead, he wants us to be he wants the leaders and the and the soldiers and everyone involved to have genuine courage. The kind that leads to to that that results in excellence. And so we wait. We wait till we maximally armed and they're minimally armed.

We wait till we are unified and they are distracted. We wait for the lack of moonlight rather than the uh, you know, having the moon shine over the the battlefield. We wait for a day where they might be celebrating some kind of victory or some kind of holiday. Uh, and uh we strike. Then we we we uh we we use all of our intellect to maximize the wisdom of the demonstrable courage that it will take to win this battle. And that's really applicable to every area of life. So, if indeed I want to run a 5K, you know, and I'm approaching 60 years old, you know, it's probably wise to hydrate.

It's probably wise to work my way up in the mileage, probably even more miles than I need so that on the race day I have a little extra in the tank. It's probably wise to uh get the right kinds of shoes and to avoid injury. And I mean there's a variety of things to eat right to uh you know electrolytes uh what is this stuff my kids are uh eating these creatine or something like that. um I don't understand all of it, but I know there's a wisdom behind an excellence behind that I really want to know. And so I listen to people who know and I try to do you know what I'm told by these experts in order to properly prepare and that's where excellence can be shown. So virtue is really important in this sense. It leads to a kind of excellence.

And we see it exemplified at times by Odysius, Vidipades, and others in the ancient Greek world. And yet sometimes they can't help but show their quote unquote Achilles heel, a weakness. And it, you know, for Odysius, it was it was bragging by sharing his name. For Fidipities, it was maybe one mile too far. maybe you could have walked to the finish line, you know, maybe maybe I could have stopped a little earlier on my 5K um and uh been just fine. Um but I didn't. And that day on the raceourse, I exemplified courage. I exemplified determination. I exemplified the quest for excellence. And in a lot of ways, I was a good role model for my kids.

However, the lack of humility, teachability, and really general knowhow, you know, just being an intellectual bully by having the beer and not really hydrating and listening in one ear and it goes out the other ear to what my kids who are experienced in running are telling me. That's probably not a good idea. Beer is not a good substitute for real water and other hydration fluids. Um, I thought I could have my cake and eat it, too. Valor of this kind may get you some ways in life or sometimes get you to your goal, but just as often they will get you to some kind of calamity.

And Aristotle, I think, um, ex, you know, teaches us that that we want to know ourselves. This would be a Socratic point, you know, know thyself and the Oracle of Deli, having that written on the top of the wall, you know, knowing yourself is really important. And I knew myself really well, but I had that Achilles heel of um of uh you know, not listening and not being teachable at just the wrong time. And it cost me it cost John Ho on the trip uh in throughout France, you know, because well, we didn't really have anybody teaching us anything. So, we went kind of blindly and, you know, somewhat stupidly forward.

It ended up working out at the end of the day. Oh man, I'm going to, like I said, I'm going to have him on. We're going to talk about all the things we learned on that trip together about life and about I mean those stories resonate for the rest of your life. And so I'm not saying don't go. I am saying prepare and dispositionally demonstrate virtue and wisdom. push the boundaries but don't push them to the point where excellence uh is giving way to um overconfidence to the kind of exuberance that Odysius showed or anything like that. Um knowledge and humility and knowing yourself are the basics.

um then have sort of an existential courage to go and do. And if you balance those things out and you willing to and you're willing to take the risk and to go and stretch yourself, you are going to become so much more than you ever thought you could be. And that is really true in any area of life. I've mentioned athletics. I've mentioned um journeys as a way of doing it. I think the athletics and and those types of journeys are a great metaphor because when I found my way into the academic world and I started studying the philosophy of Emanuel Kant and I realized all the difficulty surrounding the interpretation of Kant and I really wanted to make a difference in that field.

I was able to draw upon my trip through Europe with my buddy John. I was able to draw upon some of my other adventures that I had been on and the kind of resolve it took to get from point A to point B. And uh in many ways, you know, my journey into philosophy was so much more difficult than those physical journeys were.

uh just as one little you know thought that comes to mind um I'll be telling this story somewhere along the way but I I joined the PhD program at the University of Edinburgh in 1996 and I graduated after blood sweat and tears of learning the philosophy of Kant and the interpretive field out there and the uh and all the things it took to write well and to stake a claim and give rationale for it. I graduated in 2005.

It took 9 years if for that adventure to pan out. um never would have gotten there had I not gone through those other metaphorical journeys, those other big events in life that had given me the kind of strength and resolve and grown in me the realization that I needed to be humble and needed to um to uh uh know myself and to have the kind of tenacity and resolve it took to get to the finish line. There are other things that I can recall when I made a feature film that took you know from conception to completion it was I don't know more like 5 years but it took 3 years of actual film making to get it done.

Um there are other things you know that took a good long time to pull off. Um those kinds of things you've got to have the kind of grit it takes to get there. Learn as you go. Try not to make the same mistake twice and keep moving forward if you're called to do that. If you feel like that's your mission, if that's something that God's laid on your heart, then do it and get it done. But remember some of the great stories because in the middle of all these great virtues, there are Achilles heels that we have to be on guard for and we have to try to minimize along the way.

All right. Well, that's all I have time for today. Uh, thank you very much for listening. As always, um, this is the Firestone Files. Have a good one. Bye for now. 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.

Turn it around.