What does it look like to give up everything — including your life — for the greater good?
In this episode, we explore one of the most powerful examples of self-sacrifice in all of Scripture as part of our ongoing series, More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership. Queen Esther’s story is a masterclass in what it means to lead not for personal gain, position, or safety — but for a purpose so much larger than yourself that you’re willing to risk everything to serve it. Self-sacrifice, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, means giving up your own interests to help others or advance a cause. Esther didn’t just define it. She lived it. And her example stands as one of the highest forms of leadership the world has ever seen.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. She was willing to risk it all by going before the king and pleading a case. She was willing to risk her position, her lifestyle, and even her own life for her people. She was not focused on her life. She was focused on the lives of others, on her fellow people. She wasn't trying to be a hero. She was just trying to do whatever she could to save the lives of others.
Gary Schneeberger:
Self-sacrifice we discuss in this week's episode of our series within the show, More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership means, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, being willing to give up your own interests in order to help others or advance a cause. The focus of our conversation, the Bible's Queen Esther, and how she exemplifies the truth that there are few higher forms of leadership than a willingness to sacrifice everything for the greater good. Welcome friends to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have joined us in one of the episodes that we call the series within the show. And this year, the series within the show is again about Warwick's book, Crucible Leadership, and this is More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership.
Last year we did Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership. This year we pulled together a real top flight team of folks that, what should we call this one? And we came up with More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership. No, it just made sense, right? Stories last year, more stories this year. And just to level set everybody, that book Crucible Leadership is the blueprint for what Beyond the Crucible has become. In fact, if there was no Crucible Leadership, Wall Street Journal bestseller, it's safe to say there would not be a Beyond the Crucible because that's where Warwick really leaned into telling his story and the lessons that he learned from his story. And that's what this podcast is all about, stories and what we can learn from those stories.
So today's story, speaking of stories, is Queen Esther, Queen Esther of the Bible. Her example in Warwick's book appears in the final manuscript section on self-sacrifice. So that's what we're going to focus on here today is how Esther can teach us many things about self-sacrifice. And we'll talk about that and about what self-sacrifice looks like. So Warwick, after that preamble, let me ask you this question. Why Esther? What makes her story a leadership story for this series?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's a good question because not everybody has heard of Esther, Queen Esther, but she is a great example of self-sacrifice. So let's just provide some context. Esther's story is in a chapter in my book, Crucible Leadership called Faith that Guides Leadership. And I speak of faith more generally as a key ingredient to life and leadership in the sense that it guides that direction. You might have different religious faith, spiritual faith, values and principles, and whatever that may mean to you, it acts as an anchor for our soul. And in a sense, it stands as something immovable in your life as you deal with your decisions in career, family, neighborhood, amongst your people. And the reason that faith in this context, again, we're describing it as an anchor for your soul is the reason it's so important. So when you're hit by the storms of life, and it's really more when than if-
Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.
Warwick Fairfax:
... you need a solid set of values and principles that can help you make difficult decisions amidst challenging circumstances. One of the things that we found in the research that we've done on crucibles is that the vast majority of people have gone through crucibles, which we define as something so traumatic that it fundamentally changes your life. And our research experts said those who said that they didn't have a crucible were basically lying because if you looked at the underlying data, it said they really did have challenges. Sometimes you think, well, my life isn't that difficult and it hasn't been that bad compared to others. But the reality is everybody's going to go through storms in life. And the question is when they hit, how will you navigate your way through?
And one of the keys is having a solid set of values and principles that can help you make those key decisions that are true to who you are and what you believe to your core at your soul. And so in the chapter that I wrote, Faith that Guides Leadership, I talk about key principles of leadership and indeed they're really key principles of life that should help you put faith into action. Faith is important, but ultimately faith has to be active. It has to correspond with how you lead your life. It can't be just bumper stickers on a wall somewhere. And so some of the principles I talk about in this chapter include humility, integrity, servant leadership, and self-sacrifice. So these principles that we're talking about in this chapter, Faith that Guide Leadership, the one that we're going to be focusing on is self-sacrifice.
So let's talk about what self-sacrifice means. Self-sacrifice means being willing to give your all, even your own life for cause or principle you believe in. The Oxford English Dictionary defines self-sacrifice as being willing to give up your own interests in order to help others or advance a cause. So it may mean being willing to give up your position, your reputation, or even your career for something that you believe in. There are a few high forms of leadership or indeed life than a willingness to sacrifice everything for the good of others. And Esther, as we'll see, is a great example of self-sacrifice. She was willing to risk her life to save the lives of others, to save the lives of her people.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that's a good tease to my next question, which is what was the crucible that was facing Esther and her people? Because this is a podcast called Beyond the Crucible. So crucibles figure prominently in what we discuss. And Esther and her people were looking at a crucible when this story kind of picks up steam here, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So let's talk a bit about who Esther was. Esther was a Jew who lived at a time when the Jewish people had been conquered and taken to Babylon as captives. Now, Babylon was the capital of the Persian Empire. King Xerxes asked for a search to be made of his kingdom for beautiful young women. And his officials rounded up many from throughout the kingdom. And one of these young women that King Xerxes had rounded up was Esther. And she was brought with other women to the palace. Now over time, she became one of the king's favorites and eventually she won his favor and approval and was made queen. Now the king did not know of her background that she was Jewish and that she was one of the captive people who had been brought to Babylon, but it's really remarkable here.
You have Esther as being just a normal person living somewhere in the Persian Empire and she gets rounded up as one of the beautiful women. And one of the things we'll find is, I don't know that we know this specifically, but what attracted Xerxes to Esther, I think was more than just her beauty. There was something, and again, this is me speculating, something within her soul, something about her that he truly admired and respected. I have the feeling, again, I'm just speculating, but I think it was more than just physical beauty that made him select her out of all of the women that he had in his palace to be his queen.
Gary Schneeberger:
So now that we've set the stage for that, what was the crucible? Again, Beyond the Crucible, what was the crucible facing Esther and her people at the time of this story taking place?
Warwick Fairfax:
So Esther's cousin Mordecai would not kneel or pay honor to one of King Xerxes' high official Haman. This set in motion a series of events that would threaten the very lives of Esther's people, the Jewish people. So Haman being an arrogant, proud official, saw that Mordecai would not kneel and he was enraged. And when Haman learned of Mordecai's background that Mordecai was Jewish, and obviously one of the captives that had been brought to Babylon, and he was just so angry, not only did he want to kill Mordecai, he wanted to kill all of Mordecai's people. I mean, that is just staggering to contemplate. I mean, people can be angry, but it's just staggering that Haman would want to kill not just Mordecai, but Mordecai's people, the Jewish people.
So Haman went to King Xerxes and he's basically said that there are people in your kingdom who did not want to obey your laws. And so he asked Xerxes for a decree, which was granted, to kill all of those people, all the Jewish people. And obviously Xerxes didn't understand the background that this was a personal thing between Haman and Mordecai. He was just told they're not willing to obey your laws. And the King's like, "Well, that's a problem." And back then there are dire consequences for not obeying the king's laws.
Gary Schneeberger:
And this is where in this story, where Esther begins to really play a prominent role. And it started with Mordecai challenged Esther with the words, "For such a time as this." And folks, if you've heard that phrase before, it's one of many, many, many. I actually wrote Warwick an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal for Mark Burnett and Roma Downey about this very issue about the Bible should be taught in schools, not as holy literature, but it should be taught as history because so many words and phrases come from the Bible. Here's one of them, "For such a time as this." So how did that challenge, if you will, how did those words change what Esther's position required of her?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, when Mordecai uncovered Haman's plot to have all of the Jewish people killed, he sent a message to his cousin, Esther, pleading for her to save her people. Now Esther, she was initially reluctant and Esther told Mordecai that for any man or woman who approaches the king without being summoned, then that basically means death unless the king decides to spare their lives. So if you go before the king unsummoned, you're going to assume it's death unless by some miracle he says, "Well, actually in this case, I'll spare your life." But the default assumption is you're going to die if you go before the king unsummoned. So Mordecai replied to Esther that she should not think that just because she's in the king's house, that she alone of all the Jewish people will be spared.
He said that if she remains silent, you and your father's family will perish. And this is where Mordecai told Esther, and these are famous words that we might have heard, may not know the source, but these are words that are pretty familiar to many. And this is what Mordecai told Esther. "And who knows, but you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. And Mordecai had given Esther a huge challenge for Esther to try to save her people while risking her own life. That's a big challenge and a big ask to risk going before the king with the default assumption is you got to die to try to save her people.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And it's interesting in the context of Beyond the Crucible that you said when you were leading into him giving her that challenge, that she was initially reluctant. How many times, I mean, that is the way that we all tend to feel or that many of us tend to feel when we're facing something that can be a crucible, that asks us to have courage, asks us to step into some place we may not be comfortable. That's pretty common. Take us out of biblical times, take us into today's times. That's a pretty common reaction to being initially reluctant, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It is. We might be thinking that we want to do something, speak to somebody at work, your boss, have a conversation with family members or people in your community to take an action that's going to be risky to your career, position, status. You don't typically think, "Sure, let's go."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
You got to be thinking, "I don't know that I really want to do this. Can't somebody else step up? Why does it have to be me? Why always me? Come on." Can somebody else just charge ahead while I'm on the sidelines and cheer them and say, "Hey, way to go. Off you go. Yeah. This is awesome. We'll cheer you." We can often think that, that we want to cheer from the sidelines, but we really don't want to take the big risk. But ultimately, we need to take that risk, but it's a rare person when challenged from other people or challenged from within that they're going to say instantly, "Sure, I'll go. I'll risk my career, position or even my own life."
It's like, "Well, let me count the cost. Do I really want to do this? Does it really have to be me?" So most mortals, most humans, they don't instantly charge in. They're thinking, "Gosh, I don't want to do this. It's risky. It's going to be painful. Surely, can't somebody else?" Most people will at least have some of those thoughts before charging in.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And in the case of Esther, what did she do and why do you call what she did self-sacrifice? And you've already hinted at it in what we've been talking about so far.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, so Esther told Mordecai that she would indeed go to the king and she said, "And if I perish, I perish." So what that meant was she knew that if she went before the king unsummoned, she could be killed instantly even before she had a chance to say why she was there, which would've accomplished nothing other than her own death and obviously the death of all of her people, the Jewish people. So she knew that she risked her own life, but her words are just so heroic. And if I perish, I perish. So Esther put on her royal robes and went to the king. And the king asked, "What is it Queen Esther? What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given you."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
I think that really shows something that even before she opened her mouth with her request, clearly the king deeply respects Queen Esther. He knows that she's coming before him unsummoned. He knows the Persian laws. He knows the royal decrees. If you come before the king unsummoned, you're risking death. So he realizes this has to be important. She would not come in this way unless it's serious. And because he deeply respects Queen Esther, his default is to say, "What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom it will be given you. Pretty much whatever you ask, I will grant it even before I even know what you're going to ask." That shows deep respect and admiration for Esther.
And so Esther then asks the king to spare her people and her people were indeed spared. So this story of Esther shows remarkable courage, really tremendous courage. She was a Jew whose people had been captured by the Persians. She was willing to go before the king unsummoned to try and save the people, knowing that this could mean certain death, but she was willing to go anyway. So to risk your life to save other people is the highest form of self-sacrifice. It's putting others' interests before your own. There are a few more noble qualities than this.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it's interesting. And again, in our experience at Beyond the Crucible, we hear these kinds of things all the time. We've gone through them all the time. And that phrase, "If I perish, I perish." Okay, that talks about if I die, I die. But there's a lot of... I mean, every crucible that you face, you can have a statement like that. If I fail, I fail, but I'm still going to go, right? If I have to start over, I'll start over, if you try something new. If I upset some people, I upset some people if you're taking a bold stand for something that maybe your family's not going to be thrilled about. If I hit a roadblock, I hit a roadblock.
That perspective, if this happens, then this happens, that's okay because that's what it's going to take for me to find my life of significance beyond my crucible, right? I mean, if I perish, I perish is the ultimate stakes, but we have a lot of stakes like that when we're going through crucibles that we have to answer that question in a positive way. If this happens, this happens, so be it. I've still got to go, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. Having the attitude that irrespective of the outcome, I have to try. That might cost me my life, my career, my status within the community. If you're in politics, standing up for what you believe in your community or your state or beyond, that may not necessarily make you friends within your party, the other party. Typically, the way to get ahead is to go along to get along, basically. That's typically what happens.
Gary Schneeberger:
So the idea of if I lose the election, I lose the election. Talk about that takes a lot of courage and maybe not as much courage as Esther displayed, but that takes courage too.
Warwick Fairfax:
It really does. When thinking of politicians who are willing to make great sacrifices, it reminds me of a story from the book that we've spoken earlier about William Wilberforce who campaigned to abolish the slave trade in the late 1700s, early 1800s in Britain. And he was a member of the conservative party, a good friend of the prime minister, and he was this person who was young, charismatic. Everybody liked him. As I said, he was good friends with the then Prime Minister William Pitt, but he came to a deep faith in Christ and he believed that the slave trade was morally wrong.
And so he campaigned for that. It took a lot of years for parliament to pass a bill abolishing the slave trade, and he appealed to people's higher moral principles, even though the slave trade brought in massive amounts of money to the British Empire. Now, by doing this, he knowingly sacrificed his political career. The chances of him becoming-
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. That was self-sacrifice, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Chances of him becoming prime minister was zero after that. Some people may have respected him, but he was sort of making enemies in the process. He may have won the day, but his chances of being prime minister were gone. So he knew that going in, but his life, his career was not important. Slavery was a scourge on the British Empire, was morally wrong, and he was going to do whatever it took to have it abolished. There are very few people in business and politics who are willing to make a William Wilberforce kind of stand. It tends to be career ending and threatening, which is why people don't tend to do it. So Esther is a great example of being willing to make that stand, even though it might, in this case, mean her death.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. You write that the key to self-sacrifice is motivation, and you hinted at it a little bit, right? Well, not hinted at it. I mean, your story of Wilberforce, his self-sacrifice, what was his motivation? He wanted to see the slave trade abolished. That was his motivation. What does Esther show us about this idea of the key to self-sacrifice is motivation? What lessons can we learn there?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Esther's motivation was to save her people. She was King Xerxes' queen and was the most favored and honored woman of all the women in King Xerxes' palace. She had a very comfortable, perhaps opulent and lavish life. Now, she may have thought that even though she was Jewish, that the king respected and liked her so much that there's no way that despite the decree that all the Jewish people should be killed, she might have thought, and she may have been right in thinking this, that she'd be spared, the king liked her and respected her, so she'd be fine. And that could be a fair calculation in this case, but she was willing to risk it all by going before the king and pleading her case.
She was willing to risk her position, her lifestyle, and even her own life for her people. She was not focused on her life. She was focused on the lives of others, on the fellow people. Now, she wasn't trying to be a hero. She was just trying to do whatever she could to save the lives of others. And it's such a wonderful example of self-sacrifice. She wasn't thinking, "Man, I'm going to be written up in the Bible or I'm going to be written up in annals of the great men and women who've sacrificed everything." She was just thinking, "I don't really care about all that. I just want to save my people." It was that simple. That was the motivation, not glory, grandeur, applause. It was all about doing whatever it took to help others, to save the people.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And this idea, you said it in answering the question, Esther was willing to risk it all. And for her, all could have, as you said, meant her lifestyle could have meant her life. It seems to me it's pretty true in bouncing back from a crucible and achieving a life of significance, we have to be ready, willing to risk it all to whatever all is, right? And you talked about it earlier, sometimes it's your reputation. Sometimes it's a political career. Sometimes it's... I mean, there's a lot of stuff that you have... This idea of being willing to risk it all seems to me at the center of what it takes to bounce back from a crucible and bounce toward a life of significance, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
It really is. More broadly, when you go through a crucible, you've got to take risks to bounce back.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
There are different level of risk, whether maybe you're in the midst of substance abuse, you're hanging around with certain people, maybe you're growing up in a neighborhood where people are drug dealers. There's all sorts of levels of risk. We have to be willing to say, "Okay, I'm going to chart a different course. It's not good for me to hang around people that will reinforce habits and behaviors that is going to damage, if not kill me. I need to find different friends that will live lifestyles that help me." Well, people won't understand, "Why don't you want to hang around us? What's your problem?"
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that's going to cause problems when you make waves in your party, in your company. People will say, "Well, look, it's go along to get along. What are you doing?" You might lose friends. You might lose your chance of being promoted. You might feel like you're very lonely. You're in a group of one because everybody else thinks you're crazy. Maybe your family thinks you're crazy. Maybe your husband, wife or partner says, "Look, if you make this choice, your career is over and the people at your company are sufficiently powerful that they'll blackball you from getting a job with any other company in that industry in your area." Sometimes people have the power to really might make life very difficult for you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And you might have a spouse or partner saying, "We're enjoying the lifestyle we have. You take that risk, we could lose everything. We might have to sell our opulent house and move somewhere else." And so that could risk alienating your family, spouse, coworkers. So that can be willing to make a sacrifice to do whatever it takes, it's not easy, but you might feel like not only is it important for me, but it's important for me to stand up for what's right because I'm trying to defend the rights of others. But it's doing the right thing often entails big personal risks for yourself, your lifestyle, your friendships. It's not easy to do and it's risky and it's why many people won't do that. They don't want to risk their lifestyle, their friendships, their career. I mean, that's a big ask to risk all of that.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Right. I'm sorry to keep drilling on this point, but as you were talking about it, it made me think about your own story and this idea, right? You so wanted the family media business to be established again in the principles of the founder, your great-great-grandfather. You wanted it to continue to do good. You wanted a lot of things and you were willing, right? Your takeover, you had to be willing to risk it all, and there was a lot to risk in that takeover. Do you see this connecting in any way to your story?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, that's an interesting question. I hadn't really thought about that before, but yeah, as listeners and viewers would know, I grew up in a very large family media business in Australia. It was founded by a person of faith, person of great principle in 1841. And by the time I grew up, it was very large with newspapers, TV, radio stations, magazines that had the Australian equivalent to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. And after coming back from Harvard Business School in 1987, my dad had died earlier that year. There was a sense when my father was alive and my parents that the company wasn't being run well.
It wasn't being run along the ideas of the founder. So I launched this $2.25 billion takeover, which was certainly risky to bring it back to the ideas of the founder and have it be well managed. Obviously, for those who've heard my story and read my book, Crucible Leadership, I made a lot of mistakes and false assumptions. Was my motives noble? I think in most cases, yes. Yes. My father had been thrown out as chairman 11 years before in 1976 by the family members that subconsciously that may have played a part. But yeah, I didn't really think about it as self-sacrifice. I mean, I was trying to do what was right. Was it really necessary? One could debate that.
But certainly, I don't know that I want to call myself an example of self-sacrifice, but I was trying to do the right thing and one could argue whether that was the right thing or not. It certainly caused friction within the family. And three years later after the takeover, Australia got in a recession and after a number of family members sold out, we had to file for bankruptcy and my wife's American. So we ended up starting a new life in the U.S. Where I'm not as well known and we could raise a family without all the pressures of being a Fairfax in Sydney, which is sort of like being a Bush or a Kennedy or a Vanderbilt or something.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So I don't know that I think of it quite as self-sacrifice, but my motivation was to try to do the right thing and it certainly had consequences. And some of them were because of my own mistakes and false assumptions. But yes, more generally, when you try to do the right thing, people aren't always going to see it as the right thing. They might have a different perspective.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And they certainly won't necessarily applaud it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure. All right. We'll get off of your story because I can tell I'm making you a little uncomfortable here. Sorry. It just struck me as something I never thought of before and I think it's true. I'll call you this, you were someone who was willing to risk it all for the vision that you had for the family media business. And that is not dissimilar to what we were talking about here with Esther. So as we begin to wrap up here, Warwick, what can listeners and viewers take from the story of Esther doing the right thing that may cost them something? In other words, what can they learn about this very thing, being willing to risk it all and being able to say, "If it fails, it fails. If some negative outcome, that's okay, I'll survive." What do we want people to walk away with from this conversation?
Warwick Fairfax:
When there are challenges in life, be it at work or at home, amongst your people, it's easy to think that the smart play is to keep your head down, be quiet and do nothing. It's easy to say to yourself like, "I'm just one person. What difference can I make? I mean, look, it won't work. I'll sacrifice myself, my career, my job, my status within the community for nothing. What is the point?" So I'm reminded of, there's a great quote by Edmund Burke who was an Irishman and actually in the British Parliament sometime in the 1700s. He said something like basically bad things happen when good men, good people do nothing.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Something in that vein. And it's very true. Bad things happen when good people who should know better, they do nothing because they think, "Look, what is the point? Why even try?" But the issue is not so much success, but being willing to try to do the right thing irrespective of the outcome. It means being willing to talk to your boss at work when you feel a coworker is being mistreated, even though that might mean that you'll be fired and your career will be damaged. As I said before, sometimes people have enough power within the community to label you as a troublemaker, somebody that really wouldn't want to employ, somebody will just upset the apple cart. When you're making the decision to try to do the right thing, the noble thing, you typically, you won't know the outcome.
You won't know if you're going to succeed or not. You won't know if your sacrifice is worth it, so to speak. I mean, will your sacrifice succeed? But that's really not the point. You don't know the outcome. You don't know whether it will succeed. But the point is it's all about your motivation and your willingness to sacrifice your self-interest for the interest of others, irrespective of whether what you're doing is successful. And that's exactly what Esther did. She went to King Xerxes to plead her case for her people not knowing whether she would succeed. In fact, she might have walked into that room in the palace towards his throne and she might have been killed on the spot without even being able to plead her case.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that was a possibility. So that's like, not only may I not succeed, I might even get a chance to present my case. That was a real possibility. But she knew that she had to try to talk to the king to save her people. And success and indeed her own safety was certainly not assured. So that's what self-sacrifice is. Ultimately, it's being willing to sacrifice your reputation, your career, and even your own life for the good of others. It's interesting, when you think of self-sacrifice, you often think of brave men and women who've given their lives in defense of their country.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And especially when their cause is to preserve the freedom of their country or countries. You can think of World War II and the U.S. And Britain and other allies trying to defeat the scourge of Nazi Germany and free Europe. And you can think of soldiers receiving the Victoria Cross, which is sort of the ultimate medal that you can receive in Australia and the British Empire. In the U.S., you can think of soldiers who received the Congressional Medal of Honor. And such soldiers receive these medals in many cases by sacrificing their lives to save their comrades in arms. And soldiers in these circumstances are not thinking of being heroes. That is the furthest thing from their minds. They want to save their comrades, their brothers and sisters in arms. And that's true self-sacrifice.
And I'm just reminded of the theme of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. And this sums it up so well. And this is what it says. It says ordinary people doing the extraordinary. And to me, that's what self-sacrifice is. It's not so much or not necessarily people who are famous and well known. Yes, it could be political leaders or business leaders, but often it's just ordinary people running into harm's way. Maybe there's somebody caught in a fire in your apartment building, a child or a neighbor and you go in to save them. You're not thinking maybe the fire department's on their way, but you're thinking, "Gosh, I need to do something before I dash out." And people aren't thinking of heroism at that point.
They're thinking of just, as the Congressional Medal of Honor Society says, ordinary people doing extraordinary. You're thinking somebody needs to do something. I need to step in. You're not even often thinking about the ramifications. It's like, "I need to charge into the fray. I need to do something." And that's what, in the case of the Victoria Cross or the Congressional Medal of Honor, that's what these soldiers are thinking. They're thinking, "I need to save the men and women that are in here with me amidst battle. I might lose my own life, but I've got to do what I can to save others." And it's often a split second thought. They just charge in and when they're asked later, and many unfortunately don't survive, but those who do, when they're given the Congressional Medal of Honor, for instance, or the Victoria Cross, then when people ask them, "Well, you're a hero."
They're thinking, "I'm not a hero. I just tried to do the right thing. I just tried to save my brothers and sisters in arms." And they just completely dismiss the notion that they're a hero. They won't accept that. I just tried to do what I could to... And they sometimes say, "Well, I just did what anybody would do. I would try to save the people around me." And obviously not everybody does, but they're thinking, "Well, surely anybody would do this." So that's really self-sacrifice, that's true heroism. And that's what Queen Esther did is she wanted to save her people and she did that, but she didn't know that. She just charged in. If somebody said to her, "Well, you're a hero." She said, "I'm not a hero." And from her faith perspective, she might think, "Well, God put me in a place where I'm the queen of this king and I'm part of the Jewish people."
Gary Schneeberger:
For such a time as this.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. God put me in this place, so therefore I have to charge in and save my people or try even though I might risk my own life. So she's not thinking she's a hero. She just happens to be in a position where maybe she'll succeed. And she did. I don't think she was probably aware of the degree to which the king respected her. She might have had a notion, but not to the degree when he said, "Queen Esther, tell me what you ask and I'll give you up to half the kingdom."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
She might think, "I think he likes and respects me, but not that much. Not half the kingdom, that's a lot of respect." But yet she was willing to go in and that's really self-sacrifice, being willing to go in when you don't know the outcome, but you know it's the right thing and you want to save the people around you, irrespective of the damage to your life, career, political career, whatever it is, that's self-sacrifice. So that's why Esther is such a great example.
Gary Schneeberger:
I would ruin a good ending. And as an old journalist, I was taught every story deserves a good ending and don't wreck it. I'm not going to wreck this ending by adding a bunch of stuff. I will simply say this as we wrap up, folks. This is our eighth episode of the series within the show on More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership. We'll turn the page again in November to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance. We will see you then.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
What if you could train your response to fear before the crisis comes?
In this episode, we sit down with Jenna Schutt, a former cardiac nurse who learned the answer to that question while fighting for her own life. Diagnosed with a rare and incurable bone-marrow disease, Jenna endured chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant — and in the hospital rooms where fear and “what if” thoughts threatened to overwhelm her, she began deliberately redirecting her mind toward Scripture and what she believed to be true. Over time, that repetition became spiritual muscle memory. It became what she now calls The Joy Reflex — a faith-based framework she uses to help women train peace before panic arrives. Your diagnosis is not your identity. And Jenna’s story is proof. To learn more about Jenna Schutt and to access the free resource she discusses, visit https://www.jennaschutt.com
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
Jenna Schutt:
And I can remember very clearly, me sitting there with a mask on, and he's looking at me and he said, "Jenna, I need you to hear me right now." He said, "This is treatable, but it is not curable. There is no cure." And if I had thought that moment in my kitchen was a before and after, this truly was. I felt like there was just a line drawn in my life, and here I am going from mom and wife and nurse to patient.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's our guest this week, Jenna Schutt, talking about the crossroads she reached when she faced not a single medical setback, but a succession of them. She endured chemotherapy, repeated medical procedures and hospital stays, and ultimately a stem cell transplant. Her experience forced her to confront what happens internally when fear arrives faster than faith and led her to develop the Joy Reflex to build the spiritual muscle memory, to return to faith, peace, and joy when circumstances trigger panic and catastrophic thinking.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Jenna, it's so wonderful to have you on the podcast, and I'll just read a brief introduction. So Jenna Schutt is a former cardiac nurse, stem cell transplant survivor, Christian speaker, and founder of the Joy Reflex. After being diagnosed at 30 with a rare disease that later became aggressive systemic mastocytosis, she endured years of treatment and a bone marrow transplant. Today, she helps women renew their minds, respond to fear with faith, and take the next faithful step when life feels overwhelming.
So Jenna, I love what you have with the whole Joy Reflex system you have, train peace before panic, practice faith before fear, make joy your reflex. What you talk about, which I think is so impressive that we'll get into, is when you have fear come on, it's just don't let it grow too large. I think of it really like weeding when you feel those first weeds of fear, so to speak, of really dealing with it and praying. So I loved your whole concept, and we'll get into the Joy Reflex here in a bit.
Tell us a bit about yourself. I think I read on your website that you live with your husband and two boys in rural Nebraska?
Jenna Schutt:
Yes.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just tell us what life was like for young Jenna growing up and what were your hopes and dreams and what was your family life just as a kid growing up. What was life like for Jenna?
Jenna Schutt:
Well, I actually was born and raised in Kansas, and then I moved to Nebraska when I got married. So now, I'm a corn husker and I literally live in the middle of a cornfield. If I were to flip my camera, you would see corn because that is what we live in the middle of, and we live on a dirt road, and I absolutely love it. You could walk outside of our house and you would not know that anything in the world was going on because it is just very peaceful outside.
But I was born and raised in Kansas. My grandfather started the church that I was raised in and my father is now the pastor since my grandfather has since passed. So I very much grew up in the faith world. I like to say that I was attending church services in the womb because my mother was a pastor's wife, and so I very much grew up with being the pastor's kid and knowing all about faith. We had services four times a week. So Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, I was in church. And if it was open, we were there. Kind of my life growing up was very faith filled, and I'm so grateful for that background as I grew up. And now, I am married to a pastor, and his father is also a pastor. So pastors all around.
Warwick Fairfax:
So what is that like... Just knowing a few pastors and we go to a... I think I mentioned a non-denominational evangelical church in Maryland, it's not always easy being, what do they call it, a PK, a pastor's kid, because they expect you to be perfect and know everything. So how did you deal with the pressure of being the kid of the pastor with your friends at school and in church? How'd that all kind of feel?
Jenna Schutt:
Not only was I a pastor's kid, but I'm also an eldest daughter and an eldest granddaughter. So if you want to talk about responsibility and feeling like I'm in charge of everything and feeling all of that on my shoulders, you 100% read that correctly. So I definitely was the one that loved to take care of other people, loved to help other people, and I think probably that has what led me into nursing and to be a nurse because it's always filled my cup to pour out to other people. And I think that you can maybe see that now as the way my life went, starting from just being a nurse to being the patient and now I want to pour out into other people this Joy Reflex and show them how they can be empowered to have that faith, peace, and joy for themselves. And I think that where I started from, just being that pastor's kid and knowing that people's eyes were on me and knowing that I could be the example and to be the example that they could follow, has traveled with me even until today.
Warwick Fairfax:
What's interesting is-
Gary Schneeberger:
I'm going to jump in just for a second, Warwick.
Warwick Fairfax:
Please go ahead.
Gary Schneeberger:
Just a second.
Warwick Fairfax:
Sure, sure.
Gary Schneeberger:
I also am a PK, a policeman's kid.
Jenna Schutt:
There you go.
Gary Schneeberger:
So I know of what you speak in a different way, but I know of it.
Jenna Schutt:
Yes, yes.
Warwick Fairfax:
That is very funny. Certainly, the eyes were on you growing up, which-
Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.
Warwick Fairfax:
What's interesting, Jenna, is that some people rebel against that whole upbringing and the spotlight being on you, but it seemed like you rose to the occasion like, "Okay, I'm the daughter of a pastor, and I'm going to do my level best to care for other people and be somebody that my parents would be proud of," and so you didn't rebel. It's like you almost rose to the occasion and the role, which not everybody does. That's kind of remarkable. Is that just in your DNA? I mean, not everybody makes a choice you made, which is kind of amazing.
Jenna Schutt:
Yeah. I think some of it is just my upbringing. My family and I were extremely close. My grandpa, who was the founder of the church, and I were extremely close. And I can always remember my grandpa's house was the parsonage that was right next to the church, and his door was always open, and his Bible was always on his lap and it was always open. And he would have people come in all the time, wanting to hear what he had to say, and what he had to say was always what the Word had to say.
I can remember going down there. If I wasn't feeling well or anything like that, you'd go to your grandparents' house, and so I would be laying on the couch, and it would be phone call after phone call of people wanting to know advice and hear what he had to say. He always had the Word open, and it was always going back to the Word. And I think just growing up under that and seeing that example for myself, that really was a big way to grow up and a big example to live through and to live by. And I think that's part of the reason why I am the way that I am, is because of those examples that were lived out in front of me.
Warwick Fairfax:
Before we get to the crucible, talk about what led you to being a nurse and what kind of nurse were you. So just talk about just the background you were in when your crucible happened, so what led you to be in nursing and what that look like once you're a nurse.
Jenna Schutt:
I had thought that I wanted to be a teacher until I was a teacher's aid for a little while, and then I quickly learned that was not for me, even though now I homeschool my children, but I think it's a different situation when it's your own children. I knew I wanted to help people, and so where do you go from there, from thinking you know what you want to do to figuring out what it is that you're supposed to do? I had gone to some college classes, and one of the college classes I went to was anatomy and physiology or A&P, which is a pretty good one to figure out if you like this whole medical side or not.
My mom tells the story of when I came home from one of the classes, and we dissected the sheep's brain, and I just thought that was the coolest thing. My eyes were just glowing and talking about this. And my mom looked at me and she goes, "Yep, you're in the right spot. You're doing what you need to do." And so not just the science part, but the science part to me was just amazing. And to see how the body works together and how all these parts have to be working in concordance with another in order to function correctly was just amazing to me.
And then as I did become a nurse and started through my specialties and to see what it was that really excited me, I ended up in the cardiology world. So I was a cardiac catheterization lab nurse, which is kind of a mouthful to say that I was the nurse who took the patient who was in the middle of having an active heart attack, and I would be the nurse that would take them into the lab and assist the doctors as they were the ones who were opening those arteries to restore blood flow to the heart. I was very used to being in the middle of these emergent situations, trying to get that knowledge to that person who was in the middle of a heart attack while keeping them calm and also working with the doctors and doing all of the necessary things as well.
As I started to have children, I moved from that position to a position with less overnight call. Because heart attacks don't happen on a nine-to-five schedule, so you would be on call, you'd have to go in at all times of the night. So I moved to the cardiovascular clinic where I worked really closely with the doctors and more with educating patients, which again I loved. And that is really where I was at when I did receive that diagnosis.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just before we get there, tell me, so you got married and have a couple of sons, do you?
Jenna Schutt:
Yeah, I have two boys.
Warwick Fairfax:
What stage of life are they all at?
Jenna Schutt:
So now, my children are 7, almost 8 years old, and 9. They're 18 months apart, so they're very close.
Warwick Fairfax:
Very active time in life. And you met your husband... I guess you moved to Nebraska, you met him in Nebraska? What's your [inaudible 00:10:59]-
Jenna Schutt:
We actually met online, believe that or not. We met on... Heads up to christianmingle.com because they connected me and my husband. I always like to say that our parents got us together because my mom saw an ad on TV for Christian Mingle, and his mom saw the same ad, and they both were like, "You need to get on there and you need to see what there is." And so we both got on and met each other, and one thing happened. We just talked on the phone and we just talked for hours, and it was just this instant connection. And I could remember our very first date when we met in person, he came and he actually stayed at the parsonage with my grandparents, first time. On our very first date, he told me, "I don't feel like I'm supposed to be anywhere else. So if this goes any further, you're moving to me." It was pretty evident right away that if I was going to go any further, I was moving six hours. It just worked out, and we got married. We've been married almost 13 years now.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just talk about the crucible because you went from being somebody that dealt with people in the most challenging moments, certainly when you're in the cardiac unit. What happened? It seemed like the roles were flipped. You were no longer kind of over the patient looking at them, talking to them. You were on the other side. So what happened?
Jenna Schutt:
I had spent a lot of my life performing strength, and I knew how to keep going. I knew how to do all of my responsibilities. I had really prided myself on being able to carry it all, to hold it all, to help other people, to hold my family up. And I knew how to say, "I'm fine," and keep moving on to the next thing. And then all of a sudden, you get this diagnosis, and I was only 30 years old. Both my kids were still in diapers at the time. And to switch that perspective from being the nurse taking care of the patient in the bed to being the patient in the bed and to have all of those things that you see in your mind as to where your life is going to go just completely switch in the snap of the finger and you're living in this before and after, it really opened my eyes to several things. One of the biggest things was just to have compassion for people that are going through that in a way that you can never have just by helping them, but by living it.
Warwick Fairfax:
So you talk about the diagnosis you had, because it was a journey. I think you had abdominal symptoms, and it sometimes happened. It wasn't an instant diagnosis. So what was the journey? Because that probably was pretty tense at the time because you're a nurse and you write about this. You're probably thinking about the 85 things it could be and drawn a decision tree, "If this and that, or this and that," which sometimes knowledge is helpful, sometimes there's a downside to knowing a whole lot. So just talk about just that journey of figuring out what exactly was wrong.
Jenna Schutt:
Yes. Well, definitely to your point, knowledge is not always power, and sometimes it can definitely be more anxiety-producing to have all of these what ifs and to know the knowledge behind it. And yes, I did have a lot of abdominal symptoms. I had been on some medications for a sinus thing, so I had just attributed all of the symptoms that I had to a reaction to a medication. To be honest, my doctor agreed and she said, "Let's just do our due diligence. Let's do some lab work and some other testing, make sure there's nothing else going on, although I agree with what you think it probably is," and so we started down this journey of figuring out what it was that was the cause. Most of my lab work came back normal except for one number, and that pointed us towards a gallbladder issue.
And I can remember just on the inside, that inward, knowing that it wasn't my gallbladder, but I didn't know what it was. But I said, "Okay, an ultrasound is not invasive. Let's just go do that." Did the ultrasound, and they showed a mass on my kidney. And she said, "We can't see what this mass is with the ultrasound. You're going to have to go to do a CT scan." And I definitely attribute the CT scan with one of the first miracles I saw, because here I am having all these abdominal symptoms and then they give you these two huge bottles of chalky contrast that you have to chug and then also keep down the entire time. And so I'm praying, "Okay, Lord, help me keep this down and help me be able to actually drink this so they can see what they need to see," and that was definitely the first miracle was just I actually kept it down.
Did the CT scan, came home. And I talk a lot about this moment where I'm in my kitchen, my husband's holding my three to six month old, and my toddler boy is standing right beside them, and I get the call. In my nurse brain, I should have known that when my doctor is calling me about the scan an hour after it's done and it's my doctor on the phone, not a nurse, just the doctor's on the phone, I should have known that it wasn't good news. But in my mind, I just hadn't put those things together. And she told me, "The mass on your kidney is benign. There's nothing we need to be concerned about." And so I'm getting ready to get off the phone. I say, "Okay, great. Wonderful. Praise the Lord," click. And she goes, "Hold on, wait just a second."
And she went on to tell me that there was infiltrates in my bones, that my liver was enlarged, my spleen was enlarged, and I had lymph nodes enlarged all around my body, and later would come to find out that the reason I had all these stomach issues was because the lymph nodes had enlarged so much around my stomach that it was like a boa constrictor and it was just squeezing my stomach so incredibly tight. And then from there, we moved to oncology where I did receive the diagnosis.
Warwick Fairfax:
And what was it that you had?
Jenna Schutt:
It's kind of a mouthful, but it's a bone marrow disease called systemic mastocytosis, and it is a mast cell disorder. So we all have mast cells in our bodies, but this is where the mast cells kind of take over the bone marrow. And what mast cells do is they release histamine in a inflammatory or a allergic response. It tends to release histamine when it's not supposed to be, releases an enormous amount. And because it's in the bone marrow, it can go anywhere and everywhere that it wants to go.
Warwick Fairfax:
So what happened then? You got the diagnosis, and what were the next steps? What were you thinking, feeling, fearing?
Jenna Schutt:
Well, when I met with the oncologist, he had thought it was a B-cell lymphoma, and that was the direction that we were leaning. But he said, "We are going to have to do a lot of testing to figure out what this is." That first week, it was just test after test, after test. And I had a bone marrow biopsy, a PET scan, a scope, and then a long needle-guided biopsy. They were supposed to do that guided biopsy, and he had told me, kept looking at the images, looking at the scans, and the doctor said, "I cannot do this in good faith." And he said, "Where I need to go with my needle is between your kidney and your spinal cord. If I am off and I hit either one of those things, it's going to be very, very serious." So he said, "We're not going to do that."
So they took me back to my room, which I'd been waiting all day to have this procedure. They had had some emergencies come in, and so I had had nothing to eat. It's 5:00 PM. I am so hungry. And I remember the doctor came and he said, "Hey, I talked to your oncologist, and I just wanted to let you know that we already have a diagnosis, so this wasn't necessary for us to do anyway," and he rattled off, "Masto, da, da, da, da, da." I had never heard... didn't know, hadn't heard anything from oncology, so I am just spinning. From my nurse, I knew masto meant something in the bone, something with the bone marrow. And I asked my husband, I said, "Did you hear what he said?" And my husband, who's not medical, he said, "I heard it. I don't know what it is." And I said, "Well, I don't know either, but I can look it up." And he was like, "No, no, no," he said, "we're not going to Google ourselves into oblivion."
And so I'm sitting there at the restaurant finally getting to eat, and the hostess comes up, and I'm just bawling because I know it's not good, but I don't know what it is, and fear is trying to write this ending. We haven't even begun yet and fear's already writing the ending. And my husband says, "We are not going to go there. We're going to just take one step. We're going to believe what God's word says. We are going to just go with the next thing in front of us." And the next thing in front of us was waiting until the weekend was over to get the diagnosis.
Warwick Fairfax:
That must have been one of the longest weekends of your life [inaudible 00:20:06] waiting.
Jenna Schutt:
It was a long weekend. I go to church on Sundays and I can remember going into the church service. And my husband is the worship pastor, so he leads us in song. He was singing, and it was just this peace. I can remember walking in, and I was just so concerned about what was going to happen and I was so tired from all of the testing that I had gone through and I was sore and I was in pain. Just to have that peace come over me was such a blessing and that carried me through to Monday.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. So, okay, it's Monday and you get the diagnosis, and then what happens?
Jenna Schutt:
Yes. So I went into the oncology office and he, again, was under this impression it was a B-cell lymphoma. And he told me, he said, "The good thing about B-cell lymphoma, it's treatable and it's curable." And he said, "We'll tackle it when we get there." And then I go in and he said, "Well, it's not a B-cell lymphoma." I said, "Okay, well, what is it?" And he said, "Well, it's systemic mastocytosis." And I can remember very clearly me sitting there with a mask on and he's looking at me and he said, "Jenna, I need you to hear me right now." He said, "This is treatable, but it is not curable. There is no cure." And if I had thought that moment in my kitchen was a before and after, this truly was. I felt like there was just a line drawn in my life, and here I am going from mom and wife and nurse to patient.
So we very quickly started moving to, "What do we do now? Now, we know what this is, but how do we treat it?" And so I was sent to Mayo Clinic. And at the time, it was dormant, so we just did some over-the-counter medications and we were just watching it, but very quickly it became aggressive. And then we started having to really get into the big, heavy treatments. Definitely, chemo was not my first choice. It really started with abdominal symptoms again, and so I went to see just my family doctor and he had gotten in this mindset of IBS, "This is IBS, this is what this is." I knew again in my inside that it was not IBS. And I can remember having to be such a strong advocate more than I had ever had to advocate for myself or any patient that I had ever taken care of before. And it was a couple of weeks of advocating for, "I need more scans. I need more imaging. We've got to do more. Something's not right."
That doctor had just had it in his brain that, "This is what this is." And so there was a point where I called and I said, "I appreciate everything you've done, but I think you're going to have to refer me to someone else because we are not seeing eye to eye and I just don't feel like this treatment is doing what it's supposed to do." And then somehow miraculously, he decided that a CT scan was needed, and so went to CT scan and I'd had all these abdominal symptoms, as I mentioned, and it was because my liver had been shutting down.
And so I called, and he called me, and I called Mayo Clinic and called my other doctor. I got in to see oncology, but I still remember that doctor calling me and he said, "Did you see the scan?" I said, "Yeah, so it's my liver. It's ascites," which is this buildup of fluid in your stomach from your liver not functioning correctly. And still after he was looking at the scan, told me, "I still don't think it looks like ascites," and I knew we have to move on. We have to move on.
So then, that's when we started to have those really hard conversations. I had my first round of IV chemotherapy during COVID, so then we faced a whole other battle. Because if you remember back in those times during COVID, not only was there an enormous amount of fear around COVID in and of itself, but there were a bunch of supply issues, getting things, and the chemotherapy that I needed was a supply issue. So my oncology team had a certain number, and the hospital had a certain number, and they couldn't come together. And so we're waiting and waiting, and finally the doctor said, "I'm just going to have to put you as an inpatient, and you're going to have to be in the hospital." So I was in the hospital for six days, and I was told not to leave my room, because there was COVID patients in the hospital.
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh my gosh. I know during those times, sometimes family members couldn't visit.
Jenna Schutt:
Yes. And I didn't have my kids come, so we just did the FaceTime thing.
Warwick Fairfax:
You couldn't have your husband come into the [inaudible 00:24:52]-
Jenna Schutt:
My husband was okay, but that was all really that we had come in, and he had to wear a mask and he had to be very careful. I didn't want him bringing anything home to my kids. I didn't want my kids coming. So here I am having chemotherapy, and my mind is going to my children and my husband and protecting them. I think as a mom, you don't see things through your own eyes. You see them through the eyes of your children, and you want what's best for them, and you're trying to protect them even though you're still fighting for your life.
Gary Schneeberger:
I don't know if it's a strange way, but as you look back, did that moment that you just described, what was going on with COVID, did that help you get the focus off of yourself in a sense, off of what you were going through, and put it on, "Oh yeah, I'm responsible for these children too"? I mean, I would think knowing how you want to help people, that may have, I don't know, shaken you loose to focus your attentions on things that weren't wrong with you.
Jenna Schutt:
For me, I always do that. And that's part of the problem my husband and my mom always have to kind of snap me out of and saying, "You need to focus on yourself for a few minutes. It's okay for you to go rest," because I always want to do everything for my kids and for my husband and for my house and for all the things. And so it takes a lot for me to step back and say, "I need to take care of myself," because what's inside of me is to help other people and to help my kids and make sure everybody has everything that they need before I take care of myself. And that was something that was a very big lesson I had to learn out of necessity, was that my value and my worth is not tied to what I can do for others and what I can give out.
Warwick Fairfax:
So you were going through this terrible crucible, and your mind must have gone down a whole bunch of what ifs, "Will I survive this?" You had kids that were like babies or toddlers, "Am I going to be able to raise my kids or will somebody else?" No mother, matter how wonderful the support team you have, wants anybody raising your kid is other than yourself. What were all those what ifs going through? Because it must have been... I think you talk about this, the physical pain and challenges was one thing. But the whole mental, spiritual, that must have been something it's hard to describe. It must have been just a massive challenge.
Jenna Schutt:
It was. The picture that you saw, I didn't lose my hair in my first round of chemo. I actually lost it during stem cell transplant. So I think that was almost a little bit more difficult because, from the outside, nobody could tell that anything was going on. I looked normal, I looked healthy, I looked strong. And on the inside, I was so tired and I was so weak and I was so exhausted from not only the natural medicine that had been coming in, but from all of these responsibilities that I was still trying to hold. And it was difficult for me to give some of that control up.
I can remember my mom coming to help me and we potty trained my three year old in the middle of chemo. In between chemo sessions, we're potty training my three year old child. To say I need help, it was hard for me, and it still sometimes is difficult for me, but it was very necessary. And I had to learn that if I'm still holding all of the weight, if I'm still trying to hold all of the control, then I can't have help with it because you can't have it both ways.
Warwick Fairfax:
Eventually, you're able to manage your condition and move forward. How are you able to kind of move forward both physically, but also spiritually and mentally? It sounds like you had to shift your thinking, you can't do it all. If somebody else is helping a kid learn to ride a bike and it's not you or whatever it is, take them to the first day of school, doesn't mean you're a terrible mother. I mean, just sort of learning that to give up on, not give up, but to let go of having to do everything, how did you handle that? Because I think that was really the genesis of what you do with the Joy Reflex. So what were some of the lessons you learned as you began to have treatment to make you better, but then there's almost the treatment to help mentally and spiritually to, I won't say make you better, but somehow change your thinking?
Jenna Schutt:
Well, I definitely talk a lot about neuroplasticity. I think that's from my nursing brain, so my nurse wants to go towards the science. So we know from science that your brain can be retrained. You can retrain those neural pathways. But I also go back to God's word, which has been saying that for a very, very long time. And if we look at one of the verses, it says, "To be transformed by the renewing of your mind," so to literally be changed by changing the way that you think. And if you look, I'm kind of a Bible geek, so I love to look at the etymology of words. And so if you look at the word renewing, it is the similar word to renovate. We renovated our 100-year-old-plus farmhouse during the middle of chemo and transplant. Why we did that? Lord only knows why we took that on, but we did.
And I talk about the similarities between renovating and between changing your mind. What's one of the big things we have to do is recognize what needs to be changed. That was a big turning point for me was to have my eyes open to what it was that really needed to be changed. One of the things I talk about a lot is that faith doesn't deny the reality that you are in, but it will determine how you're going to walk out that reality. I think there's a lot of faith world right now and has been that doesn't want to say what the hard thing is. We don't want to talk about those difficulties, those struggles, those circumstances. But I truly believe that we can recognize the hard that we're in without staying there, and that's the way that we start addressing it.
Warwick Fairfax:
So how did you do that in your case? Because I think I've read that obviously your husband, life partner, I mean, it was sort of a collective journey. As you would, I'm sure if he was on the other side of the bed, so to speak, he would have probably done the same thing, I'm sure. There were some things that he said that were very helpful in terms of scripture and just dealing with thoughts and fears, so talk about that. Because again I'm sure if the roles were reversed, you would have done the same thing, I think [inaudible 00:32:14]-
Jenna Schutt:
I hope I would. I think I would have. I think as a nurse, I would have been probably trying to take care of all the things, but he helped so much. I can remember being in the hospital and I was in and out of consciousness and I would wake up and I would see the vital signs machine and I would know I'm not doing very well. And I can remember all of those what-if thoughts that you had mentioned, especially about my children and missing their first day of school and missing their weddings and missing... Fear is trying to write this future that hasn't even hardly begun. My kids were still in diapers when I got diagnosed. And I can remember calling my husband and saying, "I don't know what to do," again, having to fight those feelings of my faith being a failure because I grew up in the faith, so I should know, and those thoughts of, "You should know better. You should know what to do. You should know where to go. You should know how to fix this." But I didn't.
I knew a lot about faith, but I didn't know as much about how to walk it out when my own heart was knocking at the door. And my husband answered and he said, "Well, what you're going to do is you're going to get in God's word." I would play those verses and I would play my pastor's messages and I would read when I could read. And there were times when I was so tired, I couldn't read, I was just half asleep, but I would have my husband or my mom just read to me stories of encouragement, stories of other people who had battled things similar and made it out on the other side. What I was really doing in that moment, which I didn't realize until later when I started writing, was that I was training my brain where to go when fear started to hit, and I was training my brain to go to those things that God's word says and to go towards faith and joy and peace instead of all the what-if questions that kept trying to hit.
Warwick Fairfax:
See, what you're saying is so profound. In my own life, I'd have to say, what you're saying is so profoundly true is I think of it, I think I used this analogy earlier, like weeding, when those first fears come up and... Like you, I mean, I'm not medically trained, but I'm a strategic thinker by nature, so I will naturally go to 100 different what ifs and all the bad things can happen. We're trying to fix a problem or reconcile with somebody or whatever it is. And I'm thinking, "Okay, but if this doesn't happen, all these terrible things can happen." And I've mapped out a very detailed painting, if you will, that there's probably 100 different horrific paintings of 100 different outcomes, all of which are really scary and awful.
And you write about this. What's the next step that I need to take? And what happens after that is unknowable like, "Is there somebody I need to talk to?" I don't know how that's going to go. I just feel led to talk to that person. Okay, that's the first step. What's going to happen after that? Who knows? God knows, we don't. But it's just training your brain to ignore all of the what ifs and read a scripture or inspirational story that you think is relevant and just, "Okay, what's the next step? Okay, I can't have that meeting until next Wednesday. Okay, I'm going to let it go until then. And just every time it counts up, no, I'm going to pray."
In my case, sometimes I can be anxious about things. I'll say to my wife, "Gale, I'm anxious about this." Sometimes I'll say, "I'm feeling bad, I'm not quite sure what it is, but can we talk about it?" And she knows me, and she figures it out. Then I ask, "Do you mind praying for me?" I'm not stupid enough to say, "Oh, I shouldn't have my wife pray for me." Why not? I need all the help I can get, and so I'll say that and vice versa. So does that make sense? I mean, it's maybe a similar approach, maybe different language, but just stopping those weeds get out of control and those embers becoming a forest fires. Is that kind of in the same zip code of what you try to do?
Jenna Schutt:
100%. And I love the Bible verse that talks about His word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.
Warwick Fairfax:
Amen.
Jenna Schutt:
Because a lot of us want it to be a floodlight and we want to see the whole path, but a lamp is only going to light up the next step that you need to take. And he's standing right there with you and he's got that light and you're walking with him, but you're going to have to trust him that he's going to know the step after and the step after that and just have that peace to take the next faithful step.
And to your point exactly is you can have a lot of different faithful steps. That can be reaching out to someone for prayer. It could be going to a doctor. It could be making an appointment. It could be praying. It could be finding a scripture verse. It could be reaching out to your faith community. Mine was so important. And so my faithful step may not be your faithful step, and that's okay. It's just that we're taking those faithful steps one step at a time. We're not trying to take the whole staircase in one leap, but we just know that we can just take the next one and the next one after that.
Gary Schneeberger:
Why is that so difficult for people? Because it makes so much sense when you say it. I mean, it makes sense to me. Who is a jump the whole staircase guy, right? What makes it so hard to take one small step at a time and not try to get the whole... They say, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? I want to eat the whole elephant in one shot. So why is that so hard, do you think?
Jenna Schutt:
I think that's because we want to have an element of control. Because when we feel like we're in control of the narrative, we feel like we can control the outcome, but that's unfortunately not always the case. We don't always get to know the next 10 steps. We don't always get to control every outcome, but I can just be responsible for my part. And I talk a lot... I love to talk about natural things in the way that we look at spiritual. Jesus did the same thing. He used parables for the same reason, because they're very relatable.
I like to say, if you walked into a gym for the first time, you never worked out in your life, you would probably look at all the dumbbells and you're not going to go for the 100 pound dumbbell and try to lift it first and say, "I'm just going to take this and we're going to go to town. We're going to do curls and squats and all the things with this 100 pound dumbbell." You might not even be able to lift that 100 pound dumbbell, but you can go to where you can start, which for me, I've had to start over so many times with the ups and downs of my health that there were times when I was lifting a soup can and that was as much as I could do. But I knew that that's where I was at, and at least I was doing what I could.
Most of the times in the spiritual or in our own minds, we want to go straight to that 100 pound weight. We want to do as much as we can, as quick as we can, and we want to just fast-track it. But we have to start where we are and we have to build up to where we are. We don't feel bad when we're going to the gym for the first time knowing that we are where we are. We're just happy that we started and we're confident that we did something. In the spiritual and in our mind, we have to do those same principles and say, "You know what? I may have not had every single right thought today. I may have had some anxious thoughts, but I did X, Y, and Z to start training my brain to go to the right thing. And I'm going to keep doing that and pick it up tomorrow."
Warwick Fairfax:
It's such a helpful thought that you have, Jenna. I mean, there's several things I think of. One is really to retrain your brain, retrain your spiritual framework to tell yourself, "I'm not in control. God is. I want to control lots of things. There's many things I can't control. I hope and pray I'm there for my son's weddings. I'm doing everything I can to have that happen, but I don't know. There's a few years left." Or college or whatever they do, and it's like, "Okay, I'm going to focus on what I... I can't control that. That's years into the future, but what can I control today?"
Your identity, I think you mentioned, was a lot of being the caregiver. Well, you can care for a lot of people, but not all the time. When you're in chemo and not doing well, you're not going to be able to do a lot of caregiving, I'm just saying, and that's okay. That's where God has you for that moment, and your identity is not in being a caregiver. It's being, in your case, a daughter of the king, if you will. And then the days when you feel anxious, rather than saying, "Well, I thought I was a solid believer. I guess I got an F today," it's like, "No, no, no. I'm human." Give yourself grace because you know the Lord will give you grace. Does that make sense? It's like giving yourself grace on the bad days, realizing, "Okay, my identity is not in caring for everybody in the planet. I can't do that." Did you find you had to rewire not just your brain, but almost your spiritual framework, if you will?
Jenna Schutt:
100%. And going back to the natural, if you were trying to eat healthier, let's say, and that was your goal and you were going to do that and that was what you were going to really train yourself to do and you had a wonderful day where you had all of the right foods. And then the next day you decided, "I'm going to eat a whole king-sized chocolate bar," well, okay, you didn't do so great that day. But the next day you say, "I'm going to pick it up back again, and I'm going to keep going," because it is not about every single second being perfect. It's about consistently making those changes so that your brain gets consistently trained to know where to go. So, "Okay, I didn't have a great thought right now. But the next one, I'm going to work on being great. Tomorrow, I'm going to continue on making those things great." There's that saying, "Done is better than perfect," because if you get yourself in this loop of, "I have to be perfect and every thought has to be perfect," then anytime you fail, you can derail yourself.
I've talked to my young children about this, that if you had $100 in the bank and it was wonderful and you were so excited about this $100, but you had two dirty pennies, would you let those two dirty pennies ruin that entire $100, or would you just be glad you have this $100 that you can go spend? In the natural, my sons were like, "Well, I would just be glad I had $100." I said, "Well, exactly. So don't let this small moment of the day ruin everything that you've built and that you are building."
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so true. I want to talk a bit about the Joy Reflex, and I think we've really been talking about it, but one of the things that... It's a lot in the self-help, inspirational space of gratitude. Periodically, I do that when I... There are all different tools that can help. You can pick the tool you feel led to at the time.
But yeah, I remember being on an hour drive from the airport at one point a while back, and I just felt that I'm just going to, for the next hour, think of all the things that I'm grateful for. I'm thinking about, "Well, gosh, I'm married to my wife 37 years, and I'm so blessed. My dad was married three times, and mother, twice, so I don't take that lightly. The wonderful kids we have, my oldest son got married a few months ago, just all of the people in my life, college in England, the evangelical Anglican church I went to..." I just went through all the different stages of my life, how God added in and was so faithful, and an hour went in a nanosecond. I was just letting my mind drift from one grateful thought to the next of how He was faithful to me my whole life. Does that kind of make sense?
I mean, I'm sure you probably do that too. I mean, there are various tools that we can have that can... It's hard to be down after about an hour thinking about how faithful God has been to you. At that point, you just... Joy can't help but creep in. So just talk about that as well as some of the themes in the Joy Reflex. I think it really brings together all these strands and to try to help other people through the lessons that you've learned through your journey.
Jenna Schutt:
Yes. I think really it sounds like what you're saying is just that shift in perspective. And so choosing what you're going to focus on can change the perspective of how your day is going. To have that mindset of, "Okay, for this amount of time, I'm going to focus on X, Y, and Z, whether that's thankfulness or whether that's just being present in the moment. So I can't figure out the next 10 years, but I know what I'm going to do right now, and I can be present and thankful for where I'm at right now." And so that really is going back to training the reflex. It is telling your mind where it's going to go and then repeatedly doing that over and over again until it becomes a practice, until it becomes what your brain knows how to do, and that is how you get better at everything else in the natural.
You see these very talented basketball and football players, and how did they get that way? They practiced when they felt like it, and they practiced when they didn't, and they kept practicing over and over and over again until those rhythms became so well known in their brain that they don't even really have to think a lot about that motion. They just do it because they've done it so many times. And that is really the true heart between the Joy Reflex is training your brain so well that when life hits and hard things hit, you have trained it to go towards faith, peace, and joy so often that your brain and your body and your spirit knows the motion.
Warwick Fairfax:
I'm sort of reminded of something that we had a guest on the podcast, J.S. Park, who's a chaplain at a level 1 trauma center in Tampa and a person of faith. He talked about not really moving on from grief. Because he's a chaplain, you see people, dealing with people dying and families every week, every day. And he used this expression moving with rather than moving on, and I love that concept. I think in the context of what you're talking about with the Joy Reflex... Maybe you've got that hospital test that's going to come up in a week, but not a whole lot you can do until then. So you're praying about it, you're looking at scripture, but there may be other things that you need to do in life, and maybe it's read a bedtime story to one of your kids or whatever it is.
I tried to do that in my own life. If there are things I can't control, are there things I feel led to do now? That helps at least. Another tool for me of if I'm focusing on something else and it's something I'm not trying to replace it, but I feel led, well, there's something I feel that I need to do. It's part of maybe my work or being with family. Does that kind of make sense? It's just putting your whole life on hold as opposed to, "Okay, some things I can't do, but maybe there are some things I feel called to do." Does that kind of make sense?
Jenna Schutt:
I remember when I got the phone call that I was going to have to see the oncologist for the first time, and she had told me, "I can't get you in until Monday," and it's Thursday. So I am thinking, "Oh boy, I have to get through four days of thinking and planning and et cetera."
Something that I talk about is that I didn't have Monday's answers, but I had Thursday's grace. Being able to walk in the grace that you have for today and know I can't do a single thing about Monday except for just give it to the Lord and say, "Okay, God, I know that you're here with me, and I have things I have to do on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday, and I have things that I have to do, life responsibilities, and I don't want to walk out Monday's future on Thursday. I want to take what is here today, enjoy it, and then move on and know that I've given it to you, know that I'm doing everything I can for Monday, but I'm going to be in Thursday because Thursday is where I'm at," I think that's kind of what you're saying is that it's so important to not try to have control about those things that haven't even happened yet because that really takes away from today.
Gary Schneeberger:
We do a thing with all guests. We have them fill out a form, and you filled out a form, Jenna. One of the things we say, if we could only ask you one question, and we asked you a lot more than that so far, this is the question you said you wanted to be asked, and I'd love to know why you wanted this to be the one question and what your answer would be, and that's this, it's, how do you keep the hardest thing that happened to you from becoming the thing that defines you? Why is that such a pivotal question for what you're doing with your life now and what you've been through in your life before?
Jenna Schutt:
One of the reasons I think that question is so important is because when hard things happen, it's so often we want to make that our identity. I don't want people to look at me as the stem cell transplant girl. I don't want them to look at me as the chemo girl or any of those things. I want people to see me as the joy girl. That's the girl that talks about joy. That's the girl that talks about how we can have peace and faith and joy. Why that's important to me is that you don't have to live in the identity of those things that have happened to you. You can move from those things. Yes, those things may change your life. I know my diagnosis changed my life. I'm still living with graft-versus-host disease. I still take oral chemo every day. I still have IV infusions every day. But I think if you've heard me talking for the last 45 minutes or so, that is not what my focus is. That is not who I see myself as.
I want people to know that they can have these things happen. It doesn't have to become your identity. It doesn't have to be your entire life. You can continue on. You can retrain yourself. You can be that person that has moved on, not erasing it, you're never going to be able to erase that and you're not going to be able to wipe it from your memory. Like you had said, you like sci-fi movies. Well, it's not Men in Black where you get to push the button and it just erases that last several moments of your life. But we do get to walk out our identity and what we are, and that's what I want.
Warwick Fairfax:
Boy, that's so profound. I mean, we could all learn so much from that thought is your identity is not in, as you say, being a stem cell patient and a chemo patient. Listeners and viewers would know having grown up in this very large family business in Australia, my identity is not the 26 year old that launched this $2.25 billion takeover to change management, bring the ideals of the company back with the founder, and failed. No. I mean, that's a lot of years ago now. It's 30 years ago or more. It's a long time.
A husband, father, and elder at my church, we have this podcast, I mean, a lot of things I do. It's really trying to help you understand that you're not defined by your worst day, that your worst day is not your identity. That's not who you are. I mean, in your case, you're a wife, a mother, you're a speaker, you're a coach. You help women deal with anxiety and challenge. I mean, there's a whole lot to who Jenna Schutt is, and it's not stem cells, it's not chemo. That's not who you are. Yes, you're a child of God, but you're somebody that makes a difference in so many people's lives. Does that kind of make sense? I'm sure that's probably how you try to rewire your brain, 'cause that's who I am.
Jenna Schutt:
Yeah. I want what has happened to bring meaning without having ownership. What happened to me did shape me. It changed my life. It changed my perspectives. It taught me things. It helped me to grow in my faith, and the Lord has used that. There's that verse that says, "What the enemy meant for evil, the Lord will use." And I praise the Lord that He is able to use these things that have happened, but that doesn't mean that it is who I am. It means that I get to use those things and have that have meaning without being ownership of me.
Gary Schneeberger:
So friends, that sound you just heard, it was the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating we have begun our descent to land the plane on this conversation, but we're not there yet. In fact, I would be remiss, Jenna, if I did not give you an opportunity at this moment to let people know how they can find out more about you and the work that you do. So what's a good place they can find you on the web?
Jenna Schutt:
Yes. I have a link that I believe you'll have in your show notes that is my free Joy Reflex training guide. I really designed that, and it's a totally free download and it's seven days of exactly what we've been talking about for the last hour is how to start retraining your brain. Now, this is for people who are of faith and people who have never stepped inside of a church again, never have, never will, that is not my heart, is to give it to people who need it. I hope that you'll find a faith community. I hope that you'll find faith friends. That has been such a big blessing and a big reason why I am where I am today, but I do want you to be able to have faith, peace, and joy. This free resource is great to just start if you have no idea where to start, you've listened and you said, "I want that, but I don't know how that is for you." And that's available, just a free download. And that connects you with me, and then we can stay connected.
And then I have my website, it's just my name, jennaschutt.com, and you can go on there and see pictures of me and my journey. You can read a little bit more about my journey and have some more free resources on there too. I would love for anybody to check that out. My heart is for people to leave with an empowerment that they can do this for themselves too.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warrick, as always, you as the founder, host, chief operating officer of Beyond the Crucible, the final question or questions are yours.
Warwick Fairfax:
Jenna, there may be somebody, and I know you deal a lot with women who have anxiety, and maybe there's a woman that's feeling like today is her worst day. It may be a health diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, maybe a life partner has walked out. I mean, there's all sorts of grief and anxiety that can befall people. What would a word of hope, because they might be feeling like, "How could this happen to me? I didn't deserve this diagnosis. I didn't deserve to be treated this way. This is so unfair"? What would a word of hope be for a person who today may feel like their worst day?
Jenna Schutt:
I would say I completely relate with you. I have had those same thoughts, and those do not mean... If you're a person of faith, that doesn't mean your faith is failing. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It just means you're human. And I would want to encourage you that you don't have to wait until you feel fearless or feel healed or feel completely certain of every single step you need to take to be able to move forward. You can ask yourself, "What is real right now?" Recognize that hard thing, and then you can take that hard thing and you can anchor yourself in what is true right now. What does the Lord say? What is the truth that you are living in right now? And then you can take the next faithful step, and you can let God meet you there.
Gary Schneeberger:
That puts our plane on the ground. But before you grab your peanut bags and head out, let me make sure you understand and know how to spell Jenna's name, because as a fellow German, I know how sometimes the names don't always get spelled right when we say them. It's Jenna, J-E-N-N-A, Schutt, S-C-H-U-T-T. Again, that's J-E-N-N-A-S-C-H-U-T-T.com.
Well, Warwick, we just finished a great conversation with our guest, Jenna Schutt, who has created this way to help people called the Joy Reflex. What stands out? I know there's a lot, so if you had to limit it to the top one, I'll give you two if you need them, what are the top things you want listeners and viewers to know about our conversation with Jenna?
Warwick Fairfax:
Jenna Schutt is a remarkable person. She's really learned so much through the crucible that she's been through. She grew up in Kansas and married a guy in Nebraska, she has two small sons, and life was going well. She was a nurse and dealing with cardiac patients. She spent her whole life caring for others. Just from the earliest age, I think she said she was like the eldest daughter and granddaughter of a pastor. She never found that as a burden because she rose to the occasion, would always care for others, never thinking about herself. That's who she was.
And so then she gets this diagnosis of this illness, this aggressive systemic mastocytosis, and it was a horrific experience. She had to go through stem cell treatment and chemo, and it was not easy. So she had to go from somebody that was caring for others to a point where she didn't know what the future held. Was she going to be able to see her boys grow up and get married? What was the future going to hold? And so her mind would naturally go down 100 different dark directions, and so she had to train her brain, really anchored by her faith, to think differently. What do I have to do today? If I have a meeting with the oncologist on Tuesday and it's now Thursday, there's nothing I can do between Thursday and Tuesday. I can't solve that problem.
Through prayer and scripture memory and just support of her husband and friends, she's trained her brain not to focus on that Tuesday appointment and, "What is it I need to do today? What's that one step I need to take? I know what I need to do for my health. Let's go to that oncologist on Tuesday, but what can I do today? Let me let that alone. If I start feeling anxious, pray about it, move my brain to think of other things." It's not easy, but she uses the analogy of exercise when you go to the gym. You don't go in there and try to lift that 100 pound weight first off. You work your way up. And so she has a whole system that works for her that helps train her brain to think differently, both mentally and spiritually.
So I think really the lesson for us, and if you're a person of faith, it's obviously pretty directly applicable. But even if you might have a different faith or faith isn't the most uppermost thing in your life, the question would be, what systems do you have in place so that you don't go down that dark road of 1,000 what ifs that may never happen, but that will just torture your soul? What's one positive step when you start thinking about the what if? "So look, I don't know what's going to happen on Tuesday with the oncologist, so let's not worry about that," easier said than done. But just training your brain to figure out, "Okay, what is it that I can do today? Maybe it's pick up my kids from school. Maybe it's get that project done at work. Maybe," if you're physically able, "just go to that nonprofit meeting and help out. Whatever it is, just what is it that I can do today that's positive? And let me not focus on the negative that I cannot control. One step at a time."
It sounds difficult and it's not easy, but it's like a lot of things in life. Whether it's eating well or going to the gym, what's one positive step? Maybe I'll slip. The other thing we talked about is having grace when you do slip. You'll have days which you maybe let your brain and mind and heart go down negative thoughts a bit too long, "Okay, yesterday I didn't do so well. Today's a new day. What will I do today that focus on things that are positive and not get consumed by things I can't control? And I'll have to wait till that meeting with the oncologist and go from there."
So really, it's a lot about retraining your brain, your heart, your spirit to not go down those dark roads and focus on the next step and really try to focus your brain on thinking about things that are more positive when you can have an impact each day.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that, folks, until the next time we're together, please remember we understand your crucible experiences are hard. We just talked about them for about an hour here, about Jenna's and about Warwick's, but we also know this, and Jenna and Warwick know this and they've talked about this, that your crucible experience do not define you. In fact, if you learn lessons from them, if you apply lessons from them, if you extract joy from them and purpose from them, they can lead you on a journey to the greatest destination you could ever want to go. And that destination is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
What if you don’t have to accept the story you’ve been handed — you can write a new one?
In this episode, we discuss Warwick’s latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com and explore one of the most empowering ideas in personal growth: that we are not locked into the narratives that shaped us. We can take the parts of our story we admire and want to carry forward, meld them with the new story we aspire to live, and chart a course toward something better. Rewriting your story isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about refusing to let the past have the final word on who you become.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. We have this tendency to feel like, "Well, I grew up this way. That's who we are in my family. And so my story is set, so I don't really have any agency or determination. I just have to live the way I grew up." And it's common to think that, but it doesn't have to be true.
Gary Schneeberger:
Those six words, "It doesn't have to be true," can unlock not just an entirely new life, but an entirely new life of joy and significance. But how do you navigate your way there? In this week's episode based on Warwick's latest blog, we discuss the steps we can take to write our own unique stories, even rewrite them. We can take the good parts we admire and want to emulate, and meld them to the new stories we aspire to. The result, we get to chart a new course for ourselves.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible, and it's a good one. They're all good ones, but this is a particularly good one, I think, because it's based off of a blog that Warwick has written. As you may remember, for a couple of months, we had a summer film series. But this is kind of the cadence of what we do, once a month, Warwick writes a blog and we talk about that blog on the podcast. And this one, Warwick, dare I say, tells quite the story, doesn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It sure does.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, what led you to write this blog, which you titled Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story? Folks, that's why I said this one has a story behind it. Warwick's going to tell us about what led him, what story, what thing in his story, what thing in his life led him to write a blog on this subject.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I've been thinking about this a bit. We're all made up of stories. We grew up in different backgrounds, different cultures, and our family histories are a mix of different strands. And these stories that we grow up with, parents, mom, dad, uncles, aunts, grandparents, the town we grew up in, the country we grew up in, they're all a big part of who we are and makes us the people that we are. And some of those strands might feel beneficial and positive, and others might be harmful and we wish we'd grown up in a different family or a different environment didn't have that history.
So we're made up of stories, both ones we perceive to be good and ones we perceive to be bad or not so good. And we have this tendency to feel that our past, that our stories determine our future, and that includes all these strands of stories that we grew up with. But that does not have to be the case. We can value and honor the stories that we admire, and we can take those with us. We can incorporate that into our lives. But at the same time, there might be stories that we feel that are harmful and we really don't admire, and we just like to chart a different course. And we can choose to leave those alone. We can choose to discard them, if you will, in the sense of not incorporating them.
So we get to determine the stories that we choose to keep, the new ones we choose to incorporate, and the story that we want to move ahead with. We can't determine our future, but we can determine the direction, the stories that we value and the stories that just maybe don't fit us. Some of them may not be bad, but just don't fit who we are. And we'll get into this more in a bit.
So just that whole notion of stories, we have this tendency to feel like, "Well, I grew up this way. That's who we are in my family. And so my story is set, so I don't really have any agency or determination. I just have to live the way I grew up." And it's common to think that, but it doesn't have to be true. We can chart a new course and write our own story.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Before you pivot and talk a little bit about your own story, just having you say that, what popped in my head is our stories that we grew up with, that we've lived thus far, those aren't written in ink, right? They're written in pencil, and we can erase the parts, as you said, that don't serve us well and we can bold those parts that do serve us well. But no story that's come before the moment that we're in right now is written in indelible ink, is it?
Warwick Fairfax:
No, it really is not. Just because your parents had certain values, lived in a certain location, had a certain job, doesn't mean that we have to have the same job, the same values, and live in the same place.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
It doesn't mean we disrespect them. Sometimes you might feel they were bad choices. Other times it's like, "Well, I respect my parents, but I want to chart a new course, live somewhere different, work somewhere different, be in a different environment." It's not always right or wrong, it just doesn't fit who I am. So it's okay to chart your own course. Sometimes your parents and family will understand. Other times, as we'll get into, they may not, but it's your life and you get to chart your own course.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And listeners and viewers who've been with us for a while know that you indeed have a robust family story that you grew up in, but you also have built a robust story about the way that you've charted your course. So talk a little bit about your story and maybe the way it's evolved from what it was to what it is today.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. For me, I grew up in a 150-year-old family media business, and there were some stories in that family, in my family that I greatly respected. My great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, was a person of great faith. And there was a tradition in my family of producing quality newspapers serving the community. Just to let listeners and viewers know, this company was very large. It had the equivalent in the US of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. It had magazines, TV stations, radio stations. It was huge. And so there were elements I respected. I'm a person of faith, so the faith of my great-great-grandfather has always been very inspiring. The sense of producing quality newspapers to serve the community, that's also something I greatly respected. But there were other stories that were more challenging.
In 1987, after I'd come back from Harvard Business School, and before that worked on Wall Street and graduated from Oxford in England, in 1987, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover to change management and to bring the values of the company back to the ideals of the founder. My dad had died earlier that year and in 1987. My parents and I felt like the company wasn't being run along the ideals of the founder. So there were some things that I thought were challenging, that I thought should change. And there'd also been infighting amongst the family for decades before I launched the takeover, so that obviously I didn't think was helpful.
So three years after I launched the takeover, we ended up having too much debt, family sold out and a variety of other things happened. And the company, we had to file for bankruptcy. So while I valued the heritage of the company, one of the things I've learned as I reflected on that crucible is that I'm not a take-charge CEO, and the intense pressure and scrutiny that went with it. There was a time, and this was from '87 to 1990, where I could walk in a mall in Sydney and people would go, "Isn't that Warwick Fairfax?" It's kind of like being Vanderbilt or a Kennedy or a Bush. And just being somewhat of a shy person, certainly back then, I just did not enjoy that. I'm just more of a reflective advisor, so it was really a very poor fit.
And so that's what we do here at Beyond the Crucible. I mean, I'm a reflective advisor. We get to tell other people's stories. I reflect on some thoughts that I or you, Gary, might have about how we bounce back from our crucibles, and we discuss them.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So it's such a better fit. So I would say I've incorporated parts of my story that I value and are helpful. I'm so inspired by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who was the stronger business person for Christ that I've ever come across. I admired many aspects of my father who was a person of integrity and really tried to do the right thing, even when it meant forgiving other family members who threw him out as chairman in 1976. I value parts of him in which he would talk to people of different political opinions or even religious opinions, political leaders, religious leaders, and he wanted to know what they thought. Even though he might not agree, he wanted to understand differing opinions. Those are stories I greatly value and try to live that way myself.
So there are parts of that story that I respect. But the parts where power and money can, in some cases, not all, warp your values and what's important, and just the divisions within the family, there are some things I would really rather chart a new course in. So, in my case, my story and the way my kids have grown up in the US, where I live now, is very different than how I grew up. The name Fairfax, it doesn't mean as much here as it does in Australia, which is good. They're all grown, from 20s to 30s. Now just wonderful kids and wonderful adults. And they grew up differently and they'll chart their own stories that may be different than mine, and that's great. So, yeah, I've charted a different story, my kids will chart their own stories. And that's as it should be.
Gary Schneeberger:
And before we go any further with this, since this is Beyond the Crucible, since what we deal with is not letting your worst day define you, turning trial into triumph, talk a bit about how not taking steps to write a new story based on your passions and skills, can lead to a crucible. In other words, why is this a subject? Why is this idea of you don't have to live by the story you've always lived by, you can write your own new story, why is that a subject for Beyond the Crucible?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's a good question. If we blindly follow the stories of our heritage, continue to do that, that can well lead to crucibles. I'm reminded of the words of Henry David Thoreau, and he says that you may immediately feel that we're leading lives of quiet desperation, and nobody wants to live a life of quiet desperation. Our parents may be from generations of accountants, doctors or lawyers, and they'll say, "Look, I've got this great practice, legal practice. We're the biggest firm in town and I can get you in. And it's a good life and you earn a fair amount of money." And they might tell us to be practical and, "Come on, why not? You got an in here." But you may not want it. You might want to be an entrepreneur or an artist. You respect your parents' choices to be lawyers, but you might want to do something different.
But there's a tendency to go along with our parents' advice, thinking, "Well, that advice may not be terrible. I mean, it's a good living and I'd like a decent amount of money to have a house and help support a family and have nice vacations. And it's probably the safe choice. It's probably the smart choice." You sell yourself, you convince yourself. But as time goes by, as the decades go by, you might have this simmering discontent.
Now, for others, you might have grown up in an abusive family and the discontent may be a lot stronger. You might say, "Look, I don't want to continue this dysfunction. It will only hurt others." Now, sadly, some have grown up in abusive families that continue to abuse their own families. They're just so angry about what's happened, sadly, anger leaks, anger and bitterness leaks. And if you're angry and bitter, you tend to be angry and bitter towards those closest to you, but you can set a new path.
We might grow up in a family where we're told to play it safe. Maybe nobody in our family has gone to college, maybe the generations of steel workers or coal miners. And you might hear from parents and friends like, "People like us don't go to college. That's just not who we are. It's a good job, it's a hard job, but that's who we are and that's what we do." But that can also lead to simmering anger and frustration. And as I look at my own upbringing, you could say part of the crucible I went through was caused by me wanting to follow in the steps of my heritage. We've got to return the [inaudible 00:14:38] to the image of the founder. We want to make sure it's well led. And so let me just continue this story without asking myself the question, do I want to? Is it my role to fix this? These big existential questions I didn't really ask. And so I was almost trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. It just, in hindsight, didn't work.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, as we always do with these blog discussion episodes, Warwick, you have extracted some insights and action steps for listeners and viewers. Listener and viewer, you may be expecting there's going to be seven action steps. There's not. There are not going to be seven, there are going to be nine this time. Warwick did a little extra credit on this one. No, seriously, the subject is so important to him that he came up with nine points that we're going to go through point by point so that you can find your way to enjoy true contentment as you craft your own story. So let's run through those points, Warwick. Point number one is this, examine your story. It all starts with examining your story. Why is that so important?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, this is the first step. You want to look at your story and what are the elements that make it up. Where did we grow up? What parents did we have? Where did we live, in the country, in the town? What country? What culture? What were the expectations that we grew up with? What were the kind of professions that we were surrounded with? What you need to do is just examine your story and what are these different elements that make up who you are? Very often I find people tend not to be reflective and they don't analyze it. And before we even get to what do we like and not like, you've got to figure out, well, what are these elements? Just because you grew up in a culture with parents that had certain professions or grew up in a country, doesn't mean you have to follow that profession or live in the country rather than the city. But the first step is what are the elements of your background that make up your story? That's the first step.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. I mean, you really have to go to school on your story, right? You have to, like anything else, you got to study it before you can act on it. So it makes perfect sense that you say examine your stories, point one. Then comes point two. And points two and three are interesting to me because they're sort of the yin and the yang of everything. But point two is this, what parts of your story do you want to keep? What is critical about that?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's easy when you're faced with a sense of quiet discontent to say, let's just chuck it all out and start anew. But I think the smart play is, after having examined your story, there may be elements that you want to keep. Maybe your family was artistic or musical. Maybe your mom or dad was a music teacher. Well, maybe you don't necessarily want to be a music teacher, but maybe you want to still play the piano or play the guitar or whatever it is. Maybe you do that in your spare time, on weekends. What are the things that you enjoy? Maybe they were entrepreneurs, always willing to try new things. Doesn't mean that you want to be in the same business as they were, but you admire the fact that they didn't play it safe. They were always willing to try things.
Maybe your family loved to hike in the wilderness, and it's like, "Gee, I love the outdoors. I want to continue to do that. That was helpful." Maybe they traveled and they exposed you to all kinds of different cultures. It's like, "I love learning about people who are different." Maybe they were very caring, always willing to help a neighbor. So there can be things about your family that you really admire and says, you know what? I love the way mom or dad did this, grandpa, grandma, and I'd like to keep those elements. So identify the ones that you admire and want to keep.
So really, I think the theme as we're going through this is you want to live your life intentionally, not just on default or on autopilot or as most of us have now, cruise control. Cruise control in a car doesn't always make sense. At some point you might want to take it off. You're in a lot of traffic and it's like, okay, don't live your life on cruise control.
Gary Schneeberger:
That was the yin. Here's the yang. Point three, what parts do you want to leave behind? Just as important as the parts you want to keep, right? And again, I love every time you do a blog, Warwick, because you build stair steps, right? You got to examine it, you got to study it. Now, what do you want to keep? What do you want to leave behind? Point three, what do you want to leave behind? Why is that both important and it can be difficult, I think too, can't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It surely can. It's not easy to ask yourself the question, what do you want to leave behind? Because you might feel like, well, is that dishonoring my parents if I want to leave behind the whole family law business and go be a sculptor? Yeah, that's probably not going to go down too well. Or it may be admitting the fact that your family has some trauma that is painful, and just having to admit it. Sometimes that can be obvious. It can be obvious like generational trauma of abuse or alcoholism, and you want to break free from what can feel like a generational curse. Or maybe your family has this sense of being sarcastic and belittling each other and saying, "Oh, come on, that'll never work," or, "Here you go again. Come on, that's kind of stupid." Whatever idea you have, it's just so fun to tear them down with some sarcastic, snarky remark. And that might feel, "Well, that's just what we do." But it's not helpful.
You might say, "You know what? That whole sarcasm thing, I don't like when people do that to me. And you know what? I should stop doing it to others. Because why do I do it to others, my brother and sister? It's payback. They hit me with a zinger, I'm going to hit them with a zinger." Is that really who you want to be, you might decide? No, I don't want to do that. "Oh, it's all in fun." Really? Rarely those things are all in fun in the sense. It's usually there's some level of impact, especially if you keep doing it about a tender issue.
So your family might define success as corporate success with a stable job. You want to be an entrepreneur or an artist, and your family might say, "Look, a stable job with a big company, that's where it's at." In reality, how many jobs are stable these days? It's not the way it was in the '50s and '60s. But still, you might hear that from your parents. And even if you grew up in this relatively healthy and stable family, they might just say, "You need to play it safe, be cautious, careful where you travel," which in one sense is good advice, but you can overdo the be careful. "Don't take risks." And you might just want more adventure. You might want to take some level of risk. It doesn't mean like jumping off a cliff, but it might be just going to some exciting new place or just trying something different. Maybe going to a different restaurant, trying a new food. It's like, do we have to eat at the same place all the time? Can't we go somewhere different, try something different?
So you get to choose what parts you want to leave behind. Sometimes they're obviously objectively bad, like abuse, but other times it may not be bad, but it just may not fit you. You don't want that safe corporate job. You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to be a poet, an artist, whatever it is. It's not wrong, it's just not you.
Gary Schneeberger:
This is where sort of the fulcrum on which everything turns here. Point four is define your new story, right? This is where you get out the blank piece of paper, blank typewriter sheet, typewriter. Oh, my gosh, have I aged myself. A blank page on your computer, a blank screen on your computer, and you write your own story, you begin to do that. But point four is define your own story. Why is this so critical?
Warwick Fairfax:
I think one of the things you have to do is tell yourself, it's my life, I have the right to define my new story. It's okay. Because sometimes we feel like, "Look, my life is predetermined by my ancestors and my culture and surroundings and family, and I'm dishonoring them. And if I live a new story, do I even have the right? Gosh, maybe I don't feel like I have much self-worth. And so if I try to be different, I'll fail. And who am I to write my new story? Doesn't it feel arrogant?" You can play all these mind games and talk yourself out of writing a new story. But from my faith perspective, God created us with unique values, aspirations, and passions. And we have, in my view, the divine right to define and write our own story. So you want to write these elements down.
We've talked about the paths that you want to keep, the paths that you want to leave behind, and they're almost like colors that blend together to form a new painting, a new unique story. So maybe you grew up in a family of abuse, and we've had people like this on the podcast, and they want to be counselors. They want to help people who suffer trauma so that they can bounce back.
Maybe you want to define success differently than your parents, and you want to be an entrepreneur or have your own art studio. And just think about it, write some elements down, what is it that you want to do? And, yes, you may want to be successful, but success for you may not be having a large bank account. Success may not be the safe corporate job. It might involve taking more risk. But you want to be successful on your terms.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And when you wrote this in the blog, it really resonated with me. And this point of define your new story, I think it's important to point out you don't have to have every step of that new story worked out in order to begin it. And I'm going to use me as an example of that. Because I was in my mid to late 40s and I had a successful career, but we also say this often, is this all there is, right? There was this sense of there was something I was missing out on. And the thing that I was missing out on, for a variety of decisions both made by me and made by others, I had no children. And I was wrestling in my mid to late 40s with this idea that I was going to have absolutely no legacy. Have a good career, but that was about all that I was going to be.
And then I tell this story and I ask people not to judge me, and I'll ask you listeners and viewers not to judge me on the first sentence. So give me the first sentence and I'll explain more to you. My journey toward having a legacy began with a 16-year-old girl I met on Facebook. Give me that sentence. It's not a creepy story. Here's why that started a change in my life that led me to a true life of significance and a legacy.
And I was in public relations. Worked at Focus on the Family for a man named Dr. James Dobson, who was a very famous, very influential evangelical. One of my jobs as his head of public relations was to go find things that were out there that maybe were critical of him. So I went on Facebook, I found these groups. Some of them were very nasty about him. And there was one particular one that was very supportive, it was called James Dobson, Fighter for the Family. And I saw... But there was something about it. There was the picture that the administrator of the page used was one he didn't like. One that his people who didn't like him, used a lot.
So I reached out, contacted the person who ran this page, and I said, "Hey, I'm Dr. Dobson's PR guy. I'd love to give you his official biography from Focus on the Family." And the person who ran the page got back to me and said, "That sounds wonderful." And then told me she was a 16-year-old girl who lived in International Falls, Minnesota. And I immediately said, "Let me talk to your mom. That would be great." And I did do that.
And to take that story and to fast-forward it, her name was Heather Ducharme. Her name today is Heather Kirsheman. When she got married, she asked me, because she grew up in a family that you talked about, there was dysfunction. Her father was not part of the family. Heather grew up very isolated. She felt lonely. She had a father need. And for whatever reason, I stepped into that. She allowed me into that. When she got married to her husband, Jesse, she asked me to walk her down the aisle. When she had her second child, she and Jesse had their second son, Ben, his name is Benjamin Gary Kirsheman, that Gary is after me. And that idea of not having a legacy began to get chipped away. I wasn't completely gone.
But then I re-met my wife, Kelly, who I knew as a friend in college after 30 years, back in 2016. She and I found out we still liked each other. We were friends in college, but then we found out we were more than that, that we fell in love. And we got married in 2017. And the package with Kelly, as she calls it, the package came with two children, Hunter and Alyssa, who are my, they're my stepchildren. But I tell them, "It's your fault that I always fall down the steps," or I always fall down the stairs because I don't see the steps. They are my children. They are my kids in my heart.
And just recently, Warwick, to end this, and I'm sorry I'm taking a lot of time, but just recently, my nephew, Luke, who is the only child, the only son of my late sister, Dale, who passed away in 2012. Dale passed away in 2012. Luke is now a young man in his early 30s and Luke is married. Luke had one child a couple years ago, a boy named Thomas Allen. And he recently had his second son, he and his wife, Taylor, and they named their second son Theodore Lee Brewster. And Lee is my middle name. And that, again, was done out of respect and love for me.
So when I tell you, how did I define my story? I defined my story, I didn't know where it was going to go, but I wanted to lean into leaving a legacy, lean into helping people, lean into those things. And by doing that through Heather and through Alyssa and Hunter, through Kelly, and through my nephew, Luke, that is my life. When Luke and Taylor told us that they'd named Theodore, Theodore Lee Brewster, Kelly looked at me and said, "You're not allowed to ever, ever say you don't have a legacy again."
So that's just an example, and I'm sorry it's a long one, of what it can be if you start out defining your new story. You don't have to have all the parts worked out. If you just take one, we say it all the time, one step at a time, the next right step. I believe I did that, and I am richly blessed today because of it.
Warwick Fairfax:
That is such a wonderful story. As people of faith, we tend to pray to the Lord and express the longings of our heart.
Gary Schneeberger:
Amen.
Warwick Fairfax:
And I'm sure there were days in which you said, "Lord, for a variety of reasons, I don't have a family. I don't feel complete. I don't have kids. I would like to have a legacy with kids, and I don't quite know how that's going to happen." And bit by bit, the Lord unfolded a plan with Heather.
Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, you wanted to know what was going to happen. I mean, to have Heather ask you to walk her down the aisle, that is a remarkable thing. That says, I do see you as a father figure. And then to re-meet Kelly and then her kids, Hunter and Alyssa. To have a couple different times, either your first name or your middle name used as a middle name, it's remarkable. This is just an element of your story, but you are charting a story. You had a desire, a legacy for family and kids, and the Lord unfolded it a certain way. And looking back, it's just remarkable, but you expressed the desires of your heart and it ended up happening.
But if you hadn't expressed those desires and say, look, I don't deserve a family, I don't deserve kids, maybe your choices might have been different. Maybe your connection with Heather and her family wouldn't have happened because you wouldn't have been open to it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Maybe with Kelly, it's like, "No, comes with a package. I don't know. I'm not worth it. I don't feel good about myself. I wouldn't be a good parent." Whatever it is, if you'd made different choices because of a different mindset, that story may never have happened. There was an alternate path. Does that kind of make sense?
Gary Schneeberger:
It does. And I'm very grateful that, again, I took one step at a time. It was interesting, one part of the... And Heather's going to love that I tell this story. Her mom called me at one point, because Heather, she was out of high school and she had some rough times going on. And her mom called me up and said, "I need you to take Heather for the summer." So Heather came out and stayed with me for the summer, and my then wife stayed with us. Interned at Focus on the Family. And it was just an opportunity to give back.
The other thing, how the relationship really was cemented. She was such a fan of Dr. Dobson and I was so close to Dr. Dobson, I just flew her and her mom out to meet Dr. Dobson. It seemed like an easy thing to do. There's not a lot I can do, right? I remember saying that, Warwick, "There's not much I can do. I don't know what it is to be a dad, I don't know what those things are, but I know what it is to help people out. And if she loves Dr. Dobson so much, let's bring them out here to meet him." And they did that. And she still talks about it to this day. Her mom still talks about it to this day.
So you're right, you just look forward and you do the thing that comes to your mind's eye, your heart's eye, act on that and you'll be amazed. I'm amazed at where my story is at, from that first blush of, I don't have a legacy and I'd like to try to build one. I've done that, and I'm grateful for that for sure.
All right. I've taken up enough of the middle of this show. Let's move on to your fifth point, Warwick. And your fifth point is this, explain your vision for a new unique story to the family you grew up with. This is critical, and it's critical based on some of the things you said earlier. Why is that so important to share that with the family that you grew up with?
Warwick Fairfax:
And this point is not easy. It's often challenging. So you have a conversation with your family and you honor the parts of your family's story that you admire, but you explain there are new parts you want to add on. So maybe you grew up in this corporate environment and you explain that you admire your family's hard work and they're striving for success, wanting to do well at what they did and grow the business, grow the number of employees. You admire that hard work and that ethic.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
You could say you too believe in hard work, but you want to define success in a different realm, in a different way. So maybe you don't want to work in a corporate environment, you want to be an entrepreneur or have a small business. Maybe you want to start a nonprofit. Maybe success for you is not money, it's how many people you can serve in your nonprofit. Maybe you measure success as the impact you have in people's lives.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so you're trying to explain this to your family that may come a very different environment, may just be more of a corporate environment. And you might have had a loving and supportive family, and you tell them that you admire that, but you want to have a bit more adventure. And maybe they're the kind of family that says, "Don't travel, don't take risks, be safe." And you say, "Well, I understand safety is important, but I want to travel to all sorts of places and have adventures and learn from different cultures." And they may not understand that. It's like, "Well, what's wrong with our town, our state, our country? Do you not like it?" "No, mom and dad, it's not that. I love where I grew up, but I want something different."
Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, the blog is called Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story. And what we're talking about, what we've been talking about is that blog and some of Warwick's points, some of those nine points about how to write your new story. Let's go through the first of them. One is examine your story. Two, what parts do you want to keep? That's important. So is three, what parts would you like to leave behind? Four, define your new story. And five, which we just talked about, is explain your vision for your new unique story to the family you grew up with. Warwick, that brings us to point six, which is to create your own supportive environment. How do you do that?
Warwick Fairfax:
So one of the things we talk a lot about at Beyond the Crucible is the importance of having fellow travelers, those who will encourage us and those who might have skills and abilities that we don't have. Sadly, you might find, and it can be all too common, is if you grow up in a family with a certain mindset, be it a corporate environment or family that were coal mine or steel workers, it might be hard to find family members who will understand what you want to do, still less support it or encourage you or find suggestions.
So if your family are coal miners, "Okay, I'm thinking of going to college. I'm wondering about a major. Maybe I want to be a teacher in high school or college. Do you have any advice for me?" It's like, well, they might say, "Hey, why are you rejecting who you are?" And, "No, it's not an environment I know anything about." So, for a variety of reasons, it might not create the environment of fellow travelers that you really need. And so maybe you can find people that grow up like you did, let's say if you're the son or daughter of a coal miner, and maybe they might have found a way to go to college, start their own business, maybe they became an academic. And it's like, "Okay, how did you do that? How did you talk to your parents? I feel like I'm rejecting them." And they might say, "No, you're not rejecting them. You're just pursuing your dream just like I did. I'm you, I just may be 20, 30 years down the track."
That's so helpful, I would say vital to have fellow travelers who will encourage you because initially it can be very scary to chart a new course that's very different than the one that you grew up with. And you need people that will encourage you to say, "It's okay to be you. It's okay to take a different path. You're not rejecting your family. You're doing your level best to keep up relations and see them and encourage them in their lives, but you have a right to pursue your own life. And here are some suggestions, here are some people maybe you could talk to. Maybe get an internship here." So having that supportive environment of fellow travelers is absolutely critical, especially in the initial stages as you're trying to live your own unique story.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. The first six that we've talked about is the ideation stage, right? How do you research it? How do you figure out where you're going? Point seven is where the rubber meets the road really. And it could be a point in every one of the blogs you write on this stuff in all seriousness, and that is take the first step. So, Warwick, after we've gathered all the data and we've thought it through and we've hatched a plan, the plan's got to become action. What happens next for people who are following this order of what we're going through?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's great to have a dream, but for a dream to become reality, you have to take the first step. And often that is the hardest step. We talk about this a lot, this concept of the flywheel. Getting that flywheel to move, that first push, that first step, it's not easy. Once it starts moving, you gain momentum, it's easy. That first step. So for you, maybe if you grew up in more of a blue-collar environment with mom or dad being a steel worker, just taking that first step of looking up colleges in your area and visiting them, you might feel like everybody's going to look at me and say, "What are you doing here?" They probably won't be, because people who go to colleges come from all kinds of different backgrounds. But you might tell yourself all these negative stories that may not be true, but it feels true to you. It feels real. And so you're reluctant to take that first step.
Maybe you grew up in a more of a corporate environment where be a banker, a lawyer, accountant, and you want to talk to some entrepreneurs. Maybe you have some friends of your family or maybe you have some friends at school whose parents might be entrepreneurs because they know people. Go talk to that person. If you've got some connection, like a friend of a friend or a friend of the family somewhere, a friend of a cousin, most people want to help younger people. They want to give them advice. Sit down with them and say, "Well, what did it look like for you?" Maybe ask them, "I'd like to go to college. And during college, you know anybody that has an internship?" And maybe they have something or maybe they know people. But take that first step.
And it feels intimidating. It feels like they won't want to listen to you. And you're afraid of telling your parents, "Yep, I talk with that entrepreneur and they said they've gone bankrupt three or four times, but they found a way to bounce back and they're good now." It could give your family a heart attack, it's like, "Going bankrupt? Oh, my gosh." Well, yeah, but that's actually fairly common with entrepreneurs. But they don't fear failure, they find a way to bounce back. So you've got to be willing to take that first step. Explore and the next step will be easier. But that first step is hard, but you've got to be willing to take it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And this next one can be maybe deceivingly hard, right? This next one doesn't seem hard on its face, but it can be hard too. And the eighth point here is honor your past. How do we do that?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's an interesting question. Sometimes as you chart your new path, you want to say, "I'm done with the old," and you can ditch everything, which is really not what we're talking about. Honor your past, honor the paths that you value. Let your family know that just because you're charting a new course, let's say you want to be an entrepreneur and your family are in the corporate arena, or you want to go to college, maybe be an academic, and your family came from generations of steel workers, doesn't mean that you look down on, for instance, your dad that may have been a steel worker. You admire his hard work, his work ethic.
Maybe he tried to help other folks, younger folks in the steel mill and just tell them how to be safe and how to do a good job, and he was always looking out for people in his community. Your dad might be just this wonderful human being. You're not denigrating what he's doing at all. He may not in this case understand, but don't give up. Just say, "Look, dad, I admire who you are. I admire how you live your life. A huge part of me of just treating people with dignity, treating people fairly, working hard, I got that from you. I just want to live life a bit differently. I just am passionate about education. I want to teach high school and maybe teach in college. Some of those lessons you've given me, I want to pass on. It's just going to be in a different field." And so, hopefully, over time they will see a different story.
And maybe if you've grown up in a family where there was abuse, maybe that means forgiving them, which of course we always say doesn't mean condoning them. It's like, "Look, what you did to me, it was awful and painful, but I'm going to chart a new course. I'm going to live my life differently. And I hope and pray that you would live your life differently, because I do believe in redemption," you might say. "And it doesn't excuse what's happened, but I'd like you to chart a different course to live a bit differently yourself. But either way, I forgive what happened." And to the degree you can, "I don't want to break off relations." There might be times in which they're abusive and, for your own safety, you have to break off relations. And that does happen.
But the bigger picture here is you want to find a way to honor your parents, honor your family and not reject them as human beings as you chart your new course.
Gary Schneeberger:
And the ninth point, where it all comes to a close, is celebrate your new story. And I'm going to go first because I'm talking now, so why not? The story I told earlier in the middle of the show about, I don't say I have no kids anymore. I have three. I have my heart daughter, Heather, and I have my stepkids, Hunter and Alyssa. I have their birth stones on a necklace I wear around my neck every now and again to remind me of that, not that I would ever forget that.
Heather's children, both Benjamin, who's my namesake, but Matthew and Abby are my heart grandchildren. Hunter and Alyssa, as I said, stepchildren, but I always tell them, "It's your fault that I fall down the stairs because I don't see the steps." And then my nephew, Luke, is very much like a son to me. And the older he gets, the sweeter our relationship gets from... I have pictures of holding them when he was this big, and now he's like a bodybuilding 30-year-old, 30-something year old. But that's how I celebrate that story on holidays.
And, oh, I'll add one more. Kelly and I, because we reconnected later in our lives, got married, and we got married and we're not going to have quite as many years as people who get married earlier in life have. So we'd celebrate every year what we call our reconnectiversary, where we reconnected after 30 years apart on February 13th. So we have two anniversaries, May 20th, our wedding anniversary, and February 13th, our reconnectiversary. That's how we celebrate, how I celebrate my new story every year and as often as I possibly can. So, Warwick, why is it so important to celebrate your new story?
Warwick Fairfax:
Boy, that's awesome. It's really a great example that you're setting and the stories you're sharing because when you're on your journey, we should never forget the courage it took to begin a new story. We should always celebrate. So thinking at that time when you reached out to Heather, when you reconnected with Kelly, when you're talking to Luke and remembering obviously the sadness of losing your sister, but just celebrating the fact that you have been in his life for many years and that close relationship. If you'd made different choices, life could have been different you didn't make those choices. You chose to reconnect with Kelly, to stay close to Luke. You chose to be a part of Heather and a husband and a kid's life. You made those choices.
And I think it's important to celebrate because often we can feel bad about ourselves or what if this and what if that or, "Gee, I wish this had happened earlier." We can all go down the what-ifs, but we need to celebrate where we are and the new story we have, and be grateful. And try, to the degree you can, be thankful for the family you grew up with and some of the things that you learned from them. And you've discarded the things that weren't helpful. Try to still honor your family and be as close to them as you can.
I've had a while to look back on the failed takeover in 1987. And I used to be very harsh with myself and say it was all my fault. And I certainly made some big mistakes, but there was challenges in the family going back generations. So I look back and there's a lot I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for the faith of my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. I'm grateful for my father and his ability to learn from people who had different opinions, be it political or religious. His love of history. I have a love of history. I greatly admire my mother's perseverance. I mean, she was somebody that never ever gave up. She was an incredibly creative lateral thinker. And I have pretty high levels of perseverance, I believe, but certainly her example of never giving up was pretty amazing.
So I've learned a lot, but yet I have a new story. I'm not involved in a family media business that ended on my watch. But through the course of time, I've done different things. But I'm a certified executive coach with the International Coach Federation. That was one season. And I wrote a book, Crucible Leadership, that came out in 2022. And now I have this podcast, Beyond the Crucible. We write blogs, active on social media. There's a number of things we do, and we're all about helping people bounce back from their worst day. Not letting their life be defined by crucibles. And helping folks live lives of significance, which we call living a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So I have my new story. My wife and I, Gail, we've been married, gosh, I guess it's like 37 years.
Gary Schneeberger:
Don't get it wrong.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Well, it was '89. So if I do the math right, I'm pretty sure 37. But I have three wonderful kids. I have a lot to celebrate. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a friend, whenever I call him, I says, "Hey, how you doing?" He says, "Oh, I have a lot to be thankful for." Every single time, every single conversation. We've known each other for a lot of years. And that's a good mindset to say, "Yep, I have a lot to be thankful for."
Yes, life isn't perfect. We have challenges, but we need to celebrate our story, our new story. And that gives us strength to keep on going and chart more stories that are part of our new story. So that's why it's just so important.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We have landed the plane on this conversation, but we can't get out of the plane. We can't, is it called disembarking the plane? Yes, maybe it is. I don't know. What do you want to leave them with on your blog, Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story? At beyondthecrucible.com now they can go read it. But what do you want to leave them with from our podcast discussion of that blog?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so easy to believe that our lives are being predetermined, that we're destined to live lives like our past. "Our family come from generation of steel workers or coal miners. That's just what we do." "Nobody in my family has ever gone to college. That's who we are." "My family, they've been in the corporate world for quite a while, at least one or two generations. That's what we do. We have a safe, stable corporate job." May not feel that way today, but that's certainly what your parents might feel like. And maybe we grew up in this warm, supportive, safe family, but travel, adventure, oh, that's risky. Our family doesn't take risks, they just play it safe.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Because that's the way you don't get hurt, just play it safe. And you might respect some of those stories. You might understand them. Not all stories are bad or wrong. We get to live our own lives. We are the author of our own stories. We get to determine the journey we want to travel on. Now, that doesn't mean that there won't be speed bumps along the way. That doesn't mean that we know exactly where our life will be headed. Certainly you, Gary, or I could not have forecast where life would take us, but we have a vision. When you had a vision to say, look, I would like a family in some sense, I would like to have that be part of my legacy, you had no clue where life would turn, but you had the vision. And from our faith perspective, the Lord helped unfold it, but you charted your course.
We get to chart our course, and from our faith perspective, the Lord helps guide us and determine those. So we can't know the future, but we can chart a different course. We can head in a different direction. We can be the captain of our ship. We can kind of lean into the tiller of our lives. And we want to just, as we do this, live life on our own terms with our own values, our own interests, our own passions. So no matter how much we may love our family, they should not be the ones determining our future. From my perspective, we have a God-given right to chart our own course and live our own lives. And we hope and pray that our loved ones understand and we should try to help them understand. But either way, we've got to live our lives and chart our course and lean into that.
We don't want to be decades into our lives, in our 50s, 60s, and 70s, and feel like we've lived a life of quiet discontent, a life of quiet desperation. It's never too early or too late to chart a new course and to begin a new story. Today's the day, if you haven't already, to begin to live a new story.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well said. I've never put this together until right now, Warwick. You'd think after more than 300 episodes of this show, I would've figured this out, since we've done a lot of episodes on your blog. You'll always end your blogs with reflection questions. You also frequently refer to yourself as a reflective advisor, right? Now that I'm looking back on what we've just done here for the last hour or so, you've advised folks on how to write new stories. You've advised them and now you're asking them to reflect. So here's the points of reflection from the blog.
Reflection point number one, make a decision today to create your own story and chart a new path. Question two, write down the elements of the story you grew up with that you want to keep melded with the new elements that you want to blend in. I'll say that again. Write down the elements of the story that you live that you want to keep melded with the new elements that you want to blend in. And then reflection point number three, take the first step to creating your new story, ensuring you have supportive fellow travelers who understand your path and can advise you and guide you well.
And that's it, folks. That will wrap another episode of Beyond the Crucible. We will be back next week to talk again about how we know your crucible experiences are difficult, we know that they can be challenging, they can knock the wind out of your sails. But we also know this, we know that they are not the ends of your stories, and we're talking about stories here today. They're not the end of your story. Your crucible's not the end of your story. If you learn the lessons from that story, if you write new chapters in that story, you can move beyond that crucible and it can lead you to the greatest destination you could ever want to get to, and that is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment, it's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
We all grow up with stories. Stories can be magnificent, filling us with awe and wonder. But they can also be intimidating and scary, giving us fears about the future.
We are, in a sense, made up of our stories. Some of us grew up in stories of corporate success, where a certain level of money and lifestyle are expected. Others grew up as children of coal miners and steelworkers, where going to college may have been an unrealistic dream. Some might have grown up in relatively happy supportive families. Others may have grown up in families where there have been generations of alcoholism and abuse.
We tend to feel defined by our stories. “People like us” get corporate jobs or go to work in the mine. My family has been supportive and relatively healthy, but they played it safe, not taking many chances. My family may have had generational challenges with alcoholism and abuse. How can I be any different?
We might think we don’t have agency. That our lives have been pre-determined by our past, be it good or bad. We have to be like those who have gone before us. That’s who we are.
But we can write our own stories. Our stories can take the good parts that we admire and want to emulate, melded with new stories that we aspire to. We are the authors of own stories, which can influence the journey we take. We get to chart a new course. What will that new course be?
So how do we break free from what we feel are predetermined paths, to create a new story, our own unique story?
1. Examine your story
What are elements that make that up? Where we grew up? The type of parents we had? The kind of expectations there were? The kind of professions we were surrounded by? Or the type of culture we lived in?
2. What parts do you want to keep?
Perhaps your family was artistic or musical. Maybe they were entrepreneurs, who were always willing to try new things. Perhaps your family loved to hike in the wilderness, exposing you to the wonders of nature. Maybe your family was caring, always willing to help out a neighbor or someone in need.
3. What parts do you want to leave behind?
Perhaps your family has had generational trauma, suffering abuse or alcoholism, and you want to in a sense break that generational curse. Maybe your family defines success as corporate success, with a stable job, but you want to be an entrepreneur or an artist. Even if your family was relatively healthy and stable, perhaps they played it safe and were very cautious. Maybe you want more adventure and are willing to take more risks.
4. Define your new story.
Write down the elements — almost the colors — that will form your unique story. You may want to be a counselor of those who have suffered trauma and you want the family you are establishing to be a loving and supportive one. You want to define success differently and dream to be an entrepreneur or maybe have your own art studio. Yes, you want to be successful — but on your terms. You respect your loving family and you admire that, but you want adventure and want a job that enables you to travel the world, learning from new cultures and peoples.
5. Explain your vision for your new unique story to the family you grew up with.
Where you can honor the parts of your family’s story that you admire, do so, but explain the new parts you want to add on. If you grew up in a corporate environment you can explain that you admire your family’s hard work and striving for success. You too believe in hard work, but you want to define success in a different realm and a different way. If you had a loving, supportive family, tell them how much you admire that and you too want to have a loving and supportive family, but that you want to have adventure and want to expose your family to cultures and people they may not have known.
6. Create your own supportive environment.
If you grew up in a family of coal miners or steel workers, it might be hard to find family members who can help you in your journey to go to college and start a business. Find people that may have grown up in an environment like you but did go to college and start their own business. They can be your fellow travelers and supporters along your journey.
7. Take the first step.
How can you start making your dream a reality? Perhaps it is looking up colleges in your area and visiting them, which for you might feel very intimidating. But determine you will take that next step. For those who grew up in a corporate environment, talk to some entrepreneurs. Perhaps consider interning in their business or organization. Learn from them.
8. Honor your past.
As you take the road to your new journey, let your family know that just because you have taken a new course does not mean you condemn their path. Yes, that is hard if you grew up in a family of abuse and alcoholism. Perhaps you can give them a picture of what a healthier and better life looks like. Maybe that means forgiving them, which of course does not mean condoning what they have done. The combination of a new life lived out with forgiveness could begin to make a difference in the family you grew up with.
9. Celebrate your new story.
Wherever you are on your journey, never forget the courage it took to begin your new story. Celebrate your story with supportive friends and co-workers, with your fellow travelers and the new family you may have created. Hopefully, the family you grew up with will be able to celebrate your new story with you.
It is so easy to believe that our lives have been predetermined. We are destined to live our lives just like our parents have. But we are the author of our stories. We get to determine the journey we want to travel on. Yes, there will be speed bumps along the way, with unexpected challenges as well as unexpected opportunities and blessings. Nobody can know the complete future path, but we can chart a course that heads in a different direction.
We need to lean into the tiller of our lives, and not let our ship be taken off by the tides of our upbringing. Let’s live our lives on our terms, with our values, our interests, our passions. We get to live our lives. No matter how much we love our parents and family, they should not be the ones that determine our future. We cannot control what will happen, but we can chart a new course with new challenges and new adventures. Life is meant to be lived actively, not as a passive follower of some predetermined course.
Reflection
Make a decision today to create your own story and chart your new path.
Write down the elements of the story you grew up with that you want to keep, melded with the new elements you want to blend in.
Take the first step to creating your new story, ensuring you have supportive fellow travelers who understand your path and can help guide and advise you.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
What if your crucible didn’t happen to you — but for you?
In this episode, we sit down with Zach Duke, whose life has taken one of the most unexpected and faith-filled paths we’ve ever featured on Beyond the Crucible. An eighth-generation Indiana farm kid, college football player, and missionary, Zach thought he knew his calling — until years of chronic illness left him convinced his best days were behind him. Then came an audacious act of faith: pursuing soccer, a game he had never even played, with the goal of competing in the World Cup. What followed is a remarkable story of obedience, discipline, and the discovery that the seasons we most want to escape are often the ones quietly preparing us for our greatest purpose.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
Zach Duke:
If I'm going to push myself to the limits, I need to find what my soccer limit will be. So if I could think to the farthest degree of what the limit could be, it would be the World Cup. And so naturally or unnaturally or supernaturally, I think, I'm going to try to make it to the World Cup in four years or break my body trying because I'm going to find what my limit and my edge is.
Gary Schneeberger:
Our guest this week, Zach Duke, has done just that. From an eighth generation Indiana farm kid to a college football player and missionary, Duke thought he knew his calling, until years of chronic illness left him believing his best days were behind him. Then his audacious act of faith, pursuing soccer, a game he had never even played, gave him his purpose back. His pursuit of playing in the World Cup is a remarkable story of faith, discipline, and discovering his crucible didn't happen to him, but for him.
Warwick Fairfax:
So Zach, welcome. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. And I'll just read a brief bio to let people know who Zach Duke is. So Zach is an American athlete and father known as World Cup Dad, who famously began a quest in late 2022 to become a professional soccer player. And this is despite having absolutely no previous experience, he aimed to compete in the FIFA World Cup in 2026.
Now he's documented his entire journey on social media and uses a digital platform to inspire others, including fellow fathers and families to chase their dreams. Now, before embarking on a soccer journey, Zach was a former collegiate American football player at Liberty University. And from there he went on to church planting, missionary work, family life. Traveled over 40 countries around the world. He was first inspired to begin pursuing his goal by a podcast he heard, that dared its listeners to stop accepting the status quo.
He began training in soccer for the first time when he was 34 years old. A remarkable story. His athletic journey included losing over 30 pounds and changing his entire body composition and skillset. In the Major Arena Soccer League, the indoor league, in 2024, he was selected 24th in the draft by the Empire Strykers, and that's in a roster which included much younger and more experienced players.
He met his wife, Megan, while attending Liberty, and together they have five children. And as Zach just mentioned to me off-air and one on the way. So Zach, thanks so much for coming and thanks so much for being here. So I understand that you are from Indiana and believe it or not, I have some understanding of Indiana because even though I'm from Maryland, my three kids all went to Taylor University, which is not far from where you first went to university before going to Liberty, so I'm sure you know where it is.
Zach Duke:
I know right where that is. Ivanhoe's.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. In the middle of the cornfields. Ivanhoe's is an ice cream place and the goal, I think by the time you finished at Taylor is to have all ... I don't know, 101 flavors or whatever it is, some massive amount, which is quite a lofty goal. But Zach, tell us about growing up in Indiana, what was life like for young Zach? What was your hopes and dreams? What was just your family all about? So just tell us about what life was like for you growing up.
Zach Duke:
Yeah, absolutely. And Warwick and Gary, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I'm just looking forward to this conversation. I'm so grateful, when I look back on my childhood, incredible parents that love Jesus so much. They weren't just in the church, but really wanting to hear and obey Jesus from their hearts. My grandparents the same. Our family has lived in the same area in Indiana, since the Revolutionary War. So we've been farmers in that same area for essentially as old as the country is, which is pretty remarkable.
And in fact, just last week we got our entire Duke family together around the original tombstone of our ancestor that fought in the Revolutionary War and took a giant Duke family picture. So just really special small town community farmers in Indiana and grew up in a very loving, incredible home. And as I look back on that ... I definitely took it for granted growing up because I didn't know any better. But looking back, it's more than I deserve. I'm very, very grateful for that.
And I was always taught to be a hard worker, blue collar mindset, very gritty, and my dad just instilled those values into me. And so I was always a very high driven, high performance type of a guy, but that also ended up being part of my underbelly in my relationship with the Lord because I always wanted to prove myself. I was always questioning, "God, am I good enough? Is what I've done good enough for you?" And a big part of my story is no, that's not how the gospel works. So I can get into more of that story later, but God really used those areas of my life to push me, to grow me, to mold me, but also at the same time to break me and to build me.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's fascinating, even though I imagine ... As you say, you grew up in the church and you probably heard lots of messages that were saved by grace, not by works. You probably heard that message a 1,000 times. I'm sure your parents were all about it, but yet it can be a challenge because we tend to think, "Yeah, but really ..." Intellectually we hear that, but emotionally or spiritually, it's like, "You have to work hard and you got to get good grades and do well if you're an athlete." And it's a subtle thing. That is not an easy message to believe to your core.
My thought about beliefs are, you know you believe something, if it changes the way you behave and act and live your life. So at the extreme, if you say, "Gee, I love Jesus." And then lie, cheat, steal and mistreat everybody, maybe you don't. People would question. I'm not seeing the match between your life and your faith. That's probably a fascinating story. Does that kind of make sense that it's ... You heard that message, but yet there was a subtle shift in the message from what the truth was, which is ... I won't say inevitable, but common.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. No, you're exactly right on that. It took years, even into being a missions pastor, youth pastor, college pastor, still struggling with that performanceism. It wasn't until I was working at a church in Dallas, Texas, and I felt like a total fraud. I felt unlovable. I felt unforgivable. I felt unredeemable. I'll never forget, I was in my apartment and I felt like the enemy had possession of my soul, legitimately, not exaggerating. And I felt like I was completely deserting Jesus.
I wasn't even living in sin, that performanceism ... That lack of peace grew so deep from my projected reputation to the depth of my depravity that I knew what I was, that I though there was no way that God could ever receive me and give me salvation. And I just cried out desperately. I didn't think God would answer me. I didn't think I had any faith. I just said, "Jesus, help." That's all I said. I said, "Jesus, help." And to this day, this is the only time this has ever happened, but I had this picture come into my mind immediately. Without thinking about it, of a lion jumping inside of my chest, eating the darkness. And I physically felt the weight leave. And I started jumping up and spinning in my room.
I knew in that moment I was free. This was in 2012. And when that kind of calmed down, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit speak to me in a still, small voice. And he said, "Zach, I never want you to try to be good again." And that just was going against everything I'd always thought and been taught of, "We need to give our best, we need to do our best." And yes, absolutely it's true, but there's an underlying as what ... Aslan in Narnia would say, "There's a deeper truth or the deeper magic."
And this is what the Holy Spirit said next. He said, "I never want you to try to be good again. I need you to trust in my goodness." And it just wrecked me. For the first time I realized that there does need to be performance. There does need to be goodness. There does need to be all of that. It's just not mine. It's Jesus'. Jesus performed for me perfectly and then died on the cross with the perfect blood.
I still wrestle with that because that's my fleshly tendency to go into performance, but the gospel has profoundly transformed my life as I've just seen Jesus was my performance.
Warwick Fairfax:
So let's talk about your love of athletics. You started off your career at Anderson University, which is not that far from where my kids went at Taylor University. Was it I-69 or something from Indianapolis up through Anderson and then on to Taylor? So talk about that and your love of athletics and football and your love of competing. So that's clearly a theme throughout your life.
Zach Duke:
Yeah, totally. My time at Anderson was amazing. I played football there as well. Actually, my first game was against Taylor. So my first ever collegiate game was Anderson versus Taylor. It was the best. I met some incredible godly friends there. I have an identical twin brother, so we both were receivers on that team. My brother and I and a few close teammates, we started a Bible study on the team called Gridiron, and that ended up being one of the most powerful things that we've ever done, just seeing teammates come to Christ, seeing coaches come to Christ.
I look back on those days of just incredible fondness of college students that don't have strategy, but have willingness. Willingness to trust God and to say yes. And I think willingness is such an underrated ... I don't want to call it a skill, but a value of just being willing to obey no matter the cost. And so I really enjoyed my time there, played two seasons and then God spoke and he told me to transfer to Liberty. And I'll put it this way, Liberty wasn't on my mind. I didn't want to go. I was loving Anderson, everything about it. And it terrified me to even think about going to Liberty, leaving my family.
I've never spent more than two days away from my brother ever, my identical twin. I didn't really know anybody there. I wasn't enrolled to Liberty. I knew if I didn't do this, I was disobeying. So in one day I withdrew from Anderson, drove down to Liberty, wasn't even enrolled. They didn't know I was coming, showed up in the Liberty parking lot with tears on my face. This woman saw me and she asked me what was wrong and I told her what I just did and she's like, "Oh, you need to come with me." I'm like, "I've got nothing to lose. I'll follow you."
So I follow this lady. We go into the registrar office. I'm like, "Okay, this is the right spot." Then we go past the desk. I'm like, "Now where are we going?" She takes me to the dean of the registrar and then she sits down in the chair because she was the dean. The very first person I met accidentally was the dean of the registrar. She's like, "All right, I'm going to enroll you in the university." I had my transcripts with me. I gave it to her. Literally, that's how it happened. She enrolled me in the school, signed me up my classes, got me dormitories, emailed all my professors, saying I was two weeks late to school and to not give me two weeks past homework.
It was a miracle. And so from that moment, I knew God has planted me at Liberty and I'm going to give my heart and soul for the purpose he has me there. So even that story itself was a journey of the impossible, trusting God. And it was all these little seeds from these little yeses growing up that continued, I don't want to say give me faith like it's mine, but gave me confidence in God that he will always fulfill what he asks us to do, whether it's a failure or a success. His purposes will be fulfilled. And I just have really come to trust that. And that's one of the beautiful stories of how he did that.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that's an amazing story because just to let listeners and viewers know, Liberty University in Virginia is probably the largest Christian university I think in the country, where I live in Maryland. My kids all went to a Christian K through 12 school. And so a lot of kids would go to Liberty and just various other places. But it's a remarkable story because sometimes you make a shift in life because you feel like things are going wrong. But as you write, things weren't going wrong. You loved Anderson. You're there with your twin brother. It's not like you had this sense of discontent, this sort of, "Gosh, is there more to life than this?" It's very rare that somebody makes a change when things are going well. That is so unusual.
And to hear that voice say "You need to go to Liberty." It's like, "Well, why? My family's in Indiana. It makes no sense." But the odds of meeting the dean of the registrar is like a billion to one. Did people say, "What are you doing, Zach? I mean, this makes no sense."
Zach Duke:
One hundred percent.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, how did you answer that? Things are going well. You love Anderson. Why in the world move to the other side of the country where you know nobody? This makes no sense. Probably so many said that. How did you respond to them?
Zach Duke:
They did. I remember those sit down meetings very well. And to be completely honest, I don't fault them at all for their thoughts and their opinions because genuinely they were right. It wasn't a moral right or wrong decision. It was a decision based on, God would be with me if I stayed and God would be with me if I went. And so I had really close friends sit down and say, "You're sinning, you're leaving work unfinished. This isn't of the Lord." And coaches, my high school coaches call me saying, "You'll never play at Liberty. This isn't a good decision."
There were very few people in my corner in this decision, but because I heard the Lord, I never wavered. And so what I would tell these people ... And I wouldn't be upset, I genuinely understood their feedback, but I would tell them, "I think God's telling me to leave something I love for something that he loves and to leave something good for something of God." Those are the conversations that I had. And what's really cool is all of those people that sat me down are still some of my closest friends to this day. Our relationship is better even after I've left. And that decision, some of them came back and said, "I'm glad you did that. That gave me confidence to step out in faith too."
I don't know if that's encouraging to anybody, but trust God even if it might cause temporary conflict because that could be the key for their life too, for faith and obedience.
Warwick Fairfax:
Another confirmation in addition to meeting the registrar, when you just got out of the car was how you came to actually play football at Liberty. So talk about that because that again makes no sense. It never happens the way it did. It just doesn't.
Zach Duke:
No. No. When I showed up at Liberty, I had zero desire to keep playing football. In my mind, I was thinking, "I've already just committed such a big transition. I just want to be here as a student. I want to be a missions major. I just want to follow Jesus. I want to grow in the word." And I was fully ready to just do that. But then my roommate who I had never known before that I got put with, when he heard my story. He's like, "You need to play football." I'm like, "I don't want to." He's like, "I think you're really supposed to do it. You should email the coach."
And so a couple of weeks into school, I'm like, "Okay, I'll just email him and see what happens." They had already had walk-on tryouts. Like, "There's no way he's going to say yes." I emailed him at 11 at night. His name was Coach Rocco. I don't remember the exact email, but I know I sent him, "Here are my stats from Anderson. I just transferred here, would love a chance to try out." And he responded back seven minutes later at 11:07. Again, what head coach would that? He had to have been on his email when I did that, just God's profound timing.
And he just said, "We already had tryouts, but I'll connect you with our receiver's coach, Charlie Skalaski, and come out Friday at such and such a time and we'll take a look at you." I'm like, "I got to at least try." So I show up Friday, and this coach is still a dear friend and mentor of mine today. We just connected at a personal level right away. I went out there. I ran 40-yard dash. I ran routes. We talked football plays and IQ and he found out real quick that I might not be the best athlete on the team, but he knew that I knew what I was doing and he knew that I was coachable and I was athletic and I would provide value to the team, at very minimum.
And so a day later got a message back saying, "I'm on the team. Show up and we'll get you all the compliance, everything set up." And I couldn't believe it. I was a Division 1 football player, which was a lifelong dream, and I didn't even go there to play football. God just opened up that door. The two years I played there ended up being some of the most fun, free, incredible times of playing football. I grew so much as a person, as an athlete with the incredible coaches and chaplains that ... Our coaching staff love Jesus so much. Our strength coach loved Jesus so much.
And so it was an incredible environment, even though a lot of our teammates weren't believers. I was in this Christian bubble of Liberty, but the football team was not a Christian bubble. So I got to live that out in the locker room every day. And God really used that time in me and in my teammates to draw us closer to Jesus while having fun smacking people around.
Warwick Fairfax:
So you met your wife, Megan, there at Liberty and it seemed at the time things are going great. I mean, you felt like, "Gosh, I've tried to obey the Lord. I've maybe found the Lord's favor in some sense." But yet it's hard to understand why bad things happen, why God doesn't cause things, but he allows things to happen. And you started having some stomach issues that went on for years. It didn't just affect you physically. It seems like it affected you emotionally, spiritually. It wasn't just ...
So talk about that journey. What I'm fascinated about is it didn't happen overnight. It's not like you woke up one day and it's like the sky's falling, at least not spiritual and emotionally. This is sort of a cautionary journey. It can happen to anybody, but just talk about the stomach issues, what it did to you physically, but also what it did to you emotionally and spiritually.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. It feels like another lifetime ago. It's crazy how quickly you can forget pain and forget where you were in that season, but it was really, really bad. And I don't even like putting my mind back into it. It was around 2014 and I just started getting very, very sick. The first thing I remember is going to the ER, and just being so nauseous, not knowing why. And then it just started every single day without exception. I would be sick.
No joke, I couldn't brush my teeth without getting sick. I couldn't drink water without getting sick. I couldn't eat food. I could barely stomach rice, but yet at the same time, I started gaining weight. Why? I don't know. Maybe cortisol, maybe stress, maybe spiritual. I don't know, but I couldn't eat or drink anything and when I did, I would just get sick. Then I started having insomnia and panic attacks while at the same time ... This is when I'm working for a global ministry, where I'm one of the main guys traveling internationally. And so I'm sick in the Congo, sick in Oman, sick in Qatar, Nairobi, Kenya, South Africa. Hugging toilets in the international airports, traveling alone, begging God to take my life because I was in so much agony. It was miserable. It was a miserable existence.
And I started getting super depressed, despairing of life. And the despair really came through thinking, "I'm never going to get to play with my kids. I'm never going to have a normal adult life. I'm never going to get to teach my kids to play sports or to play catch in the backyard." Or, "I won't be able to fulfill ministry, continuing to travel because the sickness is just taking hold of my body."
And at the same time, doctors couldn't diagnose it. I went to all sorts of functional medicine, got my stomach scoped in the hospital and it's swollen from the inside, but they don't know why. We tried to treat it from over the counter medicine and prescribed medicine. And just nothing worked, nothing for six years. And every single night I'd go to bed and I would just tell my wife to pray for me because I didn't think I would wake up in the morning. I wasn't being dramatic. I wasn't exaggerating. I felt every night like I was having a heart attack and I couldn't breathe and I had to stand up and I'm having terrible chest pain and terrible stomach pain and I'm crying and I'm hyperventilating, night after night after night. It was miserable.
So I would be scared to wake up because I'd be sick and I would also be scared to go to bed because I knew I wouldn't sleep. And so this cycle just got worse and worse and worse. Mentally, physically, emotionally affecting relationships, while trying to hold it together, help run and steward this global work in ministry. Be a father, be a husband. I was breaking. I reached an absolute breaking point. And there was one moment, I don't know the day or even the year, it was like 2019 or 2020. And I'm in the middle of a panic attack. It was in the afternoon and I just put worship music on and I was like, "I'm just going to worship and I'm just going to not care about this even though I felt like I was having a heart attack, I couldn't breathe."
Like, "I'm going to rebel against what I'm feeling and I'm going to praise God." The moment I just started singing to Jesus, the spirit spoke. And I've said this several times on the podcast. I don't want to say he's speaking all the time, but these are significant moments in my life where he did. And he said, "You're not going to die. I'm with you. You're going to be okay." And I believed him. I did. I just fully believed him, lifted my hands, and the panic attack did not go away in that moment. However, I never had one sense and I just felt his love come over me in that moment and my stomach was completely healed and haven't had those issues since. I've been sleeping great for the last six years as well. God totally, miraculously healed my body from ... I don't even know what it was, probably something spiritual and just completely brought me back from the abyss.
Warwick Fairfax:
That is a miracle.
Zach Duke:
It's miracle.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, how else could you explain it other than that? But just to dwell a bit on some of those challenging times, you write that it wasn't like discouragement happened immediately, but it wore you down. You weren't rebellious, you were resigned and resignation is dangerous and obviously it can affect every area of your life and your habits deteriorated, your confidence, purpose. You said when purpose fades, discipline follows. Discipline becomes difficult. So all of these habits that you had over a lifetime that was ingrained in everything that Zach Duke is, it began to erode. Purpose, discipline, vision, self-confidence.
I mean, just talk a bit about ... The physical pain must have been tough, but I'm sure your wife, Megan and others probably looked at you and just said, "The sickness is awful, but the person we know and love has changed. Where's the purpose? Where's the passion?" That must have been hard for you, but really hard for others.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. It was especially tough for my wife, Megan. The word I've heard her use the most is the word hopelessness. She saw the hopelessness in my eyes. She saw that my fire was gone. She saw that I was literally a walking corpse with no hope. She's an incredible woman and leader and would stick to me through thicker thin. She meant her vows with her whole heart. She's such a godly woman, but she felt hopeless and helpless because she didn't know what to do or how to help me. I mean, she prayed for me every day. She tried to encourage me. She never ever left my sight. She never criticized me or condemned me for ... Whether she thought I was acting or exaggerating. She just stood right by me and never left my side.
Now looking back, that really was beautiful and so often joy and sorrow are intermingled together. And God has a way of when you look back on things in your life that you think are sorrowful, ended up being joyful and the things that you look back that you really enjoyed, you look back and see that was actually not good. And so as I look back, as painful as that was, pain has a purpose and Jesus wastes nothing in our life. It's that Genesis 50, everything the enemy used for good, the Lord used, or the enemy used for evil, the Lord has turned for good. It's just true. It's just true.
Warwick Fairfax:
So this is where there's a profound shift in your, I suppose, vocational life and you began to be interested in soccer, which is crazy because from the sound of things, you didn't play soccer growing up. I mean, kids play soccer everywhere, but not necessarily a number of years ago. I mean, you've had a number of dramatic calls from the Lord to go from Anderson to Liberty and not having been enrolled, but then the whole soccer thing. It's like, "What?" And I think you were what, like 34 or something? I mean, you weren't like 17. That points you towards the journey that you're on now. How in the world did that happen, this whole soccer journey?
Zach Duke:
Yeah. I never grew up playing soccer. I played basketball, football, track. The only time I did soccer was when I was in preschool. When you're sitting, you're running amoeba and you're picking the grass. My dad, he's a big football guy, doesn't like soccer. So one year of that, he's like, "No more." So that was the extent of my soccer was preschool grass pickers. And so never trained, never played. And so the Lord heals my body, the story I just shared. Then a couple of years go by and I'm still very overweight, haven't got my habits back. Even though he healed me physically, mentally, emotionally from a leader and servant standpoint, I'm just not there. And so much so that I just begin to regret the man that I'm becoming.
Every man feels this. Every man thinks about, "Here's the standard God's called me to, and when I think 50 years in advance and who I am, I don't like it. I don't like the husband I'm becoming, the man I'm becoming." And so I was in Virginia at my in-laws and I'm like, "I just need to get away, go to a coffee shop, spend time with Jesus and just pray he speaks to me. Just beg as I'm listening to him to get me out of this depression and this rock bottom of my soul."
And so I go there and I listen to the podcast that you referenced in the beginning called DadWork. I love the tagline from my friend Curt Storring. It says, "Equipped to lead, easy to love, hard to kill." Every man wants that. We all want to be equipped to lead, to be hard to kill, to be easy to love. And so they had a guest on the podcast, this amazing Christian dad podcast. And he's just challenging men like me. Why have we accepted the status quo? Why do we accept the dad bod? Why do we accept the societal norms in America and not question them and challenge them according to scripture and what God has for us? Where are the few men, the warriors who trust God to the nth degree? Men of God, do you even know what your limits are? Do you even know what your edge is? Have you ever even been close to it before to know what pushing yourself looks like mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally to the edge?
And I'm sitting there thinking, "I don't have a clue because I've never tried. I just gave up." I'm coasting and just getting through life. And that burdened me. I realized in that moment that I did not like the man that I was becoming. And so I prayed a dangerous prayer and I just prayed, "God, don't let me move from this chair until you bring the fire and resolve back." Fortunately he answered that immediately or I might still be sitting there.
But the only way I can describe it is I just felt like electricity just started going through my body that I instantaneously knew that God was answering my prayer, immediately, without question. And I get out my journal, I get my pen. I'm like, "All right, whatever you tell me to do, God. I'm going to do it." And he said, "Soccer." And I'm thinking, "All right, God. Whatever you want me to do, tell me."
Gary Schneeberger:
Because I'm not hearing so good right now.
Zach Duke:
There's no way that you actually mean that. And he said soccer. I'm like, "I don't understand." And the first thing that popped to my mind was my days at Liberty, when that's when I had the best habits and disciplines and time management, abiding in Jesus. Ministry that was going on with my friends and just enjoyment of walking with God according to his purpose. I'm like, "Okay, I get that from that standpoint, but why soccer? Why not football?" And he then reminded me I was going to Southeast Asia to be with one of the big directors of football soccer for the area. And he was using soccer to plant underground churches in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal.
The lights just started going on. "Okay, this is the lowest hanging fruit, every country on Earth. It's the global language. You can get into persecuted nations. The World Cup's coming to my country, the Club World Cup, Copa America. So it's going to hockey stick as far as popularity and people really engaging with soccer in our own nation. If there's ever a window and a time to use soccer and to use this gift of gain that God has given us for the sake of the gospel, it's right now."
And so that just clicked to me. I'm like, "All right, if that's why we want to do it ..." It's kind of like that Liberty moment. If you put me on the team, I don't know why, I might not ever play, but if you do, I want to use it for your glory. It was that same mindset. I don't understand any of this, but I'll do it if this is why you want me to do it. And then the other part came to me like, "Okay, but if I'm going to push myself ..." Because the conversation was around the limits and getting to the edge. If I'm going to push myself to the limits, I need to find what my soccer limit will be. So if I could think to the farthest degree of what the limit could be, it would be the World Cup.
And so naturally or unnaturally or supernaturally, I think I'm going to try to make it to the World Cup in four years or break my body trying because I'm going to find what my limit and my edge is. I wrote it all down. I still have that original note on my phone of that commitment down and went home and told my wife. I'm convinced I could have told her I wanted to be a professional basket weaver and she would have been all in because she saw that her husband was back.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. You said something earlier that you don't have to have a strategy if you have willingness. And what you've just described is almost like willingness became your strategy. The willingness to go far beyond. I mean, you compared it to Liberty. What you did to yourself when you said, "Okay, let's just go for the World Cup," is like ... Take you back to football. Let's just go to Alabama. Let's walk out of Alabama and see how that happens, the University of Alabama. I mean, you really went far. Would you agree that willingness became a bit of a strategy for you as you move forward?
Zach Duke:
I think that's a great way to put it and I would say absolutely. I've never though of it that way. Might have to steal that, but yeah, willingness-
Gary Schneeberger:
All yours.
Zach Duke:
Willingness, it is the strategy because that's what the Lord is looking for is anyone who is thirsty may come. And that's his heart. Anyone who wants to come to me, 2 Chronicles 16:9 comes to my mind. Says that the Lord wants to give strong support to the heart that's fully committed to him. So the way to get strong support from the creator of the universe is your full heart abandoned yes, which is willingness.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, that's such a good point. I mean, you're showing throughout your life that when God says, "You need to go to Liberty." When God says, "You need to do soccer." It's like, "Okay, I don't think I understand the whole plan. In fact, I know I don't, but yes. And I trust that you'll show me the path and the next step." I mean, that is to me a practical definition of faith. It's just amazing. And it seems like ... You write that this whole journey started with hope and some of those habits came back, the discipline, the vision, you had a goal. It almost seemed like goals are important, but it wasn't as much about the goal as what can I achieve? What can God do through me? How can God use this for his glory, the journey as much, if not more than the destination?
So talk about how that journey, the whole World Cup Dad meme, where that journey went and how it began to help you physically, emotionally, spiritually. I don't know if you could say the old Zach was back, but to a degree the trajectory of your life started changing in a positive way.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. No, what you just described is exactly it. It is not about the goals. It's not about reaching some achievement. And if more people were to get that, not in my story, but in their own life. Man, that really is what the Lord is after in all of us is shaping us more into the image of Christ. And so the whole journey of what World Cup Dad is and is becoming, it's been a miracle after miracle the entire step of the way.
From day number one, I knew I had to burn the ships. I had to make this public or else I would quit in private. I had to face very quickly that people were going to make fun of it, that I would be humiliated, that I would face rejection and everything in between. And I knew I had to walk through that fire because that reputation management is something I could no longer hold onto and God wanted to burn that out of me and is still burning that out of me. And so I just started posting my training as often as I could, almost every day. And I literally told nobody. I didn't tell friends. I didn't tell family. I just started doing it and they just found out when they found out.
And then four months into it, after I started regaining my daily disciplines, my time with the Lord. After four months, I lost about 15 pounds. I started getting stronger, back in shape. I started playing soccer. I was very bad, very bad, and playing rec league soccer. But then I had my first Instagram reel go viral. And I've gotten a lot of flack over the last four years of like, "Oh, your journey only happened because of social media." I think that's silly on so many fronts because one, I would encourage everybody to use every tool possible that they have. I am convinced Paul would've used social media and Zoom to share the gospel if he lived in our days. He wouldn't say, "You should only use the roads. How dare you use these other things that have been invented?" And for any other athlete, why would you not use social media, instead of just emailing coaches?
Use everything at your disposal to maximize what God has given you. That's called stewardship. And so my reel started doing really well. My story started to inspire a lot of people, so much so that a professional mid-level team out of Brazil found out about the story and invited me to come and train and play with them in Brazil, in Sao Paulo. And to which I told them, "That's a really bad idea. I don't think you know how bad I am." And they said, "No, we know how bad you are and we want to help you." Like, "This sounds like we're on the same accord here." And so they paid for the whole trip and went down there, trained with the professional team, was scared out of my mind. We ended up leading one of the coaches to Christ there. And that was probably my highlight was that.
Come home, I get invited after that to play for the Indiana University alumni team for a seven on seven world championship. And we ended up making it to the final four, playing on ESPN, so much fun. It's these in between seasons that people don't really see or know that we get to express more on these type of podcasts. But there was three months of nothing. No one's calling, no one's reaching out. And I'm thinking, "This journey's over. This is ridiculous. What am I doing? Did I hear God correctly?"
These are the seasons when our flesh wants to force something. We want to create an Ishmael out of Abraham and Hagar, instead of waiting for God's promise through Sarah. And so every time I thought about, "Should I reach out to anybody, what should I do?" The Lord said, "Do nothing or you will take credit." And so I just waited and I just prayed and I fasted. And God told me three months later when I was fasting, it was like a three-day fast, "Call your friend Reggie." And I call Reggie and Reggie's like, "No way. I just started fasting today and I asked God, what do you want me to do? And then you called me." I'm like, "Of course. Of course that's how it happened."
And so long story short, I go out to California to where Reggie lives and he just so happens to know the general manager of the USA indoor team. And we go out to lunch, he falls in love with my story and wants me to be part of the team and puts me and rosters me on the USA pro indoor team. It makes no sense. I'm not saying I deserve to be on that team. I tried out and they thought, "Man, Zach's really good and he should be on that team." No, it happened through fasting and prayer, connecting with Reggie. Reggie knew that guy. This GM was really moved by my story and God put me on the team. I didn't force my way on it. I didn't try to strategize my way on it. God just did it. So in my shoes, should I say yes to that? Absolutely, 100% I should do that.
They ended up playing me in the game Verse Mexico, which shocked me. I've never played pro indoor in my life and you're going to play me versus Mexico. And I didn't do good, but I didn't do bad. I just kind of existed out there and that was good enough for me to not look like an idiot. But before the game, I got to pray for the team because I had been sharing my testimony with a few of them the day before. So when it came time to pray before we went out, they all pointed to me and said, "Zach will pray for us." And so I'm thinking, "This is my one opportunity. I'm just going to pray individually over each one of them and speak life, identity, the blood of Jesus over them."
And they were visibly moved by the Holy Spirit touching their lives. So much so that they came up to me after the game saying, "That was the most incredible prayer ever." And again, no credit to me, my praying, I think that's silly, but I say that to say that it impacted them so much that when I went to the combine that next month, when I ended up getting drafted 24th by the Empire Strykers, that coach was in the locker room that day at the USA game. And he said, "I remember when you prayed for the team and the respect that they had for you and the way that everyone looked at you as a leader in that room and I knew that we needed that on our team."
So again, the reason I got drafted, was it because I was good? I don't think so. I think it was genuinely because I prayed for people and it moved people and they wanted that on the team. Why did I get put on Liberty? I don't know. Why did I get put on the USA team? I don't know. Why did I get drafted to the Empire Strykers? I think all of it is more than what I deserve, but it's a testimony of the strategy of willingness, of just keep saying yes to Jesus.
Since that time ... I'll make the rest of this brief, but I got asked by the LA Galaxy to play in their Adidas tournament for their three on three national tournament, which was so fun just to get to represent the Galaxy. I signed a contract to play in the 6V6 World Cup with Brazil in September. Some of that stuff is still in flux because coaches and presidents, but the contract is signed. Nevertheless, we'll see how that plays out. But God has just blown the doors off of expectations.
I still don't know how the story's going to finish, but as I look back, I just think God uses the weak things of this life to bring honor and glory to him. He really does use mustard seeds of faith in all of us. And my prayer is that God is using this to give Joshua and Caleb like courage to obey Jesus and to take the land and to obey the promises of what he's given instead of making excuses of, "There's giants in the land, they're too big, we're too afraid." Fill in the blank of whatever the excuse is, but to have courage again to fully trust Jesus and to go for it.
I'll finish this long thought with some wisdom that my brothers from Pakistan told me. They said, "You guys in America, you feel like you have to understand before you obey, but over here in Central Asia, we obey and then we understand." I think that's what Jesus is after from us. Let's stop hesitating until we know every little dot and tittle and obey Jesus first and understand second.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's so profound because part of the definition of faith is not understanding everything. And for those of us who like to plan, and I do, just learning to, "Okay, what's the next step, Lord? I may not understand why or where this is going, but yes, you show me the path." And really you've showed just so many elements of faith and the reason why you did things and why you did what you did is everything, not so much the result, as you say. So some people could say, "Well, look at Zach Duke." I don't know how many folks you have on Instagram. Is it like 160,000? Well, that's massive. And you could say, "Well, it's all about being a social media influencer." And it's like, "Well, no. It was about being faithful to God's call. It was about burning the ships and making public what your declaration was about soccer and the whole World Cup Dad goal." That was it.
Your goal wasn't to be this social media influencer. And people may believe you or not, but that's up to them. It's their problem. You were just being faithful and when you were fasting and praying and you call Reggie and it's like, "Wow, I was just thinking about you." And you get to play with the US indoor soccer team and then later with the Empire Strykers, the indoor soccer team. I mean, that's just God and the influence you had for him praying. I mean, there's so many times when you were faithful and God showed up.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. God is incredibly faithful. He really is faithful to the end as well. Earlier on the podcast, we talked about the schemes of the enemy a little bit. And anyone who is listening would understand this, it's not often the big things that will take us out, but Satan's strategy for all of us is the wearying of the saints. Just the slow grinding down to when we just say, "You know what? This isn't worth it anymore." And I pray that I would never get to the point where I could say, "You know what? Jesus no longer is the treasure in the field that in my joy I can sell everything for." I pray I never get there. I pray that I never stop risking for Jesus no matter how old I am, because I know that this life is only a grain of sand compared to the beaches of eternity.
I pray I'm like Caleb, if I get to live to my 80s, 90s, 100s, bright-eyed and full of faith to the end. And that's only possible through Jesus, only. Not by our disciplines, not by my habits. Those things are good, but that's not it. What is it? It's the spirit of God in us as we yield to him and everything else sits on that foundation.
Gary Schneeberger:
I have no idea why I do this sometimes on the show, Zach. Sometimes people will be talking about certain phrases and words and I'm like, "I wonder what the anagram for that would be." So while you and Warwick were talking, I grabbed my phone and typed in on an anagram server what World Cup soccer ... What anagram you can build out of World Cup soccer. Here's what you can build out of World Cup soccer. Lord escrow, God's escrow. When you buy a house, escrow is where they hold funds and they hold property and they hold places. And then when it's completed, those funds are released. It seems like the Lord has held all of this in escrow for you as you've continued the journey.
Zach Duke:
That's really good. Yeah. I'm going to sit on that for a while because I think that's better than just a 10 second of, Hey, that's good." That's really, really deep and good. Thank you for sharing that.
Warwick Fairfax:
So your story is just a remarkable story of faithfulness and I'd love to ask you what you feel like you've learned through the course of your life. What God has taught you, but it just seems, at least to me ... There's so many times when you said, "Yes, Lord," and not knowing the answer, not knowing the why, having people ridicule you. I mean, you've probably been ridiculed to a degree throughout a lot of your life from different people, sometimes well-meaning people. Going to Liberty and leaving Anderson makes no sense. You're playing wide receiver with your brother. Why would you do that?
Somehow you get this notion you'll play soccer and World Cup and it's like, "Well, that's not going to happen." And it's easy to say, "Well, it's 2026 and yes, you're not on the US team." But it's not the point, that people miss that. And it's like, "Oh, you're a social media influencer. That's what it's all about." No, that's not the point. It's about the journey and how God is using me. So do you feel like maybe some of the tools of the enemy is so many people misunderstand you or question your motives or question whatever, and yet you just keep saying, "Yes, Lord. I'm not here for popularity. People may love me, condemn me, but that's not the issue." There's probably a lot of thoughts in there, but what do you feel like God has taught you through all of this?
Zach Duke:
Transparently, he taught me that I cared way too much about what people thought and that when they would say those things, that it would really bother me and it would hurt. And so that was revealing. That was revealing that I had a long way to go for the Lord to refine that out of me. And so I've been growing and getting to the place where I don't need for others to understand. I don't need to convince them. If people have opinions, I can live with them having those opinions. That's really, really hard for me.
But what he does want me to do is to keep my eyes on him, like Peter on Jesus in the waves. There's all these waves constantly coming, but my eyes are on him. And the more I focus on the vitriol or even the well-meaning opinions, they're all distractions if they're not from the Lord. Now, that doesn't mean that I should dismiss what people are saying. And that's what's hard for me, is I want to hear people. I want to know it. I don't want to come off as off-putting or I don't care what people say. I don't think to swing the pendulum that far, but I think the top filter is what is the Lord saying? That's the priority. And then everything else is filtered through that.
And so fighting bitterness when you wish people would support and they don't. Is God's support enough? It has to be. For me and for us, his look of pleasure and love, if it's not everything, then I have idols and I had idols. And furthermore, it doesn't matter how many times I've said yes to Jesus up to this point. If tomorrow I give him a resounding no, it doesn't matter. I can't think, "Oh, I'm someone who says yes to Jesus." Well, that might be historically true, but is that true today? Is that true tomorrow? I don't know. I'll have to find out when I get there.
So I think that endurance, that long obedience in the same direction is what he's after in us. I think it's harder now in this journey than it was at the beginning. The stakes are higher. The responsibility is higher. The story is more profound. The light is more on me. So how will I respond? It's harder now. So I don't know what's necessarily next, and I think it's even harder now to maintain those habits and disciplines because now more is required. And so at every part of our journey, we could get to the edge and say, "I've come far enough." And so I'm at that point right now, where I need to continue to say, "I'm going to keep going." Not just for soccer, you could change the goal. I don't care. That's not an idol to me, but I've got to keep going and saying yes to Jesus or else everything in the past really didn't mean a whole lot.
Gary Schneeberger:
That sounds you just heard, folks, is the captain has turned on the fastened seatbelt sign indicating it is time for us to begin our dissent on this conversation. But before we get there, I would be remiss, Zach, if I didn't give you the opportunity, especially since you're not sure how the story's going to end. If I didn't give you the opportunity to tell folks how they could find you on all those social media platforms that you talked about earlier.
Zach Duke:
Yeah. The best one that I'm on the most is Instagram. So it's just @worldcupdad. Yeah, shoot me a message. Would love to engage with anyone on there and how this podcast encouraged them, inspired them. It's getting harder nowadays with more messages, but I want everyone to know that their journey and story is just as significant to God as anybody's. Follow me on Instagram, engage with me. Any way that I can be of a help and service, I just want to be.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, as always, before we close, the prerogative of the last question or questions is yours.
Warwick Fairfax:
So Zach, there might be somebody that is listening and watching this and maybe they feel like today's their worst day. It might be a crippling physical ailment as you had, or it could be a loss of a loved one, loss of a business, of a job, a divorce. It could be all sorts of things in which today might feel like there is no hope. They have this grim sense of resignation, time to give up on life, give up on what I believe. What would a word of hope be for that person who they might feel like there is no hope, there is no point, I'm giving up. What would a word of hope be for that person?
Zach Duke:
If there's breath in your lungs, then there's hope. And the most profound revelation is that Jesus loves you. And I know we sing the songs, we have the nursery rhymes, but when we just sit long enough and believe that Jesus loves me, specifically me. Two verses are coming to my mind that I want to encourage people with, specifically if we're in that place of despair or giving up or tragedy or stuck. The first one is in Psalm 18, where it says that, "He delivered me because he delighted in me." And I think a lot of us have forgotten the delight of Jesus, that his love was so profound that he literally gave his life to buy back his family, to fight for us, to destroy what's destroying us.
And we so often think of kind, loving Jesus, but when it comes to the things against us, Jesus is a warrior king and he wants to destroy what's destroying us. So Psalm 18, read that, be encouraged by it. And then the second one is Isaiah 61, I believe, verse 11. And it says, "Instead of shame and dishonor, I will give you a double portion of honor." It blows my mind because we deserve, and those listening, you actually do deserve shame and dishonor. We can agree that that is true, but it's the half-truth.
The full truth is because of Jesus and his performance for us, we get a double portion of honor. We get a double portion of inheritance. We get a double portion ... It finishes in that verse saying that he will give us everlasting joy. That's our God. The only way that we can get through this is to look to Jesus, to see that he loves you, to see that he delights in you, to see that he's not against you. The moment we turn and we trust in him and believe in him, that's when he shines that light in our darkness again.
And so get up one more day, trust in him one more time. Do what I did in the middle of my panic attack. Turn on worship and start praising Jesus like your life depends on it and let worship be your warfare. So that would be just what comes to my spirit immediately to encourage others with.
Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on a subject's been spoken and our guest today, Zach Duke has just spoken it. In fact, if we go by the metaphor of what we've been talking about, he just kicked the winning goal on our conversation. If you're not watching it on YouTube, he just pumped his fist when I said that, so that's awesome.
Warwick, we just had a very interesting, inspiring and enlightening conversation with our guest, Zach Duke. You may know him folks as World Cup Dad. That's what he is all over social media. What's the one takeaway? And there were a lot of them, so I hate to do this to you. What's the one takeaway from our conversation with Zach that you'd like to leave our friends with today, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
Zach Duke is a remarkable person. His is a story of faith and continually saying yes to God when it made no sense. Here he is, he's from Indiana. His family's lived in Indiana since ... Gosh, before the Revolutionary War, like a long time. He even had an ancestor that fought for the US in the Revolutionary War. And he goes to Anderson University in Indiana, which is not that far from Indianapolis. And he's playing wide receiver on the football team with his twin brother. And he feels like the Lord's saying, "I want you to leave Anderson and go to Liberty University," which is in Virginia. It's one of the largest Christian universities in the country, but it's all the way over the other side of the country. "I want you to go." And so here he arrives at Liberty and he's not even enrolled and he's two weeks late for the beginning of the year. It just makes no sense.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's not an auspicious beginning, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
No. And then somehow a woman in the parking lot says," Can I help you?" And she was like the dean of admissions or something, the registrar. And what are the odds of that? I mean, Liberty University, it's a very big place. And he gets enrolled and then he sends an email to the coach at 11:00 and within eight minutes or something, he gets a reply saying, "Sure, why don't you try out?" And he gets to be a wide receiver on the Liberty team.
I mean, as people know in college sports, you get scholarships, there's walk-ons, but not a whole lot of people get walk-ons. But after the team is selected and the semester has begun, your chance of making it is close to zero at that point. It just doesn't work that way in college sports, certainly not college football. It makes no sense.
And then he goes through this debilitating ... Gosh, it must have been six years or so of his stomach illness and the doctors can't figure out what it is. To this day, I don't think they know what it is. And he's showing up, he works for some global missions organization, he's traveling all over the world and he's spending his life in airport toilets. It's just debilitating. He can't sleep, he's depressed, it hurts his esteem, his ability, the drive and discipline, it all goes.
And then one day he says, "Lord, I just need a sense of direction." And Lord says soccer and somehow miraculously the panic attacks stop and his stomach is healed. It makes no sense. And here he is 34 years old and this whole notion of playing soccer, which he never played in his life.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, no. That's not true. He played as a peewee, he said.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's true.
Gary Schneeberger:
He was in preschool or something, he said.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. As he puts it, when you kind of pick up dandelions or grass off the field. Having had kids who played soccer, I'm familiar with that. And he has this whole idea of playing in the World Cup in 2026. Now we're in 2026. The World Cup is here in this hemisphere, US and Canada, Mexico. And no, he's not on the US team, but it's not the point. The point is he has been faithful to God his whole life. And so one of the biggest takeaways, whether you're a person of faith or not, is when you have that still, small voice, that inner voice saying, "You need to do this." As they say, you know when you know, and nobody else might think it makes any sense, you feel like this is the next direction, this is the next place I need to live, this is the next job, this is the next step in my journey. You sort of just obey that call. You listen to that voice.
And he's done that time and time again. And God has used him at Anderson, at Liberty, to lead Bible studies with players. Here he is at one point, he plays with a Brazilian soccer team. I think it's an indoor soccer team. He plays at one point for the US indoor soccer team and then gets drafted to play for the Empire Strykers. And why does he get drafted? Because the coach heard him pray at the US indoor men's soccer team. It's not his ability. I mean, he's athletic, but he hasn't played soccer his whole life. So his whole journey is a journey of saying yes to that still, small voice, yes to the Lord.
And even in the dark times, just clinging to that belief that somehow the Lord will find a way. Certainly he's a testament to, it didn't happen to him, it happened for him. His story is amazing. Yes, you could say, "Well, he hasn't made the US team and it's 2026." But it's not the point. It's about being faithful to the journey. And yes, he's got 160,000 followers on Instagram and people can say it's all about being a social media influencer. No, it was about publicly declaring the goal that he had and being faithful to the Lord.
He has really not got his identity in what he does or even his goal. He's just trying to be faithful. It's about the journey. When you have the sense of vision, it gives you a sense of perseverance, a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, having that vision more than ... It's not so much whether every aspect comes true or maybe the vision doesn't come true in the way you thought, but just focusing on the day-to-day, on the journey and the people that you'll impact more than what you achieve. So many powerful lessons, whether you're a person of faith or not, so many powerful lessons from Zach Duke.
Gary Schneeberger:
So until the next time we're together, folks, please remember this. We know that your crucible experiences are difficult. Warwick and I have talked about it on this show many times. Zach talked about the just terrible physical and spiritual, emotional crucible he went through. But here's the hope that we all have out of this conversation and out of all the ones that have come before, and that's this. Your crucible experiences aren't the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons from them, you apply those lessons moving forward, you can find yourself heading toward what can be the greatest destination of your life, and that is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
What does it take to be the kind of adviser a leader can truly trust — and what does it take for a leader to trust them?
In this episode, we explore the remarkable relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and her closest adviser, Lord Burghley, as part of our ongoing series More Stories from the Book Crucible Leadership. Elizabeth once said of Burghley that he would not be corrupted by gifts and would remain faithful to the state — high praise from a monarch who had every reason to be guarded. Warwick unpacks why Elizabeth thought so highly of Burghley, how he handled his role with complete dedication to her mission rather than his own ambitions, and why their partnership stands as a textbook example of what truly great counsel looks like — and what it takes for a leader to recognize and receive it.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. Probably the finest tribute paid to Burghley was from Queen Elizabeth who said the following of him, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts and that you will be faithful to the state."
Gary Schneeberger:
Those are pretty strong words of endorsement, especially coming from a monarch talking about an advisor. This week in the latest episode of our series within the show, more stories from the book, Crucible Leadership, Warwick unpacks why Queen Elizabeth I thought so highly of and relied so much on Lord Burghley and how Burghley handled his role with complete dedication to the queen's mission, not to his own aspirations. Theirs is a textbook example of what it takes to be a good advisor and what it takes for a leader to trust a good advisor.
Welcome friends to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have joined us in the first, what we would call a "regular episode" after our summer film series and our 30,000-foot level look at the summer film series. So, now we're back in the regular rhythm of the show, and that means this week, we are back to... It's been a while, Warwick, but we're back on more stories from the book, Crucible Leadership. It is what we call the series within the show, as it were.
And just to refresh your memory, especially since it's been a couple months because of the summer series that we've talked about more stories from the book, Crucible Leadership. The book, Crucible Leadership was a Wall Street Journal bestseller that Warwick released in 2022. It's an important book because it was that book which birthed the brand Beyond the Crucible. And if it wasn't for Crucible Leadership, not exaggerating at all, if it wasn't for Crucible Leadership, there would be no Beyond the Crucible business. There would be no Beyond the Crucible podcast. So, that's how important it is and that's why we revisit it. We have in 2026, once a month. Each month, although as I said, with our summer series, we were off doing that and so we haven't been on about the book series for a couple of months.
We feature one story from Warwick's book, spotlighting one key learning that helped the subject of the story overcome a crucible and can help you overcome your crucibles as well. And this year, in more stories from the book, Crucible Leadership, cleverly named from last year, which was stories from the book, Crucible Leadership, we've added an interesting twist this year and that is half of the stories that we're covering were those that made it not in the book, but on the cutting room floor. They did not make it in the final edition of the book. And the story that we're going to talk about this week is indeed one of those stories.
And the story is Lord Burghley on being an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. If you don't have a lot of ideas of what that means, that's why we do this because you're going to get some great tips, some great insights and action steps from this historical story that we're going to go through. So Warwick, in every episode of this series within the show, I ask you a simple question to start off and that is this, why this individual from your book? Why are we doing a podcast episode on Lord Burghley?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, it's interesting. We did a episode earlier this year on Louis Howe, who was a key advisor to Franklin Roosevelt in the '1930s and during his rise in the '1920s. So most people have heard of Franklin Roosevelt. Some may have heard of Louis Howe. Not everybody has heard of Lord Burghley.
Gary Schneeberger:
No.
Warwick Fairfax:
Queen Elizabeth was queen as we'll get into, in the '1500s. So this is a long time ago and there's a reason that we're talking about Lord Burghley because we can learn so much from what a fantastic advisor he was to Queen Elizabeth who was queen during very challenging times. So Lord Burghley was one of the key advisors to Elizabeth 1. Queen Elizabeth had a number of great advisors who were experienced and trustworthy. Her two key advisors were Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham. Probably her most important advisor, and she had a few, was Lord Burghley.
So Burghley was Elizabeth's advisor for 40 years, initially as Secretary of State and later, Lord Treasure. The Secretary of State meant something different back then. It's not the modern U.S. foreign secretary. Elizabeth was loyal to her ministers and encouraged their frank counsel and weighed their advice. So, Lord Burghley, he was born in 1520 and he died in 1598, just a few years before Queen Elizabeth died. And it's been said that the biography of Burghley is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England. He devoted his whole life to serving his queen, Queen Elizabeth. Now, Burghley's main goal for English policy was the creation of United and Protestant British Isles. He wanted to complete the control of Ireland, forge an alliance for Scotland and protect England from invasion with the powerful Royal Navy.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. 40 years serving the Queen, that is certainly yeoman service. That is a dedicated advisor. And we'll hear in this episode, folks, about just how dedicated Burghley was and the benefits that he brought to the queen. But before we get going that far, Warwick, let's begin where we start with guests on the show as we start talking about this more stories from the book episode. The backstory, that's where we start with guests. In this case, the backstory of Elizabeth I, how did she rise to the throne? Under what circumstances did she become queen?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, Queen Elizabeth I, she was born in 1533 and died in 1603 and she became queen in 1558. Now, these were certainly turbulent times that Elizabeth grew up in.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
Her father was somebody who is well known in history, King Henry VIII. And King Henry VIII was married quite a few times, six in fact. But how he got divorced is a bit different than today, different times. And so, when Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, did not give him a male heir, he dissolved his marriage. Now, at the time, England was a Catholic country in the early part of his reign and the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize divorce, did not recognize the dissolving of his marriage. Well, Henry was not somebody who tolerated not getting his way, even if it was from the Pope and Roman Catholic Church. And so, he divorced anyway and Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, gave him a daughter, Elizabeth.
And then Henry beheaded Anne Boleyn before Elizabeth was three years old. And so, given that the Roman Catholic Church was against Henry's divorce from Catherine and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Henry created his own church, the Church of England. It's like, fine, Rome won't recognize my divorce from Catherine and my marriage to Anne Boleyn. Fine. I'll make my own church and they'll recognize it. So that's how-
Gary Schneeberger:
[inaudible 00:08:10] new church.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. The Church of England, the Anglican church, Episcopal Church, all came from this point. And so, after Henry died, Elizabeth's sickly, half brother, Edward became king. Six years later, Edward died and Elizabeth's elder half sister, Mary became Queen. Now she was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. When Mary became Queen, being an ardent Catholic, she was bent on restoring the Roman Catholic Church in England. So this put Protestant Elizabeth in a precarious position. Protestant Elizabeth was next in line to the throne behind Catholic Mary and Mary didn't have children. So, this became an inevitable target of the plots to overthrow Mary and restore Protestantism to England. Elizabeth may not have been part of such plots, but she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. And if anybody's visited London, you've got the Tower of London, the crown jewels. When you were sent to the Tower of London, it wasn't a good thing.
It tended to mean you were there for execution. And she narrowly escaped her mother's fate of being beheaded. And after five years of Mary's reign, Mary died. Elizabeth became queen in 1558 at the age of 25. And I'm reminded of scenes where Mary was pondering whether she would behead Elizabeth to preserve Catholicism by a 1998 movie called Elizabeth. And that starred a young Cate Blanchett. It was probably one of her earlier roles and launched her career. And as I was looking it up and reminding myself, it turns out that Richard Attenborough, who featured in our summer series Jurassic Park, a 1993 movie, he plays John Hammond, the guy that creates Jurassic Park and he creates dinosaurs, that same Richard Attenborough plays Lord Burghley in that movie. So pretty amazing, right? Because we've only just recently covered Jurassic Park. So when you watch that movie, it's worth looking at because it gives you an idea of the challenges of the times.
There were scenes in which the advisors to Mary said, "You've got to behead Elizabeth." And they would put pieces of paper in front of her basically saying, "Mary, sign this and your sister will be beheaded." And she ponders, she thinks, but she couldn't quite do it. And her advisors say, who are Catholic, "We've got to preserve Catholicism any way we can do it. You got to kill your sister," and she can't quite do it. And you see Elizabeth basically in prison in the Tower of London awaiting her fate. So, a movie definitely worth watching.
So what's interesting is in these turbulent times in which she's growing up and she's seen her father have multiple wives and kill a number of them, life was very uncertain even if you're a princess. And Elizabeth was somebody that was very intelligent. She received a first class education, quick-witted, intellectually serious, and she spent a good part of her growing up, understandably being careful with what she said and having to be quite cautious.
So, Elizabeth learned valuable lessons growing up on how she was seen by others. She also learned the fragility of life and the survival instinct was keenly earned. So those early years were very formative in terms of how Elizabeth would reign once she became queen.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And those difficult times that she went through didn't end when she became queen. In fact, you wouldn't make a movie starring Cate Blanchett, which got a bunch of Oscar nominations about her early days as queen if there weren't some very interesting early days as queen for Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth did indeed, from the moment she took the throne, she faced some challenging times during her reign as well, didn't she?
Warwick Fairfax:
Now, Elizabeth was more moderate. She wanted England to be Protestant, but she didn't want persecution of Catholics. So many feared that England would revert to being a Roman Catholic country after Elizabeth died. And you'll notice if you watched that movie, Elizabeth, from 1998 with Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth was known as the Virgin Queen. She never married. Basically, she didn't want to share control and women being in power in those days was certainly unusual. So, the Roman Catholic Church, they regarded Mary Queen of Scotts as the rightful queen of England. So when one of her advisors, one of Elizabeth advisors, Walsingham discovered that Mary Queen of Scotts was part of a plot against Elizabeth's life, Elizabeth reluctantly agreed to sign the death warrant for Mary. This is Mary Queen of Scotts. A year later in 1588, Elizabeth had to face the Spanish armada that was bent on invading and conquering Protestant England.
They wanted to restore England to being a Catholic country and put a Catholic on the throne. So, in part because of the fear of Elizabeth not having a Protestant heir and thus the monarchy falling back into Roman Catholic hands, there was constant pressure for Elizabeth to marry. And as I mentioned, given the time she lived in, she was reluctant to share power, Elizabeth said this famous phrase that she did indeed have a husband, namely the Kingdom of England. So hence, the Virgin Queen as she was known.
Gary Schneeberger:
And it's at this time, she has a husband, the Kingdom of England, right? She's dedicated to that, but she's going to need some help somewhere, she realizes, and that is where Lord Burghley makes his arrival and makes his impact, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So, Elizabeth's upbringing in challenging circumstances and an intellectual curiosity perhaps made her more open than some to having first class advisors. So, Elizabeth assembled a core of experienced and trustworthy advisors such as Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham. Now, chief among her advisors, followed closely by Walsingham, was indeed Lord Burghley. Elizabeth appointed Burghley, her principal Secretary of State on the morning of her accession to the throne. Burghley was to serve as her advisor for 40 years, initially as Secretary of State and later, as Lord treasurer. Elizabeth was loyal to her ministers, encouraged their frank counsel and weighed their advice, yet she retained her power to make final decisions. Elizabeth may have had good advisors, but there was no question who was in charge.
So, it's to Elizabeth's great credit that she worked with such able advisors such as Burghley and Wasingham and really was perhaps the most crucial strength of her reign. So it's amidst such pressures of state and personal pressures that it's no wonder she sought good advice. Lord Burghley had a special place as a key advisor to Elizabeth throughout much of her reign. Now, there were times when that relationship was strained. We mentioned earlier about Mary Queen of Scotts being beheaded. And it was Burghley who wanted to push through that execution quickly. He was afraid of what would happen to the kingdom given the Catholic support of Mary and wanting her to basically overthrow and indeed kill Elizabeth. And so, Burghley pushed through the death warrant to spare Elizabeth some emotional hardship. Maybe he was afraid of Elizabeth wavering in signing the death warrant of Queen Mary, the way that Queen Mary wavered in signing the death warrant of Elizabeth.
Now, Elizabeth was outraged that Burghley pushed this execution through, but while she did argue with him at times, Elizabeth said of Burghley that, "No Prince of Europe had such a counselor." So it doesn't mean that she always agreed with his advice, but she knew that his advice was purely in her best interests. He was fiercely loyal to her and wanted to do everything he could to make her successful. So, Lord Burghley was quite a remarkable man. Burghley saw his duty was to give Queen Elizabeth the best possible advice and then to carry out whatever policy she wished. Burghley was loyal to his duty to serve Elizabeth. He was a man of discretion. He did not necessarily make it obvious outside the Queen what his views were. It's interesting, historians look at his letters and memorandum and they find it very difficult to figure out what he actually believes on any given issue because you've got memorandas stating the pros and cons of various issues, but there are a few indications of where he stood.
And one writer said that he was an eminently safe man and not an original thinker, but that he was a counselor of unrivaled wisdom. And so, that's really what you want, a counselor of unrivaled wisdom. And that same writer said that caution was his supreme characteristic. Now, given the times in which Elizabeth was queen, where you've got the tumult and the monarchy before she became queen, the Protestant versus Catholic divisions in the country and the threat of Spain, it's understandable that he'd be cautious. There was a lot of things that could go wrong, a lot of threats to England and indeed, to her reign.
So Burghley had a reputation for being efficient and scrupulous. And Queen Mary, who knew of Burghley before she died, she said of Burghley that he was a very honest man. So, Queen Mary respected Burghley also. So probably the finest tribute paid to Burghley was from Queen Elizabeth who said the following of him, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts and that you will be faithful to the state." Now, having an advisor that it's not corrupt in an age when advisors could get a lot of profit from aligning themselves to whoever was going to win and accumulate wealth and patronage, that was a thing.
And advisors could profit by participating in royal intrigue, either support the current monarch or basically stab them in the back. So Elizabeth was very wise to seek advisors such as Burghley during these turbulent times. And Burghley's sole motivation was to provide support to the queen and to his country. And I'm sure many a leader would covet an advisor such as Lord Burghley.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as you were talking about all of the things that he did, things he didn't do, and what was said about him by Queen Elizabeth, what popped in my mind are advisors today, modern day advisors to presidents, for instance. As soon as the president leaves office, those men and women write memoirs and they lay open all of the things that happened. There doesn't seem to be a lot of loyalty among advisors, certainly not 40 year loyalty that Burghley did. And the things that were said about him, he kept things that were in confidence in confidence and he wasn't trying to make his mark even after he... He didn't leave the service and then try to make his mark. That's astoundingly different than what we get today from a lot of advisors, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
You're right. They write tell-all books about what happened and yes, they want to serve the president or the leader of their country, but there's often another agenda is, gosh, maybe once I leave office, I can be on a commentator on a news channel and I can write books and a thought leader, and this will launch my career as a sage and wise person. But Burghley was not like that. His sole motivation was to serve Queen Elizabeth. When you take your oath of office, you say, "Will you protect the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic?"
Well, there were enemies within, within England, those who wanted to restore Catholicism to the nation and those without, namely Spain, who also wanted to return England to being a Catholic country. So there are a lot of threats and Burghley was completely focused on preserving the nation, keeping it Protestant and protecting and furthering Queen Elizabeth's vision for the country. That was his sole motivation, not a book tour, not to go down history as a brilliant man. He was totally focused on his duty to Elizabeth and to be known as a very honest man at a time where honesty didn't really pay, it wasn't the best way to preserve your life. The best way was to align yourself with whoever was going to win because you get wealthy and you might live and not be beheaded.
We live in times in which you don't tend to get beheaded if the leader doesn't like your advice or you fall out of favor and the other side wins. So the stakes were a lot higher back then. It was literally your own survival. And so, yeah, honesty, not sure that was really a policy that always led to a long life, but he was honest and would do whatever he could to help Queen Elizabeth succeed and preserve her reign.
Gary Schneeberger:
I want to ask you this next question from two different directions. I want to ask you from Lord Burghley's perspective and then also from Queen Elizabeth's perspective. And that's this, what can we learn about being a good advisor from Lord Burghley, aside from not writing a tell all memoir as soon as your leader that you've served gets out of office? What can we learn from Lord Burghley about being a good advisor? And what can we learn from Elizabeth about keeping good advisors, about being confident enough to bring aboard good advisors? Because we have to learn sometimes we're going to be the advisor, sometimes we're going to be the leader. So what can we learn from both Burghley and Elizabeth about this subject?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So what's remarkable, I think as we've been saying, is how loyal Burghley was to Elizabeth. Now remember, this is an era in which it was very unusual for a woman to be the monarch of a country. There was constant chatter about who should Elizabeth marry and she didn't want to marry somebody because she wanted to be queen. That would be a time when it would be assumed that her husband would really take control and not her. But Burghley was loyal to... He wasn't like, "Well, how can we have a queen here? How come a woman is a monarch?" It's like, "Okay, my sovereign is a woman. She's queen of England. I will do whatever I can to help her succeed and preserve the nation." So, he was considered a counselor of unrivaled wisdom, and it was just not obvious what his personal opinion was behind his advice. I'm not sure we know.
Historians have not really found it easy to ascertain that. Burghley's goal was to serve Elizabeth, the queen, and give her the best possible advice to carry out her policies. Again, this was no easy time in which she reigned. The monarchy before she became queen, Protestant Catholic divisions, the threat of Spain, and Burghley was somebody that was honest and could not be corrupted. So to be a good advisor, you have to leave your own personal opinions and agenda behind. When you're serving somebody who has great power and influence, that is very hard. It's so tempting to want to influence the organization or the country because you're thinking, "Gosh, I'm the voice of the president. He listens to what I have to say. I can influence the nation. What is it I want? Maybe I can subtly influence things by the questions I ask, the advice I give," and that's corrupting, but that's not the role of an advisor.
An advisor's goal is to accomplish the leader's objectives, not his or her own objectives, and to give them advice on how to bring their vision to reality. It's not the advisor's vision that's relevant, it's the leader's vision that's important. That probably makes sense, but it's very rare to have an advisor whose only agenda is yours, and they're not trying to push things. They're not trying to influence you other than you've told me what your vision is, you've told me what your agenda is, this is my advice on how to get it done. I think this is the best way for it to happen. That's where the focus is, not on the direction, but more, how you get to that direction.
Gary Schneeberger:
And before we get into the Elizabeth part of this question, let me ask you this because it occurred to me that... You say a good advisor tries to give advice on how to bring the leader's vision to reality, but especially we see with Elizabeth, given all of the tumult that she went through as queen, it's also a good advisor helps you avoid crucibles, helps you... It's not just bringing your vision to life, it's keeping crucibles at bay or overcoming crucibles, isn't it? It's a vision perspective, yes, but it's also a crucible advising position, is it not?
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, it's so true. Well said. So, when you think of what was Elizabeth's vision, part of it was survival, not being killed and preserving the nation of England. You had people scheming within the country to overthrow her and make Mary Queen of Scotts the Catholic queen of England. You had Spain trying to conquer England again, same thing really, to make England a Catholic country. You had a lot of palace intrigue, will Elizabeth marry? If you watch the movie Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, you'll see that she had definitely some romantic interests and lovers and all of that. That was certainly something that happened, but she would not make any of those people that she had romantic interest in, a king. That was not going to happen.
But it doesn't mean there weren't people who were trying. It doesn't mean there weren't probably advisors and courtiers who would say, "You need to marry and how about some prince in Europe and align with this country?" And there's all sorts of intrigue, but that provided a very challenging climate. And so, Burghley's job was to protect her from probably the palace intrigue, the internal factions in the country that wanted to depose and kill her. And in fact, I think I read somewhere that it was Walsingham that set up a whole intelligence network. It wasn't like the FBI or CIA back then, but you had to have a good intelligence network to know where the threats were coming from.
So between Burghley and Walsingham, she had advisors that were very focused on preserving her reign and on her very survival. So, those kind of advisors, as you say, they helped her avoid crucibles, go through the crucibles of internally, people that wanted to kill her, externally people wanted to overthrow the country and those that wanted to try to force and pressure her to marry somebody within the country or some prince in some other land. So, truly, you could say her reign was what? 45 odd years of constant crucible. It was not easy times. It was survival was really the goal. That was one of the chief goals.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, right? A good advisor, Burghley in this case, and there's many more in history that we can talk about, a good advisor helps you achieve the positive and avoid or at least, weather the negative. I think that's what you just described about Lord Burghley, it makes that clear.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. A good advisor like Burghley and Walsingham obviously was also there, is let's deal with the negative people externally and internally that want to overthrow you, but also, let's help grow the nation of England. It wasn't quite the United Kingdom as it became, but let's see if we can better unite England and Scotland and Ireland and let's make England a great nation because at the time, Spain was probably one of, if not the great power at the time and England would later become the great power in Europe in the centuries to come. So yes, part of Elizabeth's vision that Burghley was helping her with was to make England a great nation and an even greater nation than it was. You had the positive, make England a great nation, and the negative, if you will, of preserving her life and protecting the country.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, I've interrupted you from answering the second part of my question. That's what I get for putting two questions in one and then thinking, "Hey, there's another question I can ask in the middle of that." But you've just talked about Burghley as an advisor. Now let's talk about what it takes for someone like Elizabeth, for someone in power, someone who's a leader, whether it's of a nation or it's of a company. What does that person have? Because that person has to muster some confidence and some perspective in order to allow advisors close. And that's important to do that because if you don't allow an advisor to advise, you're not going to be able to get good counsel from that advice, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
That's so true. There aren't many leaders that are good at taking advice and are willing to get advice from great advisors. If they are open to advice, it's from yes men or yes women that will tell them what they want to hear. That's not advice. That's enabling, if you will. It's like, okay, what is it that the leader wants to hear? I'll just tell them what they want to hear and then I'll preserve my power and influence and I can write my books and be a commentator on TV networks and what have you. And that's the way to be successful. But somebody that was as smart and wise as Queen Elizabeth I, she wanted good advisors who would actually speak truth to power. Now, to do that, you need to be very secure and being willing to take advice from able advisors and not feel threatened by them.
Again, this was an era where there weren't too many female monarchs. And so, it would be understandable if she felt like nobody respects me because I'm a woman. They don't think I have intelligence and I'll be seen as weak if I just listen to these men or it's like, oh, well, they're really in control, not me because how could a woman have enough wisdom and capacity to rule a country? There might be prejudice now, but my gosh, it was so much worse back then. So you've got all of these things that Elizabeth had to deal with, but yet, she was a secure enough person that she wanted the best advice. So, having great advisors such as Lord Burghley, it was really remarkable. And for 40 years, because there were times in which they had run-ins such as it's no small thing when your advisor speeds up the process and has Mary Queen of Scott's beheaded. It's like, okay, that's not a detail. It's like, "Hey, that's my role, not yours. Advisors don't make those decisions. You can advise me, but I'm the one that has to sign the piece of paper."
But again, these are different times. It's hard to relate. I understand. But she must have felt that while it wasn't appropriate, she probably realized it was necessary to preserve the nation. Maybe she wondered if she could have done it herself, but she probably realized that what Lord Burghley did was ultimately in her interests and in England's interests. And so for most, that'd be a firing offense. He wouldn't have been around 40 years, but yet she said, "Well, okay, you didn't handle it the way you should have, inappropriate, but you had my best interests at heart and I don't question your motives. Maybe your methods, but not your motives." So she didn't fire him. That's remarkable. So, yes, you have to be secure as a leader and take advice from very smart advisors.
And what you have to realize that having somebody such as Lord Burghley, it doesn't diminish you. It enhances you and increases the probability of your vision becoming reality. And that's what so many leaders, they don't get. It's like maybe people will say, "Wow, that may not have happened, that policy without Lord Burghley." And you might say, "You're right. I had the vision, but he helped me make it happen." You need a team. We talk more broadly about the importance of having a team of fellow travelers. Being an advisor is a subset of that. It's part of that. And so, a secure man or woman who's leading a nation, a nonprofit, an organization realizes they don't have all the skills and all the gifts and they need people who can be objective. And when you're in the midst of pretty tough decisions as a leader, it's not always easy to be completely objective.
And so, you've got to be very wise and secure to realize somebody like Lord Burghley shouldn't make you feel threatened. You should feel blessed to have somebody of that level of wisdom and intelligence and that level of integrity who you know you will not have to watch your back with this person. They are 100% for you and will give you great advice.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. So, we've arrived, Warwick, at the end of the episode where I ask you this question, what are the big takeaways from Elizabeth's reliance on her advisors that we discussed today that can help our listeners and viewers make their vision a reality? And to the point that we made earlier when we were talking, also weather some crucibles and move beyond them.
Warwick Fairfax:
Elizabeth grew up in challenging times. And as we've discussed, her dad was King Henry VIII and multiple wives, beheaded a number of them. Her older sister Mary was queen before her and Elizabeth narrowly escaped getting beheaded. It was not an easy time to grow up, but she had great intellectual curiosity and that made her more open than some, to having first class advisors. It's worth noting just how intelligent Elizabeth was. She was well-educated. It was probably unusual for the time she was a princess, but I imagine not everybody would've been so well-educated and not all women would've been so well-educated as she was. She could read and write in multiple languages, including English, Latin, Italian. She was familiar with French, Dutch, and Spanish. And during her life, she translated multiple works from Latin and Greek into English and she was a skilled musician. That's no small thing. She was highly intelligent.
And so Elizabeth's intelligence and growing up in such uncertain times meant that she had the wisdom to know that good advisors were essential. Again, as I've said, good advices to both to help you survive and not get overthrown or beheaded yourself like some of the wives of King Henry VIII were, and to survive the intrigue of Spain as well as Mary Queen of Scots, just survival was no small thing. So, she had the wisdom to know that good advisors could help her survive, preserve a country and help her country prosper and grow. So, this was a huge thing. She realized that good advisors, they help you make good policy decisions and help her preserve her reign and lead her life.
So for most of us, the stakes and importance of having good advisors ensuring our survival is not really what's uppermost. There are some places in the world, but for most of us, you don't think, "Gosh, I need good advice because that'll help me avoid being beheaded or killed." That's typically not something that people worry about these days. But our need for advice and good advice is just as important as is, I need to be secure enough and intellectually curious enough to want good objective advice. And this is where unfortunately, it's so unusual and yes, it's a challenge to find good advisors. I would say the greater challenge is almost being open to good advice. There's a lot of intelligent people out there. Some of those intelligent people have high integrity and honesty and are people you can trust. Not everybody, but there are some.
But it's almost rarer to find a leader that is secure enough to realize, "Hey, I don't know everything. There are some things that I may not know. And even if there are some things I'm kind of aware of," as a leader, there are times in which it's very difficult to be objective because all sorts of things can be challenging to think straight in any given particular circumstance. You're hearing counsel from many different people, you have oppositions from all sorts of folks and be able to sift through it all and calmly figure out what's the best path forward. That's where advisors, because they're not exactly in your shoes, can provide wise counsel if you listen to them. But that only happens if you're secure and it only happens if you're willing to listen to them and indeed ask, "So tell me more about that. So why do you think that? Is there something I'm missing?" You've got to create a climate where they're willing to say, "Look, with all due respect, that's an idiotic policy you're about to enact. It makes no sense. It won't fly."
There were times in which, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, Louis Howe would say that to Roosevelt. Not an easy thing to do, not something that Roosevelt would listen to everybody on, but he would to Louis Howe. And it's been said in the latter half of Roosevelt's presidency after Louis Howe died, that a number of the mistakes that he made in terms of policy, bringing them into fruition, was because Louis Howe was not there. That's not the case with Queen Elizabeth other than, gosh, I think it might be five years or less between Lord Burghley dying and Elizabeth dying. So, pretty much for a whole reign, she had Lord Burghley as a key advisor. So you've got to be secure and wise enough to take and receive good advice. You want good advisors. You want good advisors with integrity that will speak truth to power, but you want to be the kind of person that looks for good advice and creates a climate where good advisors want to be on your team and feel completely free to not hold back and give you that advice.
That's a high bar that frankly, most leaders do not meet. And that's why you typically don't have a lot of advisors that we feel are great ones because the leader is not secure enough. They want to have yes men, yes women or advisors that aren't quite as good because they're not secure enough to handle advisors who are highly intelligent, eloquent, and will tell them what they don't want to hear. Very few people are willing to put up with great advisors.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, you know what you just did there? You just landed the plane on our conversation. And folks, that will wrap up our seventh series within the show episode on more stories from the book, Crucible Leadership. We'll turn the page again in October to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance. We'll see you then.
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What does it actually take to move from your worst day to your greatest opportunity?
In this episode, we step back and take a big-picture look at the five key truths for overcoming setback and failure that emerged from our recently completed summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. From moving forward with conviction even when success isn’t guaranteed, to the deeper patterns of resilience, purpose, and transformation we saw play out across eight films, these lessons form a succinct and practical roadmap for anyone navigating a crucible right now. Grab a pen and some paper — you’ll want to write these down, because taken together they map the critical steps from your hardest moment to your greatest opportunity.
Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film? Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
[00:01] [Warwick Fairfax] Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible. You do not know, in the case of Sarah Connor, whether she'll be able to avoid Judgment Day where Skynet takes control. Captain Jean-Luc Picard doesn't know if he's going to succeed in battling the Borg and saving humanity. Ripley doesn't know if she will find a way to defeat this alien creature. You know, in no way do they know if they're going to succeed. But they let go of the past, and they find a way to move forward.
[00:39] [Gary Schneeberger] Moving forward after a crucible with conviction, even when you're uncertain you'll be successful. That's one of the 5 key truths for overcoming setback and failure we discuss today in our big-picture look at the lessons we learned from our recently completed summer series, Back to a Better Future. The crucibles of sci-fi cinema. Before you go any further, we suggest you grab a pen and some paper so you can jot down each of the points we unpack, because when taken together, they form a succinct roadmap for the critical steps necessary to move from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. Friends, welcome to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And we've— Warwick and I have maybe pulled a fast one on you because you listened last week where we talked about— it was the end of our summer movie series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. But we thought more about it and decided we wanted to do not a wrap-up episode so much, but an episode that really spotlighted from a higher vantage point the lessons that we learned in that movie series. So, we're calling this Back to a Better Future: The 5 biggest lessons from crucibles, from the crucibles of sci-fi cinema. Because, right, we spent 8 weeks taking deep dives, exploring some of science fiction's most memorable characters and crucibles. And we decided we wanted to ask this question: what did these movies collectively teach us about navigating crucibles, bouncing back from them, and building a life of significance afterward? Because that's what we're all about here at Beyond the Crucible. So over the Of Back to a Better Future: The Crucible of Sci-Fi Cinema. This is interesting, folks. We've traveled through time, through alien worlds, dystopian futures, and even a dinosaur-infested theme park. So we've been a little bit of everywhere this summer. But beneath all of that science fiction, and this is important, these are very human stories about people facing moments when life did not go according to plan and deciding what they were going to do next. So what we're going to do next is take a 30,000-foot level look at the series, not to talk about each individual lesson in each individual movie, but to talk about what big lessons come out of all the movies grouped together as one. That sound like a plan, Warwick?
[03:20] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely.
[03:22] [Gary Schneeberger] Well, let's just really quickly touch on the movies we covered so you know the ground from which we're Talking as we go through this, uh, this episode, folks. First one, Planet of the Apes. I'll give you a quick description. Planet of the Apes: Taylor discovers that the strange world he has landed on contains a devastating truth about humanity. I love this, Warwick, because if folks haven't watched the episodes, they can go back and, and this serves as a tease to those episodes too. So you can find them all on our YouTube channel. You can find them all where you get podcasts. But that's the first episode that we did, Planet of the Apes. Second episode was Alien. Ripley and the Nostromo crew face a terrifying threat compounded by disastrous decisions and misplaced trust. That's the second movie. Third movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sarah and John Connor confront a supposedly inevitable future and fight to change it. Okay, third movie. Fourth movie, Back to the Future, the movie from which we got the name for our series. Marty McFly finds himself stranded in 1955 and must repair the past to preserve his future. Sounds— I'm all excited about this. It's bringing back all the warm and fuzzies we had from doing the series. The next one, Jurassic Park. Brilliant people discover what happens when technological ability races ahead of wisdom. Ooh, we'll talk about that for sure in this episode. Star Wars. Luke Skywalker loses the life he knew and has to decide whether to answer the call to something larger. Then there's probably Warwick's favorite, if I'm daring to hazard a guess, of the movies in this summer series, Star Trek: First Contact, where Jean-Luc Picard faces the Borg again and discovers that his determination to defeat them has been— has become something much darker. And then our last episode, which aired last week, was The Martian, where astronaut Mark Watney is stranded alone on Mars and survives by repeatedly solving the next Problem in front of him. Okay, those are the 8 movies that we did, and from these 8 movies in this episode, we're going to extract 5 big lessons that you can pull from, that you can lean into, that are shared by pretty much every one of the movies. So, Warwick, we've spent the series that we're talking about looking at all these movies individually, but today— We're going to pull them all together. When you look across all of these stories, 5 lessons keep appearing, and they sound remarkably similar to the principles we talk about every week on Beyond the Crucible, don't they? These are not new concepts that we're introducing people to in this episode.
[06:20] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, absolutely. As I've mentioned throughout the series, I've always been a big fan of science fiction. Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey that I think came out in 1968. I've read widely in science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke. And these 8 movies are emblematic of why I like science fiction. We've got characters in these movies, protagonists, who face—
[06:49] [Gary Schneeberger] I love that word. I'm glad I get to hear that word one more time before next summer.
[06:53] [Warwick Fairfax] Exactly. Word of the day, protagonist. And they face massive challenges, crucibles that test who they are, what they believe in. And in some cases in these movies, the challenge that the protagonist faces is literally the fate of the human race.
[07:12] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[07:13] [Warwick Fairfax] So the stakes are very high. There is a recurring theme of would these characters be defined by their worst day or not? Could they overcome their fears, their inner demons, if you will, to focus on others and make decisions that would uplift their team and the world in general to create a brighter future. Now, most of us aren't faced with crucibles that, you know, our actions will determine the fate of the human race, fortunately, because that would be a pretty massive weight on us.
[07:43] [Gary Schneeberger] Yes, it would last more than the 2 and a half hours of your typical science fiction film.
[07:49] [Warwick Fairfax] So it would, it truly would. But our crucibles are very real, and the decisions we make as we try to get beyond them affect not just us, but those we love and the people around us. So these movies that we covered this summer, they provide powerful lessons of how to overcome your darkest day, which frankly often starts with the battle of the soul and then expands to helping those around us. So yes, we might feel like, well, I don't live in space and I'm not fighting the Borg or the Empire.
[08:23] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[08:24] [Warwick Fairfax] But yet, It might feel that the crucibles and challenges we face, they might feel like Mount Everest. They might feel like massive challenges that we wonder, how can we get beyond them? How can we not be defined by our worst day? And so in these 8 movies, there are some powerful lessons that we can apply to our lives.
[08:42] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And folks, I can't emphasize this enough, that the things that we're going to be talking about are not things necessarily that we discussed in detail during the series. We really are taking, as I said at the outset, a 30,000-foot level, an overhead look level at all of these movies and the things they have in common. And we see these 5 lessons, and I'm about to tell you what the first one is. We see these 5 lessons play out in the vast majority of those 8 films. So, the first example, the first lesson is this: every comeback begins with a decision. Warwick, before someone can actually begin moving forward beyond a crucible, right? There's usually a moment when they have to decide internally, this isn't where my story's going to end. How did that truth, so important to our listeners and viewers, how did that truth show up in the movies we covered this summer?
[09:42] [Warwick Fairfax] When we go through a crucible, which according to our research, we found that pretty much everybody has, and those that say they haven't, our data analysts say, you know, they have. We have. We face a simple but yet profound question. Will we be defined by this, our worst day? Will we give up? There may be aspects of the crucible that we can't change, certainly with physical crucibles. And we've had people on our podcast that have had, you know, crucibles that have become quadriplegics or paraplegics. So at a certain point, there may be things we can't change. But we do need to decide, are we going to be bitter and angry at ourselves or others? Right. Are we going to hide under the covers and give up on life? Or are we going to say that what we went through is awful and painful, but how do we move on? That's a decision we have to make. Yes, you know, we have to learn from the challenges that we went through, but we've got to decide, you know, how do we learn What we've been through and how do we learn how to use that to help others? And ultimately, we believe that beyond the crucible, how do we, you know, lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others? So that all starts with a decision. Am I going to be defined by my worst day? Am I going to find a way to move on and let go of bitterness and anger? And in a number of the movies that we covered, you know, we can learn so many lessons. So for instance, in the movie The Martian, which was the last movie we actually covered in the series, we've got this astronaut, Mark Watney, and he's stranded on Mars after his crew mistakenly thought that he died. There was this massive dust storm and there were no life signs on the readings, so they had every right to believe that he had died. So he ends up being stranded there. And he realizes best-case scenario, even if they figure out that he's dead, it's going to take over a year to be rescued. Now, Watney could have been bitter and wondered how could his crewmates have left him. And he could have said, look, you know, surely they should have come back. They should have found a way to make sure they didn't leave him behind. And he could have been despondent and said, look, There is no way I can survive for more than a year. Food on Mars? I mean, how is that possible? How can I get enough food or water to live? It's clearly mission impossible. I should just give up. But from the beginning, Watney finds a way to get water and food inside his habitat on Mars. Now, fortunately, Watney is a botanist, and one of the recurring lines that will come up in the movie is his sort of in-your-face humor. And he says in a video log at one point, Mars will come to fear my botany powers.
[12:45] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[12:46] [Warwick Fairfax] And in a sense, Mars will. I mean, that's the key to him surviving. But really, the point about The Martian is his attitude that he will not be defined by his worst day. He never actually is bitter or angry even for a nanosecond, which is incredible. It's like, okay, I'm here. This is bad. What do I do next? He makes that decision. In the case of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, we have Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this time, unlike the first movie, he comes back as a cyborg, which is as a good guy, if you will.
[13:20] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[13:21] [Warwick Fairfax] And his mission is to try to save Sarah Connor and her 10-year-old son, John, from a future where It's truly dystopian with cyborgs and Skynet, which is this supercomputer that sure seems malevolent. And basically, it enslaves all of humanity and it's completely in control. So we have Sarah Connor who's been in a psychiatric ward since after the first movie because she keeps saying Judgment Day is coming.
[13:53] [Gary Schneeberger] Right, right.
[13:53] [Warwick Fairfax] And Skynet's going to be in control. And for some reason, people don't believe her and think she's Got serious mental problems, which is understandable. Why would you believe that? And so she's been in the psychiatric ward. And Sarah could have been bitter and angry at nobody believing her about Judgment Day. And certainly when she's in that mental hospital, she is certainly not a happy camper. She's not doing well. But after she's rescued, she might have thought avoiding Judgment Day is impossible. How can we possibly do this? It's my son and this one cyborg. Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it's like, okay, for the sake of my son and the future of the human race, it's going to be very challenging, but we've got to find a way to prevent Judgment Day, which is when Skynet is in control. She's got to believe it's possible. She's going to try or frankly die trying. In another movie, Alien, we've got the main character Ripley who's on a cargo ship In space, and they end up having this terrifying parasitic alien roaming around the ship.
[15:03] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[15:04] [Warwick Fairfax] Now, she's faced with a crew that don't always see the danger, and the ship is part of a commercial entity that really values profit more than the safety of the crew. She's being led by a poor leader that makes some poor decisions that frankly leads to this alien creature getting on board the ship. And she could say, look, I'm with this crew that really is not making good decisions, certainly being led by a poor leader, and it's all controlled by this company that really doesn't care about us. What is the point? But she realizes that this alien creature cannot be allowed to make it onto other ships and frankly be in contact with the rest of humanity. So she will do whatever it takes to fight and defeat this creature. And stop it infesting other ships. And in Star Wars, now called Episode IV: A New Hope, we've got Luke Skywalker living on a desolate planet called Tatooine. Now, his aunt and uncle are killed by the forces of the Empire, and he could be angry and bitter and feel hopeless. And at first, he's feeling just pretty overwhelmed by— What he has to— what he's seen. And he could feel like, gee, I grew up in a farming community. What could I possibly do to help the Rebel Alliance against the Empire? But in part inspired by Obi-Wan Kenobi, he decides to join the Rebel Alliance and fight for freedom against the Empire. Now, he doesn't know what the future will hold. And he doesn't know how in the world he could play any part As it turns out, a big part in defeating the Empire. But he knows he's got to do something. He's got an uncle dead. The Empire wants to enslave all of the races of the galaxy. And he doesn't know what the future is going to hold, but he will play his part. So in each of these films, you have a key protagonist making the decision that they will not wallow in anger or bitterness or be defeated, and they'll fight to survive And in many cases, ensure the safety of not just themselves, but the well-being of others, of humanity, of other races. This provides a powerful lesson that we will not be defined by our worst day. We will not be consumed by anger and bitterness, and we'll find a way to move forward to not just help ourselves, but help others.
[17:31] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And that— right, that's the lesson, folks. As you listen to what Warwick was just describing, he wasn't running through the synopses of the films that we covered in the series. Every one of those— go back and play it again and listen to it— every one of those involves exactly what we're talking about here. The character made a decision to say, nope, I'm gonna move forward. I'm not gonna sit back and let the crucible sort of knock me out. I'm gonna move forward. And it's interesting, Warwick, the next question that I have for you is, what happens to us Again, the movies show us this, the series showed us this, but our guests show this— show us this too. What happens psychologically when someone stops asking, why did this happen, and starts asking, what am I going to do about it? Sort of like we say all the time, it didn't happen to you, it happened for you, right? What happens at that moment when we come to that realization?
[18:30] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, so there is some utility in asking Why did this happen?
[18:36] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[18:36] [Warwick Fairfax] Yes, we need to focus on understanding the lessons of our crucible, the mistakes that we made. Did we trust the wrong people? Maybe, you know, we don't— maybe we're in a situation that we didn't have the gifts and strengths that we needed. And yes, there are lessons to be learned from our crucibles. But endless reflection, endless rumination is never helpful. At some point, you've got to say, okay, I've learned, at least for the moment, everything I can from the crucibles I went through. I've got to move on. And that's really what we're talking about here in this lesson. We've got to decide, okay, well, what's next? How am I going to find my way forward through this crucible? And really, Mark Watney in The Martian is such a good example of this. He's not angry at others for a moment. He's not even despondent hardly.
[19:29] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[19:30] [Warwick Fairfax] It's like, okay, this sucks basically. This is awful. But what am I going to do? What is the next step I need to take today to survive?
[19:38] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[19:39] [Warwick Fairfax] From the very beginning, he puts the solar panels back in place, he gets the habitat back, he begins to think, okay, how do I make water here? He's a botanist and a scientist. I need to combine hydrogen and oxygen. How can I make food? Okay, I've got potatoes. Let me figure out a way to make boiled potatoes. I mean, he just, from the very beginning, it's like, okay, what's the next step I need to take? And he knows he's gonna be there for a while. He doesn't know yet how he can communicate with NASA to tell them he's alive. But it's like, okay, what step can I do today to move forward? It's such a great example of not dwelling in the past and just figuring out what's the next right step I can take today.
[20:28] [Gary Schneeberger] And what that spotlights, I think, Warwick, is that this is a place where resilience— this is where resilience really begins. It's not with a plan, not with resources, or even hope that everything's going to work out. It begins simply with the decision to move forward. One of the notes I took on this was that the first victory in every crucible happens between the ears. And I wrote on my piece of paper here, you might be able to see it, we refer to being Beyond The Crucible, colloquially around the office, is BTC, Beyond The Crucible. And this is really BTE, between the ears, right? That's where it begins. Resilience begins BTE for, right, BTC. I think that's a fair statement. So talk a little bit about that beginning, that birth of resilience and it coming from our minds and then extends to what we do with our body. Yeah.
[21:28] [Warwick Fairfax] Such a great point. Before you can move forward from your crucible, there is the battle of the soul. And that is the key battle in living a life of resilience. You've got to make a decision, yes, after you learn the lessons from your crucible, the mistakes you made, maybe things that people did to you, people that maybe aren't helpful to be around. If you're in a relationship, you've got to make a decision.
[21:51] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.
[21:52] [Warwick Fairfax] They hurt you. Certainly not repeating the mistake of being around those sorts of people. But you've got to let go of the past and endless recriminations and say, okay, this is awful, this was painful, but I've got to move on. And life is going to be uncertain. We're not going to know how it's all going to end, but what's the next step I can take? And that's where some of these movies provide such great examples. Mark Watney in The Martian. Okay, I'm stranded on Mars. I'm going to be here more than a year. What's the next step I can take to survive? He didn't really focus at all on being bitter about being stranded there. Sarah Connor. Yes, she had periods of anger, but ultimately she said, okay, how do we avoid Judgment Day? How do I protect my son? How do we save the human race? What do we do? She focused on the future. What's the next step that we need to take to try to ensure that Skynet doesn't take control and there will be no Judgment Day? So in these movies, we learn powerful lessons of resilience, which, as you say, starts with making a decision to not dwell on the past and endless recriminations on yourself or others.
[23:09] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. All right, folks, that was Point number 1, lesson number 1: every comeback begins with a decision. Moving on to lesson number 2, and that's this: courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. See how those 2 things fit together, right? Every comeback begins with a decision, and courage means acting on conviction. You're convicted, right? You have a conviction about this decision that you've made, and you act on that, not on certainty. Again and again in these movies, the characters are act without knowing how things will turn out. They don't have any idea how things are going to turn out. The lesson isn't that courageous people know that they'll succeed. It's that they take the next right step, which Warwick says all the time, take the next right step. They take the next right step anyway. So, Warwick, we sometimes think courage means being confident that everything is going to work out just hunky-dory, right? But these films suggest almost the opposite, don't they?
[24:12] [Warwick Fairfax] They really do. You know, This is one case where these films are exactly like the life that we face.
[24:20] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.
[24:21] [Warwick Fairfax] 'Cause none of us know how our life is gonna turn out. If you look back, depending on your age, 5, 10, 20, 30 years, you'll probably say to yourself, I had no clue that life was gonna turn out the way that it did. I could not possibly have foreseen the adventures I faced, the people I'd meet, The challenges I went through, the mistakes I made, the lessons I learned, the blessings I had. How could we possibly have known? And so when you're moving beyond your crucible, we're not going to know how things are going to turn out. We're not going to know how successful we're going to be in overcoming any particular challenge. But, you know, that should not stop us from moving forward. Maybe life will turn out in a radically different way than we envisage. And so when you go through a crucible and you're trying to get beyond it, we're faced with a choice. Do we give up against the challenges we're going to face and say the odds are against us, this is impossible? Or do we move forward and say, look, I don't know how life is going to turn out. Maybe it'll turn out very differently than I think, but I've got to move forward. This mission is important. And I'm going to try. I'm going to keep at it. I'm not going to give up. And so courage does indeed mean acting on our innermost beliefs of what is important, even when we have no idea if we'll be successful. There are no guarantees in life, but it's the fight. It's the living in light of your beliefs every day and doing your level best—
[25:56] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[25:56] [Warwick Fairfax] To get beyond what you went through and to live a life of significance where you're focused on others. And that's where these movies really provide so many powerful lessons. We've got Ripley in Alien refusing to give up when she's battling this alien creature, when at one point she is the last person on that ship. Everybody else has been killed. She could say, well, what chance do I have? You know?
[26:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[26:22] [Warwick Fairfax] You could say not much, but she refuses to look at that problem that way. Victory is by no means certain. But she is going to find a way to defeat this creature and stop it attacking other people in the human race. In Star Trek: First Contact, we find Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and he chooses to battle the Borg, which is this very scary, malevolent, cybernetic species that desires to enslave all other beings. Now, Picard has history with the Borg. And he could well have said, look, I want to avoid them. I was captured by them and enslaved by them, and it's been incredibly traumatic. It's too much. But he chooses to go in and engage the Borg because he wants to save humanity and other races in the galaxy. He doesn't know whether he'll succeed.
[27:18] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[27:18] [Warwick Fairfax] The Borg are about as malevolent a foe as you'll ever find in science fiction. And he, yes, I'm sure he's scared and intimidated, but he chooses to be governed by the past and at least in a way that he would give up and not even try. He is going to try. In Jurassic Park, we find paleontologist Alan Grant. He's taken to an island where billionaire industrialist John Hammond has found a way to create dinosaurs, to recreate them. Now, Hammond sees a Disney-like park that will make him lots of money. It'll be something no one has ever seen. Grant and the other scientists challenge Hammond and tell him that what he's doing is dangerous. You cannot control the unknowns. Trying to control nature is a formidable challenge and you probably will not succeed. Grant doesn't sit idly by. He challenges Hammond's assumptions, which is basically that everything's gonna work out. And every time Hammond sees a mountain, as you said in the podcast, he sees a molehill. It's just like—
[28:29] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[28:29] [Warwick Fairfax] It's great to have confidence, but you've gotta be aware of the challenges. He just doesn't even recognize speed bumps hardly. It's crazy. In Planet of the Apes, George Taylor is an astronaut, who is stranded on a planet where highly intelligent apes enslave humans who are mute. And Taylor throughout this movie, he does not give up. I mean, he's in a very difficult situation and he fights for survival and importantly, the truth about how did this planet turn out the way it did where humans are mute and enslaved. He will not give up. trying to find the truth and fight for survival. Yes, he may be angry and feel alone and he's a bit cynical, but he doesn't just sit there.
[29:17] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.
[29:17] [Warwick Fairfax] Exactly. Yes, that's an Australian understatement.
[29:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Yes.
[29:22] [Warwick Fairfax] But yeah, he's a lot cynical. But yet he could just give up, but never does Taylor give up. I'm going to find a way to survive, fight my way out of it. I'm going to find the truth. Of how humans ended up the way that they did. So in each of these cases, the protagonist makes a decision not to be defined by their worst day, by their crucible, and to courageously face that crisis they're in, speak truth, search for truth. And yet they do not know whether their efforts will be successful. They do not know, in the case of Sarah Connor, Whether she'll be able to avoid Judgment Day where Skynet takes control. Captain Jean-Luc Picard doesn't know if he's going to succeed in battling the Borg and saving humanity. Ripley doesn't know if she will find a way to defeat this alien creature. In no way do they know if they're going to succeed, but they let go of the past and they find a way to move forward and They will do whatever they can to try to succeed and in a lot of cases save humanity.
[30:34] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. Now, here's a question we can address right to listeners and viewers here because we've been talking about, right, these lessons from movies. But this idea of acting on conviction, not certainty, I can guarantee you— well, I know at least one person who has difficulty with that. Me, right? I mean, it's easy to know how it's all going to end. It's not easy to let your conviction carry you, but that's what, what this lesson talks about. So how important is it to learn to tolerate uncertainty when you're trying to move beyond the crucible? Because there's really no way to do it, I don't think, if you don't learn to tolerate a little bit, at least a little bit of uncertainty, right?
[31:22] [Warwick Fairfax] So well said. You know, back to what you said earlier, that the battle is between the ears. It's very true. And another way of saying it is, as we've said often, the battle is for the soul. And so you've got to make a decision. Okay, I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody wants to feel like they're jumping off a proverbial cliff where you have no idea what's below. But you've got to make a decision that, okay, there's going to be uncertainty. I have no idea what's going to happen. The Martian is probably one of the best cases when Mark Watney is like, He may be a scientist and a botanist. He has no idea day one how he will let NASA know that he's alive because the whole communications array has been destroyed. He has no idea of how he'll figure that out, let alone how to get food and water that will help him survive over a year. He figures it out eventually. On day one, he could say, well, my chance of survival is zero. Let's just give up. My chance of contacting NASA, zero. The communications array is all damaged beyond repair. So what do I do? But he doesn't give up. And so you've got to make a decision. Okay, I don't know that anybody can truly be comfortable with uncertainty, but say, yes, life is uncertain. I don't have it all planned out, but I'm going to make a decision not to worry about tomorrow, not to dwell on the past, and to focus purely on on today. It's really— it's— you got to have this sort of mindset shift. And you got to make a decision not to hide under the covers, but find a way to move forward and not worry about tomorrow.
[33:07] [Gary Schneeberger] Let's land the plane on this part of the conversation with this question. Somebody who's listening right now, I guarantee you, feels overwhelmed by the size of their crucible. So How powerful can it be for him or her to stop trying to solve everything and identify just the right next step? Not trying to build the map, not trying to build the house, not trying to pave the road, just taking the next right step. How powerful can that be in moving beyond your crucible?
[33:41] [Warwick Fairfax] It really is. And I think, as we have mentioned, Mark Watney in The Martian is such a great example that rather than getting overwhelmed by his crucible, which is about as bad as it could be— nobody knows he's alive, and it'll be at least a year before he can be rescued, and he doesn't have enough food or water to survive. I mean, that would seem like, let's just give up, it's just impossible. But he doesn't dwell on the past. He says, okay, what's the next step? He begins getting the solar panels set up again so that he has power. He knows he needs to find food and water. Okay, he's a scientist. He knows water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. How can I use the equipment I have to literally make water? It takes him a bit with the odd explosion as some of his experiments don't work out too well initially. But he figures out a way. How can I grow food? Well, you can't grow food on Mars. But in his habitat, he finds he has some potatoes. Okay, he's a botanist. How can I use the seeds from these potatoes? And after I figure out how to make water, how can I make more potatoes, more food? Now, he doesn't figure all this out day one, but he figures out a plan step by step by step. So the key lesson here is don't fixate about how tough the challenge is. Even when it feels impossible, but figure out, okay, this decision, this cause is important. In the case of Mark Watney, survival is an important goal. He wants to get back to his friends and family. And so what's the next right step in solving this problem? How can I get water? How can I get food? Am I going to have enough to survive over a year? I don't know. But let's figure out a way to make it. food and, you know, make water, and then we'll figure out how to make enough to survive every year, and then eventually we'll figure out how to communicate with NASA. But you made a decision from the very first day is what's the next right step. And one of the things we've said on the podcast a lot, we talked about the power of the flywheel. Once you make a few right steps, it's like, huh. Those steps have given me some progress. It may feel like baby steps. It may feel like I've covered one step in a 100-mile journey, but it's one step. And one step plus another step, you begin to have confidence saying, okay, mission impossible feels like mission really challenging, but it maybe, just maybe possible. So that's the value of making the first right step and then a next right step and the next right step. It gives you greater confidence and greater perseverance to keep moving forward.
[36:30] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. This lesson, lesson 2, courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. Confidence falls in the middle of those things, right? Right. You act on conviction and the end result, you would hope you want to get to certainty, but you can get to confidence and that can be the engine that drives you through to the next step. The next step, folks, the next lesson here, the first 2 were about ways to encourage you along the path, right? This one, the 3rd lesson, is our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. So here's where the caution comes in, right? Encouragement important, but also warning and caution is important as you're making your way back from a crucible. And this, this really— Warwick, this, this lesson 3 may be the most cautionary lesson. Running through the series, strength without humility and wisdom can actually create crucibles. So this one fascinates me, fascinates me because several of these characters aren't undone by their weaknesses, right? Several of the folks that we've been talking about and that we talked about for the last 8 weeks on the series, they're undone by what their strength— when their strengths go unchecked. How did that happen to the characters in the films we covered, and how does that happen to us in real life?
[38:01] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, this is such a great point. You know, you often think, oh, it's good to have strengths, and it is, right? But in certain situations, it is so true our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities. And, you know, one of the things we have to realize is In any given scenario, strength can be helpful or not. Our greatest strengths aren't always helpful. So for instance, for somebody who has a lot of perseverance, it may be tough to stop moving in a direction that's not bearing fruit. You know, we can have other strengths that aren't helpful. We can be very reflective, which is good to examine all angles, but at a certain point, you've got to make a decision and move forward. You can't just reflect your life away. So yes, having strengths is good, but you've got to know the flat side. So it requires both humility, but it requires the wisdom to know when in a particular situation is that strength a liability. Sometimes it'll be a strength, sometimes it won't be. That requires the humility to ask the question and the wisdom to know which situation is it helpful or not helpful. In the case of Jurassic Park, we've got Hammond, this brilliant entrepreneur who has this incredible vision to create a theme park, Jurassic Park, with living dinosaurs. But Hammond's brilliance and ambition, they blind him to the dangers despite scientists telling him that you cannot control nature. He just blows right past that. He's got some eminent scientists saying, you can try to control nature at your peril. You won't be able to. He ignores their advice right from the beginning. And certainly he has a huge lack of humility that leads him to make very unwise choices. He's a brilliant guy, but his ambition and lack of humility leads him to making incredibly poor choices. In Star Trek: First Contact, we have Captain Jean-Luc Picard, He has tremendous courage and determination to fight the Borg. But what he doesn't fully realize is that courage and determination, they're mixed with obsession. At one point, the Borg have taken over half of his ship, and the crew advise him to destroy the ship, because that way the Borg will be destroyed. Well, Picard is not willing to do this, because he feels emotionally that destroying the ship means losing. He won't be able to save his ship. And eventually, he does listen to somebody that talks sense into him and helps him realize how obsessed he was with the Borg and he's not thinking correctly. And so, he does indeed decide to put the ship on auto-destruct sequence. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a brilliant inventor, Miles Dyson, invents a computer chip That will lead to Skynet and the cyborgs that in the future will control Earth and enslave humanity. Dyson, a bit like Hammond, is not humble enough to realize what could go wrong in creating this chip that will create basically a sentient Skynet and cyborgs. It takes Sarah Connor telling Dyson about the future to make him realize how blinded he was to the danger Mhm. Of his research. And he feels terrible. It's like, how could I have been so stupid? You know, he gets to see the future. Most of us don't get to see the future. We might say, oh, that won't happen. He gets to realize it will happen. It does happen. So we all have our strengths, and they can be very helpful to us and to others. But we need humility and wisdom to realize that our strengths aren't always strengths in every situation. To realize that with those strengths come blind spots, the humility to realize that there can be blind spots, and the wisdom to know in what situation are those strengths a liability, and the wisdom to make sure that, you know, to realize that other people can help us.
[42:09] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. And this seems to be the moment where it's easier said than done, right? Because, I mean, how do we Recognize when something that has made us successful— our confidence, our determination, our intelligence, our ambition, right? All of those things, or any of those things— is beginning to work against us. How do we grasp hold of that?
[42:39] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, it's not easy. It can be difficult, almost impossible at times, to see one of our greatest strengths It can be a liability because often we've been successful with those strengths. So it can be easy to think, how can intelligence be a problem? Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an interesting movie because if Miles Dyson had survived, he would hopefully have been a lot more humble and wise about the dangers of cybernetic research.
[43:13] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[43:13] [Warwick Fairfax] He might not have abandoned it. He said, boy, I've got protocols in place. I've got to think really seriously hard about the dangers of creating a computer that's sentient. And people talk today about the dangers of AI, what will happen if AI is sentient. And we might think that, oh, we could never be in a Terminator 2 situation. Well, hopefully not. But people who follow these things are actively worried about what happens if computers get sentient and too sentient. In the case of John Hammond in Jurassic Park, you would hope he would have the humility and wisdom to learn the lessons of his crucible. But I do wonder because his whole vision was creating dinosaurs.
[43:58] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[43:59] [Warwick Fairfax] And that whole plan seems fraught with danger as in don't do it. He would have to give up on the whole dream and somehow channel his entrepreneurial vision and intelligence in a completely different direction. I'm not sure that John Hammond could really do that. But that's the lessons we can learn from both Miles Dyson, who I think was willing to make that decision or would have been, and John Hammond, who arguably wouldn't have been, that we just have to realize that our greatest strengths don't always help us. They can be our greatest liability.
[44:36] [Gary Schneeberger] This next question will lead into the next lesson, and that's, that's this: Is one mark of humility having people in our lives who we allow to tell us something we don't want to hear? Right. In other words, if we surround ourselves with people who only tell us what we want to hear, this is going to reinforce the things that we may be doing that we think are strengths, but maybe indeed weaknesses, limitations. Is one mark of humility having people around you who will speak truth to power, as it were?
[45:12] [Warwick Fairfax] It really is. You know, we've spoken about how we can learn from our crucibles, how our greatest strength can be a liability. And often, you know, crucibles provide that cauldron, if you will, where we can learn some powerful lessons. But ultimately, one key mark of wisdom is realizing That in certain situations that we won't be able to see reality. And you can have intelligent people making foolish decisions. Certainly John Hammond was an incredibly bright guy. Because of his obsession with recreating dinosaurs, he couldn't see the dangers. What he needed was people around him to be able to tell him the truth. Miles Dyson needed somebody like Sarah Connor telling him that what would happen with Skynet, the cyborgs, and the danger of his research. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: First Contact, he needed somebody to tell him that having been captured by the Borg, he was obsessed with them. And it's interesting, this person Lily, who he met When they went back to fight the Borg, this person Lily says to Picard that he is like Captain Ahab.
[46:34] [Gary Schneeberger] Right, right, right.
[46:36] [Warwick Fairfax] In the book Moby Dick and indeed the movie. And Captain Ahab was obsessed with killing this whale that had haunted him and menaced him before. And so once this fellow traveler Lily used this example, I mean, Picard is a very widely read person. He sees it. He sees how he was Captain Ahab. And he realizes, okay, I can see it. I can see it now. And so he begins to listen to Lilly. He begins to realize, I've got to find a way to, yes, defeat the Borg, but realize maybe the next right decision is to set the auto-destruct sequence on his ship, the Enterprise. Now, he ends up not having to do that, but he made the decision to, you know, basically hit the auto-destruct button and make the next right decision. So we need people in our lives who will speak truth to power and tell us things that we don't want to hear, and we need the humility to listen to their wisdom.
[47:50] [Gary Schneeberger] Hmm. That was the 3rd lesson that we learned from our summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. I will go through the first 3 lessons. Lesson 1: Every comeback begins with a decision. Lesson 2: Courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. And number 3, which we just finished talking about, is our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Brings us to lesson 4, Warwick, which is this: nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. You were just talking about that a little bit. Now we get a chance to talk about it a little more. Despite science fiction's larger-than-life heroes, our series repeatedly shows that resilience is rarely a solo achievement. And one of the myths of resilience, Warwick, is the rugged individual who pulls himself up and conquers adversity alone. And these movies don't really support that, do they, when you get right down to it and you really study them?
[48:58] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, it's such a great point. You know, in some cultures, we admire the rugged individualist who can do it all, the person who says, I've got it all. I'm smart, intelligent, I have perseverance. I have all that I need. I'm powerful. I just need to channel my inner brilliance and resilience, and I'll get it done. But that idea is a myth and dangerous. None of us have all the gifts required to see our vision become reality. And we all need fellow travelers both to encourage us When the situation becomes difficult and we're feeling down, and also strengths that we don't have. That requires humility and wisdom. And it's just so dangerous when we feel like, I've got it all, I can do it. You know, building on prior lessons, we've got to realize that our strengths can be liabilities in certain situations. And we need help with people who have strengths we don't have, and we need help from people That will tell us, hey, it's great to have perseverance, but this one you need to give it up. You need to move on to another plan, another project, another vision. This one's not going to pan out. It's okay to say that. That's a setback. And in these movies, they really provide powerful lessons of this point. So in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke definitely needs Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan becomes his mentor. He helps him learn the ways of the Force and channel his innate abilities in a positive way. He would never become the Jedi Knight he becomes without Obi-Wan helping him, training him, and channel the ways of the Force.
[50:45] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[50:45] [Warwick Fairfax] In Back to the Future, we've got Marty McFly as a 17-year-old kid, this high school student who goes back 30 years in time to 1955. And Marty absolutely needs the help of this maverick scientist, Doc Brown, to help him get back to his time of 1985. No way could he do it by himself. In The Martian, Mark Watney may be alone, but he shows an incredible ability to think outside the box to be able to survive. But even Mark Watney, who is a brilliant botanist, and as he says, Mars will fear my botany powers, Good stuff. That's great. But even he needs help. He'll end up needing to get help from NASA and JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and his crew on the ship that unknowingly left him to figure out how to survive and how to be rescued.
[51:41] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[51:42] [Warwick Fairfax] He can't lift off. He has no ship. He'll be stranded there and eventually he will die. He'll run out of food, water. I mean, eventually, You know, I don't know that he can survive forever there, but he wants to be rescued nonetheless, and he needs help. You know, the bottom line is, no matter how capable we think we are, we all need help. We need to be humble and wise enough to say, I don't have it all the time. My greatest strength could be a liability. I don't have all the strengths. I need people to help me with strengths I don't have and to help tell me when— I'm going off the rails down a track that's not helpful. We need other people. It's absolutely vital, especially to get beyond our crucibles. You know, we can't do it alone.
[52:25] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And we've been talking about this in the context of these 8 films that we talked about in our summer series. Many of those, as we mentioned in each episode, were like the top film of the year that they came out. Right. So these are, these are well-known movies, well-loved movies, very Which led to a lot of sequels and reboots and those kinds of things as well. So people know the stories here. That being true, why do people going through crucibles then sometimes resist the very relationships that we can see in these movies help the protagonist get through what they're going through? Why, why in real life, R-E-A-L, do we not follow the examples that we see here in real life? R-E-A-L.
[53:11] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, I think it comes down to a few things. One is certainly ego. It's very common that entrepreneurs who start businesses in their garage, they become successful, they get a certain amount of employees and revenue in, but the skills it takes to be an entrepreneur is often not the skills it takes to be a general manager and grow to the next level. Those skills are very different. But the entrepreneur typically says, I got it. Hey, I founded this business myself. I don't need help.
[53:42] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[53:42] [Warwick Fairfax] Look how far I've come. That's ego talking. That's a lack of humility and a lack of wisdom. That is more the rule than the exception, sadly. And so why is that? Well, we just tend to feel like, I'm brilliant. Look how successful I am and look at everything I've achieved. You know, I can figure it out. And ironically, in our darkest hours, that's the time in which we most need help, but we often least want to accept it. We might say, hey, this is bad, but, you know, I'll figure out a way, or I don't know. Or it could be, this is bad and I don't deserve help. I'm a terrible person. I made terrible mistakes. Or what was done to me makes me feel worthless and I don't deserve help. I'm in purgatory. Just leave me alone. Go away. You're in such a negative mindset. You just want to be left alone, hide under the covers, and, you know, please don't free me from my prison cell.
[54:47] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[54:48] [Warwick Fairfax] Just leave me alone. Let me fade away. You know, please don't help me. It's this almost self-loathing or just this Incredible despondency that's so unhelpful. So in Star Trek: First Contact, Picard absolutely needs a fellow traveler. And as you've mentioned, he finds one in Lily, a woman he comes across in this part of the journey. But it's not easy. He doesn't listen to her initially. He fights her in the sense that he won't accept her advice. And Picard wants to keep fighting the Borg, his way rather than destroying the ship, which makes the most sense. It takes a lot for Lily to get through to him. I mean, Lily doesn't give up. And Picard almost shouts at her and says, you don't know what it's like and what the Borg have done to me. And he just won't think straight. And Lily just doesn't give up and almost mocks him in a way with, oh, Captain Ahab, there you go.
[55:49] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[55:49] [Warwick Fairfax] As I've said before, that's what begins to penetrate, and he realizes he is Captain Ahab. We all need people like Lily in our lives who won't give up on us. And not all of us have that. We need people like that in our lives, and we need to let them in. We shouldn't make it quite as hard as Captain Picard makes it. We need to realize, okay, we may not like what they're telling us, but is there a point? Maybe what they're saying is true. And obviously you want to pick the trusted advisors, trusted fellow travelers, ones who are for you, not ones who are there just to enjoy pulling you down. It just— it's like a sport. So you got to pick the right people. But let's assume you picked the right people. You've got to let them in and listen to them because they just may be right.
[56:36] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. All right. So let's get down to brass tacks with this one. Let me ask you this. Is part of moving beyond a crucible Recognizing the limits of our own perspective and allowing other people into the story. Is that a definitive statement that we can make? That's part of bouncing back from a crucible. And if you don't do that, chances are you're not going to bounce back very well.
[56:58] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely. We have to realize that our perspective is colored by our history, our upbringing, our experiences. We don't have all knowledge or all truth. We look through life Through a lens of our experiences, our gifting. We might feel like, oh, perseverance, that's all I need. Or, hey, I don't really reflect. I just move and act, and I'll just trust I'll figure it out later. We all have certain mental mindsets that can be helpful or not helpful depending on the situation. And other people may have different strengths and perspectives and experiences that can be so helpful to us. In the case of Picard, he was captured by the Borg and he was assimilated by them, meaning he was turned into this half-human, half-machine cyborg where he was enslaved by them. And what they did is they used his experience and intelligence to harm other races, including humanity. Picard was seriously emotionally scarred by that. Even when he was freed, there was no way he could make objective decisions about the Borg. After all, they had enslaved him and then used his experience and intelligence to kill many people. How could he forgive himself for that? Even though it wasn't his fault emotionally, how do you get beyond that? I mean, this is trauma of a massive proportion.
[58:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[58:21] [Warwick Fairfax] Picard is a very sensible, highly intelligent person, but he needed to realize when it comes to the Borg, Making rational decisions in all cases are going to be a very difficult task. And that's why Picard absolutely needed people like Lily to speak truth to power. No way could he have solved that problem or been objective with the Borg. How could anybody?
[58:46] [Gary Schneeberger] Now we have arrived at what will be sort of the last lesson from our summer series. But this is the the, the cherry on top lesson, uh, in— from Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And that's this, lesson 5 from all the movies, again taken when you look at them from 30,000 feet. Lesson 5 is this: the future is built by the choices we make today. Um, this really, Warwick, is perhaps the perfect closing lesson for a series that we've called Back to a Better Future. Nearly every film Explores the connection between today's choices and tomorrow's reality. So let me ask you this question. Science fiction loves asking what the future will look like, right? That's one of the reasons that you like it so much, that you love it so much. But these movies seem to be saying that the more important question is, what are we doing today to create that future? How did you see that play out in these movies, this idea of, right, we build the future today in many, many ways?
[59:59] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, in science fiction, it's really a great example of this challenge almost to the extreme because so often the battles between a preferred future and a dangerous dystopian one, certainly true In Terminator, the Terminator 2 movies. So for us, after our worst day or crucible, one path leads to endless recrimination and anger that will lead to a darker future. That's certainly one path. The other one leads to a brighter future where you learn the lessons of your crucible, you let go of any anger and bitterness, and you move forward on a better life-enhancing future focused on others, a life of significance. It's really a choice you make. Do I want to hide under the covers and be angry and bitter against myself or others? That will be your own personal dystopian future, your own dystopian night of the soul, if you will.
[01:00:58] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[01:00:58] [Warwick Fairfax] You don't need to live that way, or you can make decisions that will lead to a brighter future. It doesn't mean that there won't be any pain from what you've been through, but you can think to yourself, how can I Figure out, is there a way to use what I've been through, the lessons I've gone through, to help others? What's a brighter future? That's a key decision that you have to make. Which path are you going to go down, the dystopian one or one that leads to a brighter future? Speaking of future, in Back to the Future, Marty McFly grows up in a family that's essentially given up unless other people mistreat them. Where others may feel that McFlys will never amount to much, Marty begins to go on a different direction. Marty's life is greatly influenced by Doc, who tells him that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. This affirmation, when Marty goes back to 1955, leads him to change the complete direction of his family. Marty's dad George He pursues his dream to be a science fiction writer. He dances with the girl he would end up marrying at the high school dance. The direction of his life and indeed his whole family changes. In The Martian, Mark Watney has to figure out how to get food and water and communicate with NASA. Now, he could have just given up and his dystopian future would be trapped on Mars and Eventually die. Well, he wants a preferred future of survival. And he does not give up. He finds a way to communicate with NASA. He finds a way to get food and water. And indeed, at the end of the movie, we see Mark Watney passing on his wisdom to future generations of astronauts and scientists. What has he learned about science and indeed about perseverance. So these lessons end up helping not just himself but other people.
[01:03:02] [Gary Schneeberger] So how do we, after a crucible, shift from thinking of ourselves as victims of what happened yesterday to becoming architects of what happens tomorrow? Dare I say, to living out what we called this series Getting back to a better future. How do we go about doing that in our own lives?
[01:03:27] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, after we've learned the lessons of our crucible, which we need to do as quickly as possible, we need to forgive others, forgive ourselves, and let go of bitterness. Only then can we move forward to create a better future. Again, we keep talking about Mark Watney, but in The Martian, it's such a powerful lesson in which He seems to move on from his crucible instantaneously. He doesn't seem to harbor bitterness towards his crew for leaving him. He realizes, look, there was a dust storm. There are no life signs on my spacesuit because those wires maybe were damaged. There's no way they could know. So he does not Hold any bitterness towards them. He's not angry towards them. He's not even angry at God or the Creator, whoever he feels like is up there. He's not really angry at anybody for his situation. It's like, okay, this is awful, but let's figure out a way forward. He goes into problem-solving mode immediately. In Star Wars, yes, Luke is uncertain about moving forward after losing his aunt and uncle, But he realizes with Obi-Wan's help, there is an important mission to fulfill. He doesn't know what his role is gonna be in that completely, but he focuses on the future and how he can be part of the Rebel Alliance to defeat the Empire. How do I move forward? What's the next right step? All he knows is to leave the planet of Tatooine with Obi-Wan, learn the ways of the Force, learn what it is to become a Jedi Knight, at least learn their skills. He doesn't know what's all going to happen, but he decides he's not going to wallow in bitterness and anger. He's going to find a way to move forward and be part of the solution, not the problem.
[01:05:19] [Gary Schneeberger] So as we approach the end here, Warwick, let me ask you this question. How do we make sure the future we're building— right, we've talked a lot about building a better future— how do we ensure that the future we're building after our crucible isn't simply a reaction to the pain of our past? How do we know that we've really moved beyond our crucible and we're moving toward a life of significance? What does that look like?
[01:05:46] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, I think probably the key way is to make sure we have let go of bitterness and anger about our crucibles, that we have forgiven ourselves and forgiven others. If we continually ruminate and reflect on what's happened and how angry we are, we just can't let go of those awful people who hurt us. The dumb decisions we made. If we keep on and on and on about that, we know we've not moved on.
[01:06:12] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.
[01:06:13] [Warwick Fairfax] And we know it's going to damage our ability to move forward and create a better future. It will also indeed damage others. We've said a lot on this podcast that anger and bitterness leak. If you're angry and bitter, you'll undoubtedly take it out on your family, your friends, coworkers. It's inevitable. So to move forward, we have to find a way to let go of that anger and bitterness. In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard probably has not really moved on from the pain of being assimilated by the Borg. It's pretty clear. His obsession with them, he may know them well and their weaknesses, but he doesn't realize that his obsession is stopping him making the next right choice at the time, which was—
[01:07:01] [Gary Schneeberger] To surrender.
[01:07:01] [Warwick Fairfax] To blow his ship up, to destroy the Borg. In this case, he needs help from a fellow traveler, Lily, to realize his blind spot and that his lack of objectivity concerning the Borg. So we've got to let go of the past, and we can only do that by letting go of anger and bitterness. But we also need help from others who can come alongside us. And we might say, I'm good. Nothing to see here. I'm not angry. And they'll say, yeah, not buying it. Why do you keep talking about that person who did what they did to you? And why do you keep being so angry at yourself? We need help from people saying, you know, I really don't think you've let go.
[01:07:44] [Gary Schneeberger] We've reached the point in the show where I have said traditionally over 300 and some episodes, You've just landed the plane on the conversation. But I'd be completely off-brand if I didn't say you just landed the spaceship on this conversation. Absolutely.
[01:08:07] [Warwick Fairfax] And which spaceship is it?
[01:08:09] [Gary Schneeberger] That would be the Starship Enterprise.
[01:08:12] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely.
[01:08:14] [Gary Schneeberger] I've learned a little something sitting next to you for these— for all these 8 episodes. We'll have to do more episodes for sure. Um, the— so let's go over the, the lessons again, folks. Uh, the 5 lessons from our series, uh, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. Lesson 1 is every comeback begins with a decision. Lesson 2, courage means acting on conviction, not on certainty. Number 3, lesson 3, our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Lesson 4, Nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. Not a solo proposition. And the 5th lesson that we just finished talking about, the future is built by the choices we make today. And Warwick, as we wrap up, when I put all 5 of those together, they almost form a roadmap. And I'm going to read it off my notes because I want to make sure I get it exactly right for our listeners and viewers. Step 1 is to decide that the crucible doesn't get the final word. Step 2 is act even when you don't know exactly how things will turn out. Step 3, stay humble enough to recognize when your strengths may not be working for you. Point 4, don't go alone. Let others help you. Seek others out to help you. And then finally, build the future through the choices you make in the present. So, Warwick, if someone's listening to us right now and still in the middle of their crucible, still roiling around with that, that the wind knocked out of their sails by the crucible that hit them, they're nowhere near the happy ending yet. Which of these 5 lessons would you encourage them to grab hold of first? And what should they do with it, not in the future, but today?
[01:10:20] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, the starting point is lesson 1: every comeback begins with a decision. We've got to make a decision to not be defined by our worst day. We've got to let go of anger and bitterness towards ourselves and others. If you don't do that, then you don't move forward. That's the first key step. And we need to be like Mark Watney. He's such a great example in The Martian. He wasn't bitter towards others for leaving him there, for his crew. He realized they made the best decision they could based on the data they had, which is, sure, it seemed like he was dead based on the The monitoring of his suit seemed to show that he was not alive because it had failed. How could anybody survive that dust storm? He decided that he was not going to be angry towards them. He wasn't going to be angry towards a higher power, the universe, whoever he thought was up there, NASA. Goodness knows, there could have been a long list. He said, okay, this is awful, but how do I move forward? He made a decision. But I'm going to let go of the past. I'm going to find a way to survive. It's not going to be easy, but what's the next right step I need to decide today? So once you make a decision that I'm going to let go of the past, I'm going to move forward, everything else flows from that. All the other lessons we just talked about— courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. Our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities. Unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. The future is built by the choices we make today. But it all starts with making a decision that we will not be defined by our worst day and that we are going to work to create a better future. Yes, a bit like weeding. When you go back and, oh boy, how could I have been so dumb? Why'd I do that? You've got to say, okay, I'm not going there, whether it's prayer or whatever you use. Let it go. Have people on your corner. It could be a spouse, partner, loved one. It could be teammates, people at work, friends. We all need fellow travelers, but just let it go. And if you're tempted to pick it up again, let it go again. Keep letting it go. And over time, we can get better at letting it go. And you might kind of obsess for a season, A few minutes, a few hours. I'm reminded in the movie Star Trek, one character we haven't talked about is Data, who's this robot. And he was tempted by the evil Borg Queen at one point to go over to her side and give up the computer codes so she could control the ship. And Picard says to Data, how long were you tempted? And he said like, I don't know what, 0.36 seconds. Right, right, right. And he says, well, that's not long. Well, yes, but for an android, that's forever. So, okay. He was pretty tough on himself, I guess. But whether it's 0.36 seconds, a day, a month, a week, whatever it is, find a way to let it go and move on. So that's really— it all starts with making a decision. I will not be defined by my worst day. I will not be defined by what people did to me or bad choices I made. I'm going to move on. I'm going to lead a life of significance. I'm going to take the better path that leads to a better future.
[01:13:50] [Gary Schneeberger] Well, I'm at that place, Warwick. I have to let it go and move on because this is the last time that we will talk about this movie series this year. So folks, until the next time we're together, do remember— and the next time we're together, just so you know, is going to be the traditional— we're going to have guests, we're going to have dialogues, we're going to do all of that stuff. Coming back next week, but until that happens, please remember this: We know that your crucible experiences are difficult. We know they're hard. We know that they're they're not easy to get beyond. That's why we're here trying to help you with insights and action steps that you can take to get beyond them. And we also know this: that when you learn the lessons of your crucibles and you apply those lessons moving forward, they can lead you to the most. rewarding destination of your life. And that destination is, as always, a life of significance. Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
What do you do when you’re stranded on Mars with almost no chance of survival — and no one is coming to save you anytime soon?
In this episode, we wrap up our special summer series Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema with The Martian — and the remarkable story of astronaut Mark Watney. Left behind on the Red Planet after a mission gone wrong, Watney faces not just his worst days, but his worst months and years, with little more than his ingenuity, determination, and an impressive sense of humor to carry him through. His story is one of the most compelling portraits of resilience we’ve explored in this entire series — a masterclass in what it looks like to science your way out of a crucible and refuse to let impossible odds have the final word.
Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film? Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. He could have given up saying, "Well, how do I grow food on Mars?" I mean, that's impossible, surely. But fortunately, Watney then says, "Luckily he's a botanist," and then says these words, "Mars will come to fear my botany powers."
Gary Schneeberger:
The red planet may not wind up fearing astronaut Mark Watney's botanical skills, but his science skills and his creative ways of applying them to overcoming being stranded on Mars impresses NASA and a watching world when a mission crucible leaves him stuck there with little chance of getting back to earth or even surviving. This week in the eighth and final episode of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future, The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema, we look at the ingenuity, determination, and sense of humor that propel Watney through and past not just his worst days, but his worst months and years too. How can understanding how he overcomes these challenges help you overcome your own? Stay tuned.
Welcome friends to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have joined us for, sadly, the final episode of our summer series, which we are calling Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And it is the fourth year that we have focused our special summer series on what films can teach us about confronting crucibles, moving beyond our crucibles, and then launching ourselves into a life of significance. And we had so much fun doing it the first three times we did it that we though we'd do it again this year. And that's indeed what we have done.
Just to rewind a little bit, the first one we did in 2022 was spotlighting heroes, sports heroes, military heroes, historical heroes, any kind of hero you can think of, we covered that in 2022. We then skipped a year and did something else in our summer series. In 2024, we did classic films from the American Film Institute that they'd spotlighted as really, really excellent films. And they were really, really excellent and they were really, really excellent in helping you learn how to move beyond your crucible. And then last year we did movies. I've said it before, not in all episodes, but in some of these episodes, you've heard of the brand Chock full o'Nuts Coffee.
Our summer series last year was chock-full of crucibles films, films that really had a lot of crucibles that really showed how to tackle multiple setbacks and failures and move forward toward a life of significance. And this year, as I said, we're focusing on sci-fi movies and Warwick, I will ask you this question. I've asked you the first seven episodes, I'll ask you here for the eighth episode. We're going back to the cinema again. We're walking through buying our tickets and going in. Why movies again? What is it about films that fit Beyond the Crucible and what are you hoping our listeners and viewers have gotten from what we've done so far? And we'll get from this. What is your hope for this series?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. We both love movies, but it's different looking at movies from the Beyond the Crucible perspective. Suddenly-
Gary Schneeberger:
Ain't that the truth?
Warwick Fairfax:
... this movie, which we'll get into, I really enjoyed it, but there's so much we can learn from this movie, which you'll talk about in a bit. There's so many lessons from Beyond the Crucible perspective. So, it's really hopefully educational for the listeners and viewers. It certainly is for both Gary and me. We really enjoy doing this. And part of the thing with movies is they typically portray a protagonist who is facing huge challenges, huge crucibles. It's really sort of technicolor level of challenges rather than just black and white or just pastel. I mean, it's just bright colors. And as you've mentioned, we've covered superheroes, sports heroes, the American Film Institute's top 100 movies.
And it's really a lot of fun and a great learning experience just to see how these central characters overcame just massive crucibles and found a way in most cases to not let those crucibles define them. In some cases, I can think of a couple, The Godfather and Citizen Kane. Unfortunately, those crucibles did define them and the arc of the movie, basically their lives get worse. So, it is possible to go downhill after a crucible, and certainly that happened in those movies. But in general, with the movies we have here portrayed over the last several years, you have characters that learn from their crucibles and find a way to focus on albums.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And whether they learn from their crucibles, the characters in the films, or like The Godfather and Citizen King, they didn't. They did let their worst day define them. There's plenty of help for all of us who go through crucibles from both the stories we should follow and the cautionary tales, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you said that it was fun just to kind of go through movies that we both like movies. As we've said before, when we do it for the series, we wear, I've coined the phrase Beyond the Crucible Goggles. But this particular series this year, right? Back to a Better Future, The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema, particularly exciting for you, this now eighth week of this series has been. What is it? Explain to folks here, what is it about science fiction that you love so much and that you think is so resonant for discussing the kinds of things we're discussing, moving past your worst day and going toward a life of significance?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I've always loved science fiction ever since I was very small. I read books, watched movies, TV shows, the focus on science fiction. And I think of one of the most influential science fiction movies ever made was 2001: A Space Odyssey. It came out in 1968. And in this movie, you saw future technologies such as space shuttles with video screens on the seat in front of you. That's common now when we fly. But back in 1968, that technology didn't exist. You had talking computers, video conferencing. And what they did so well in 2001 is Space Odyssey is they use brands such as Precursor to AT&T, the Bell Company, and you have a scientist calling his daughter back on a birthday on earth.
He's in some space station circling the earth and he's using Bell telephone video conferencing. So, it's pretty cool the way they did all that. I think the space shuttle might be a Pan-Am space shuttle, which doesn't exist now, but today it might be American Airlines or United. So, really impressive. Of all the science fiction shows that exist, my favorite was Star Trek. And that aired from 1966 to 1969, we actually discussed a Star Trek movie last week. And that was from the Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek First Contact. And as I mentioned last week, Star Trek: Next Generation is probably my favorite of the different series within the Star Trek universe.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you've seen all of them. You made that point last week. You've seen every episode of pretty much every series that they've done on Star Trek. So, it's bravo.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, huge fan. And I'm also a fan of some of the great science fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Arthur C. Clarke actually wrote the screenplay to 2001, The Space Odyssey. And what I love about science fiction is yes, it explores future technology, but at its best, and certainly Star Trek does it very well, which is one of the reasons why I love Star Trek, is it explores deep societal issues such as the future of the human race, conflict between people who are different, how we'll interact with other forms of life, what's the role of technology? We obviously think a lot about AI today and is it good? Is it bad? What will AI do? Will it take people's jobs?
If AI gets too intelligent, will it be like in the Terminator where you've got robots that are taking over the world? Science fiction portrays things in some cases that we have some degree of reason to be concerned about. So, in science fiction, we see very significant crucibles portrayed. Can the human race survive? What will happen as humans explore the galaxy? Will it be beneficial or not? And will technology get to a point where it will control humans? So, that's why a lot of science fiction is yes, there's the technology, but the deep societal issues that science fiction can explore is really amazing because it's said in the future.
It's in societies that don't exist now or in context that don't exist. So, it's not threatening to anybody per se. So, you can really fully explore some deep issues.
Gary Schneeberger:
I've not said this in any of the episodes in this series, but the one thing that's interesting to me as we talk about all the advances and things that they show is the one thing that these movies did not necessarily get right, and how could they, is what computers look like. Because every computer that they show still looks like a dot matrix thing that's running by. Even Alien, which is set in this future. It's one of those things that you look at and you go, okay, this feels a little dated. Even The Terminator does that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's so true. They can't get everything right. But I do remember in the original Star Trek, they do have these communication devices that they're not quite smartphones, but they're kind of pretty nifty and talking computers that talk back. So, they don't get everything right. But that's the beauty of science fiction is the movies we make today about the future, I'm sure in 30 years' time to look back and say, "Come on, how could we have got that so wrong?" So, it's sort of inevitable.
Gary Schneeberger:
Okay. Here we are in episode eight and we're looking at the final film on our list this summer, and it's 2015's The Martian. It's the second movie, interestingly enough, in this summer series that we're doing, directed by Ridley Scott. And the first was Alien, which we just sort of hinted at a little bit, all the way back in week two. Sorry. It feels like season two sometimes, doesn't it? But it was back in week two. That was Alien. And here's the summary of the movie that we're talking about here, The Martian, which is in the film industry, this summary is known as the log line. It's the most compact way to express a film.
And I'm going to be sad that until next summer, I'm done talking log lines on Beyond the Crucible after this week. But here is the log line, and it's the shortest film we've had so far. It's this. An astronaut stranded on Mars must rely on his ingenuity to survive and arrange a potential rescue. Now that's a very succinct way of saying something that as you'll hear, we talk about it here. It's not very succinct. There's a lot of stuff that goes on and a lot of ingenuity indeed, as the logline says, it has to happen.
But Warwick, before we get into the movie, I thought it would be interesting since this is the last one of the series, to have a little look back at all four years, four years that we've done a summer series. So, I did a little research, Warwick, into the four years that we've done this. And in those four years, we've done 32 films counting this one. 32 films over four years. There are three films that one actor appears in all three films. Three different actors appear in all three films.
Do you have any wild guess as what, going back to 2022, what one actor might appear in all three series, not films, sorry. In all three series, appears in one film in three series. There's three actors. I won't keep you on the hook long because there's a lot of actors in 32 movies.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, I know we had Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. I'm not sure if he was in any of the other series, but including this series, hmm, I don't know.
Gary Schneeberger:
I'll give you a hint. One of them's the star of the movie we're talking about this week.
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, Matt Damon.
Gary Schneeberger:
Matt Damon. So, Matt Damon is one of the three. Matt Damon was in, well, he's in The Martian. He was in The Monuments Men, which we did last year. And he was in Invictus, which we also did last year.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. Yeah.
Gary Schneeberger:
Matt Damon was one. Here are the other two really quickly. Cate Blanchett has been in three of the films we talked about in our summer series. Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, that was 2024. In 2022, she was Marion in Robin Hood way back in 2022.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow.
Gary Schneeberger:
And in 2025 last year, she was in The Monuments Men.
Warwick Fairfax:
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Gary Schneeberger:
And this one surprised me when I was looking it up because you don't think of him as doing this. Robert Duvall was in three. Robert Duvall was in The Natural in 2022. He played the sports writer that was kind of out to get Roy Hobbs. He was in The Godfather very famously as Tom Hagen, the consigliere of the Corleone family. And then he had a very small part, the pivotal part in To Kill a Mockingbird, which came from 2024.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. Yeah. I think that might've been his first role in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Gary Schneeberger:
It was one of his first roles for sure. So, I have a modest proposal that we should call these series from now on, the Blanchett, Duvall, and Damon Summer Movie Series, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
There you go.
Gary Schneeberger:
Blanchett, Duvall, and Damon summer miniseries in honor of our most visited stars in the films that we've covered.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's so funny. That's great.
Gary Schneeberger:
And one other little fact that I just thought was kind of interesting here is that, where'd it go? One film has the most actors, three actors. One particular film of the 32 that we've covered has three actors who appear in other films that we have. And that's the Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Ring is the Fellowship of the Ring. That's Cate Blanchett, isn't it? Ian Holm, who was also in Alien, isn't it? And Hugo Weaving, who was also the Red Skull and Captain America, the First Avenger. There's some summer movie series trivia from Beyond the Crucible. All right. Let's move on from trivia to what's going on in this film.
It's 2035, Warwick. And the crew of the Aries three, Mission to Mars, is exploring a planet on Martian Solar Day 18 of their 31 sol expedition. You'll explain probably better than I can what sols are when we get there. Sol, not souls like soul work that we talk about. A severe dust storm threatens their Mars ascent vehicle, known as a MAV. We'll call it a MAV throughout. And in the ensuing evacuation, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by flying debris. This kicks off the plot and it's a major crucible right away for the star of our film and for this film, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So, in this opening scene of the movie, we see Watney and then another astronaut, Rick Martinez. They're outside the MAV. And it seems like out of no way, the severe dust storm hits. And all of the crew head towards the MAV. The dust storm is so severe, it begins tilting the MAV dangerously. And if it tilts too much, it's going to keel over and they're not going to be able to take off. And so, time is against them. And amidst this dust storm, the crew loses contact with Watney. All they see is that Watney gets hit with debris and they don't see him again and they assume that he's killed.
And one of the things that certainly makes them think that is they lose all contact with him and there are no vital signs. All of the spacesuits have technology that you can see the biosigns in each crew member. So, they see him being struck by debris and there are no vial signs, no bio signs. So, they assume that he's dead. And Commander Melissa Lewis, who is the lead person of the crew, she's faced with a difficult, almost impossible decision, is that if they wait, then they might all be killed because the MAV is going to be on its side or tilted over and nobody's going to be able to escape. So, they're really faced with a choice where they have no choice and they take off.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And obviously, they assume that Watney's dead and that there's nothing they can do.
Gary Schneeberger:
But Watney is not dead. Watney awakens after the storm we see in a subsequent scene, having narrowly survived his injuries. As he recovers within the crew's surface habitat, he begins a video diary to document his thoughts on survival. Watney realizes he's alone, injured and stranded millions of miles from earth. One of the most powerful moments in the film comes when Watney makes a decision. Simple decision, but not a simple decision. He's going to survive. So, let me ask you this, Warwick. Why is mindset the most important choice we can make when we're at the beginning of our own crucibles?
Warwick Fairfax:
We see in these early scenes that after the dust storm is over, as you say, Watney is actually alive. His has been punctured by this flying metal spike, which we later learned is connected to the antenna array, and his oxygen level is critical. So, he wakes up, he's injured, and he begins to walk slowly back to the base camp before the oxygen level dissipates. And once inside, he takes his suit off, pulls out the metal spike, which is punctured his side and staples the wound with sutures. And he's all alone. The crew have left him and the MAV. And so, what he begins a video log.
It's a very useful way in the movie that we know what he's thinking because he wants to record his thoughts, which makes sense. So, he says that this metal spike was part of the antenna and it sealed the blood in his suit, but it also destroyed his biomonitor. And he says it will be four years before anyone can reach him. He talks about everything that could go wrong, including the water reclamation machinery, or if the lab is breached, or if he runs out of food. So, he's very aware of how a dire his situation is. He's not kind of saying everything's great. He is very sober and sane in terms of how challenging his position is. But then he makes this bold statement.
He says, "I'm not going to die here." He just puts that line in the sand, "I realize how dire things are, but it's not happening. I will not die." Basically throughout the movie, he finds a way to keep moving forward. It's just remarkable. And Watney obviously had every reason to give up. He could have felt that his crew abandoned him and that there is no way he'll have enough water or food to survive four years when the next mission may come. I mean, that was not what this whole space camp was designed for. Not to mention all the disasters that could happen to him on Mars. So, there's every reason for him to feel like this is impossible. I may as well just give up.
And it would be very understandable if he felt sorry for himself and as I mentioned, gave up. But yet he makes a decision that he will not die on Mars. That is his mindset. And that shifts his thinking from despondency and negativity to one of hope. And it shifts his thinking to one of where he's saying to himself, "What do I need to do to come up with a plan to keep myself alive for four years? What's the plan?" And rather than saying, "This is all too hard," he has an attitude. "This will be challenging, but let's begin the journey. What's the first step? Let's come up with a plan and begin the first step towards survival.
So, really what this says more broadly is when you try to come back from your worst day, you're crucible, your mindset is everything. It's the difference between staying mired in the pit of despair and being angry at the world, angry at yourself, or having this sense of hope that, yeah, things are challenging, but I'm going to come up with a plan. I'm going to figure out a way. We're going to move forward step by step. We'll figure it out. We'll get it done. So, the difference between despair and hope is huge. Hope offers the promise of life. Despair almost guarantees that there is no hope. Despair can be and often is a fulfilling prophecy.
So, you want to move forward from your deepest, darkest day, have a sense of optimism, a sense of hope, not anchored in some complete lack of reality, but it's like, okay, it's going to be challenging, but we'll figure out a way, one step at a time. It's remarkable throughout this whole movie, Watney's sense of optimism and his mindset. It's just incredible.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. I mean, he's got confidence and sometimes, he's even got defiance. And I think that's one of the things, folks, that you'll see in this clip that we're going to play. Let's take a look and listen to how Watney lays out his situation and his plans. His confidence, as I said, that he will survive.
Video Clip:
Right. Let's do the math. Our service mission here was supposed to last 31 sols. For redundancy, they sent 68 sols worth of food. That's for six people. So, for just me, that's going to last 300 sols, which I figure I can stretch to 400 if I ration. So, I got to figure out a way to grow three years worth of food here on a planet where nothing grows. Luckily, I'm the botanist. Mars will come to fear my botany powers.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, there's skill obviously in that clip, but also a lot of humor. What will show a lot of both throughout this film, The Martian. Why is humor an indispensable asset to pair with our skill in our crucibles? Because I think those two go hand in glove in this movie and in our lives.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So, in this clip, Watney calmly lays out what he needs to do to survive. He figures out that given that there is just one person and not the full crew, there is enough food for him for 300 or maybe 400 days. But he has to get three years worth of food when nothing grows. In other words, maybe this will cover the first year or so, but what about the rest of the four years? And he realizes that he does not have enough rations to get through four years. So, he could have given up saying, "Well, how do I grow food on Mars?" I mean, that's impossible, surely. But fortunately, Watney then says, luckily he's a botanist, and then says these words, "Mars will come to fear my botany powers."
I mean, you're right. It's an in your face, very humorous remark. But it's true the fact that he's a botanist does save his life. So, Watney calmly assesses a challenge about what will happen after his rations run out. And he has to find some way of growing food in order to survive. So, rather than being despondent, he sees this as a challenge and he's willing to face this with almost in your face humor. So, one of the things that this shows is sometimes amidst to crucible humor, even death defying gallows humor, which we see a lot from Mark Watney in this movie can be helpful. You recognize the problem, but you will not be defeated by it.
So, humor almost sort of diffuses any sense of despondency and actually help propel you towards moving forward. At least it does in this movie. Watney then begins to bring dirt from outside and he lays it all in a room and plants seeds in the dirt. So, he sees these potatoes and he finds a way to kind of get the seeds in the potatoes to kind of plant in the earth. And one of the other things you see is he's got two things sort of blocking his nose. So, he finds a way to use the manure from the waste disposal system because plants, as we know, they need some kind of fertilizer. So, he's creative, but not a fun job.
Gary Schneeberger:
No.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so, okay, so he's got the potatoes, he's got earth, he's got some kind of fertilizer, but you also need water. And this is Mars. There's not water on Mars, at least not anymore. Scientists speculate they may have been billions of years ago, but not now. So, how's he make water? Well, he's a scientist. So, he combines hydrogen and oxygen and burns it in some way that will produce water. Well, his first attempt doesn't work and it kind of blows up and is thrust backwards. But it's like, "Okay, yep, that didn't work out." And he figures out what he did wrong and figures out a new way to combine hydrogen and oxygen. And he indeed makes water and you see moisture in the room with the soil.
And eventually, he sees a small green sprout and then later potatoes. I mean, to have enough ingenuity, okay, he's a botanist, but enough ingenuity, creativity and sticktoitiveness to grow potatoes inside in this base camp in Mars. I mean, that's mind-blowing and creativity. And I'm sure the people back in NASA, if you said, "Yeah, I'm sure there's a way to grow potatoes inside a base camp," everybody would've said, "Nah, that's impossible. There's not one person at NASA that would say this could in any way, shape or form be possible." But Watney finds a way. It's truly remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
And Mars does indeed witness his botany powers as they play out in this scene. But as he's beginning this process of staying alive, back on earth, NASA has no idea that he is indeed alive, do they?
Warwick Fairfax:
They do not. So, the first we see of NASA on earth is we see Teddy Sanders, the administrator of NASA, and he's actually conducting a memorial service for Watney. They assume that he's dead. And then we see Vincent Kapoor, who is NASA's director of Mars missions. He comes and talks to Sanders and says that he wants to have satellite coverage of Mars to see what's left. And he wants to know what's happened. And Sanders worries about the PR of seeing a dead astronaut. Now, throughout this movie, Sanders doesn't always make the right call and doesn't even make the right PR call. He doesn't always approach it that well. But Kapoor advocates for satellite coverage to try to see what's happened.
And if Watney is indeed dead, let's fight out, let's bring his body home. Now's the time when everybody is focused on NASA and Mars and what's happened Let's do it now. Kapoor actually tries to push back on Sanders' PR view saying there's another way of looking at it. So, finally, Sanders does authorize satellite coverage of Mars so that they can see what happened and what's left of base camp and where things are. So, finally, Sanders authorizes it.
Gary Schneeberger:
And they don't just see what's left of base camp from those images. On earth, NASA satellite planner, Mindy Park notices Watney's activity from the recorded satellite images and suspects that he must be alive. How does NASA react to this news, Warwick? Because it is a bit of a seismic shift in what they understand to be true about what has happened on Mars.
Warwick Fairfax:
It is indeed. So, the satellite photos show that there's been movement at base camp on Mars. The solar panels are being put back. Obviously, they were kind of turned over and scattered with the storm. And they see that a rover, which is a Mars vehicle, has been moved. So, they conclude that Watney must be alive. I mean, how do those solar panels get put back in place? How does the rover sort of move from one place to the other? It's not being knocked over by a storm. It's right side up. I mean, how does all that happen? So, one of the other things that's apparent is that Sanders does not want the crew of the Aries, which is Watney's fellow crew that are heading back to earth on their spaceship.
Sanders doesn't want them to know that Watney is alive because he believes they'll be devastated to think that they've left him behind. So, Sanders makes the call, "Do not tell the crew of the Aries that Watney's alive."
Gary Schneeberger:
Watney then explores the surrounding terrain and studies his maps and he quickly journeys out to retrieve the Pathfinder probe, hoping to restore its communications. Kapoor realizes this strategy and quickly visits Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We're going to call that JPL throughout the rest of this episode, folks. The director of JPL, Bruce Ng, to use their replica of the probe. What plan is hatched next, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, this again shows Watney's remarkable creativity and his ability to think outside the box. So, he remembers the Pathfinder probe from 1997 and he takes the rover out to find it, thinking that maybe he can use this to communicate with NASA. Because remember that whatever communications array they had back at base camp was destroyed in the storm. So, while he's found a way to grow food and create water to survive, he knows that ultimately to live, to continue to be alive, he needs to find a way to restore communications with NASA. He wants them to know that he's alive and he obviously needs their help.
And so, what's interesting is at NASA on earth, they're looking at these images of base camp and they notice that the rover is headed out of base camp. Well then they draw a line from base camp to the rover and Kapoor is a smart guy and he figures out, "I know what Watney's doing. He's headed to where the Pathfinder probe was." And so, at that point, as you say, Kapoor heads out to JPL in Pasadena, California, and there they have a replica of the Pathfinder. And so, it's like, okay, he's going to find Pathfinder on Mars. We'll find the one we have here. And this is old technology, but the Mars Pathfinder in a sense will find a way to hopefully communicate with the Pathfinder on earth.
So, Watney brings his Pathfinder back to base camp. He turns the machine on and there's a camera that takes still photos. So, that's the technology. It's not video. There's no sound, but it does take still photos. So, again, Watney is the ultimate for thinking outside the box. So, he gets these trays from inside the base camp and he starts writing on them. And then he erects two sides saying yes or no. And so, when the camera spins towards yes, he knows that they're seeing him at NASA on earth and it means yes. And so, it's pretty rudimentary forms of communication, but at least he can get a yes or no answer to these questions that he's written on these trays. It's really remarkable. But Watney's not satisfied.
That's the first step in communication, but yes or no is a pretty crude way of communicating. It's a fairly elementary. It'll take forever to have any kind of communication. Well, he knows he needs to find a way to have an alphabet, but because of the turning radius of the camera, a regular 26-letter alphabet won't work. So, being a scientist, he said of something that I certainly haven't heard of, which is the hexadecimal alphabet.
Gary Schneeberger:
Oh yes, that.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, that was a new one to me. So, somehow the hexadecimal alphabet must be less than 26 letters and can fit within the turning radius of this camera on the Pathfinder. Well, somehow as he's working on that, the smart people at JPL in Pasadena figure out what he's trying to do is it's a hexadecimal alphabet. I mean, talk about great minds thinking alike. I mean, this is crazy, but I guess he must have given them clues or maybe he's written it on a tray. Somehow they've figured it out and now they can communicate with the full alphabet. So, they ask him how he is alive. And so, this is the message that Watney sends. Impaled by antenna, biomonitor destroyed. Crew had reason to think me dead, not their fault.
Very concise, very to the point. Really a remarkable message. So, this shows Watney's incredible ingenuity and thinking of using the Pathfinder's communication device and thinking of using the hexadecimal alphabet to communicate. But it also shows Watney's state of mind. He is not blaming NASA or the Aries crew for leaving him behind. He gets it. He understands that the MAV was about to keel over, that they had to escape. He realizes his biomonitor was damaged. And so, they had no reason to believe he was alive. He doesn't at all fault them for leaving him. There's no anger. He gets it. It just shows a remarkable presence of mind.
And it's not even forgiveness because it's like, well, there's nothing to forgive. They did what they had to do. So, he's not weighed by the past. He's not wallowing in the pivot of space. He's not angry at others. He's not angry at himself or anything or anybody. It's like, here we are, what's the next step? So, his creativity and his mindset as just jaw dropping. It's really incredible.
Gary Schneeberger:
The agency makes contact with Watney and instructs him to link Pathfinder to the Rover where he can now communicate by text. Totally going to change the way that they exchange information and make it much, much better. With this breakthrough, Mitch Henderson, who is a flight director for NASA, Mitch Henderson is finally allowed to inform Watney's crew mates. This is his team of fellow travelers. And how do they react to this unexpected, truly breathtaking news?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, now that Watney can communicate with NASA, really the first huge breakthrough is when NASA says, "Okay, there's a way that we can link up Pathfinder to the rover so we can have more complex conversations by text. That's not something Watney had figured out, but the bright minds at NASA did. Again, it shows the importance of having fellow travelers. As smart as Watney is, having a whole bunch of other minds can certainly help. And you're right, it was a game changer. So, now he's able to text NASA and they can text him back. I mean, it's huge. Certainly a lot more efficient than the original system of yes or no signs in the earth of Mars, so to speak.
And so, Kapoor tells Watney that they're working on a supply mission to keep him fed and working on a rescue mission. Watney is understandably relieved and in classic Watney in your face, humorous fashion says, "Glad to hear it. Really looking forward to not dying." And they all laugh back at NASAs, including Sanders. I mean, it's just classic Watney. Yeah, really looking forward to not dying. Just this optimistic gala's humor is incredible. So, Watney asks how the Aries crew is feeling now that they know that he's alive. Well, they tell him that the crew doesn't know that he's alive. And Watney's incredulous and says, "What's wrong with you at NASA that the crew doesn't know he's alive?"
He's just dumbstruck by that. At that point, Henderson tells Sanders that the crew of the Aries need to be told that Watney is alive. And so, at this point, Sanders authorizes communications. So, Henderson sends a video message to the Aries crew and he tells them that Watney's alive and healthy and that they found this out two months ago and they decided not to tell them. But then Watney says they have communications with Watney and a rescue plan. So, Lewis' reaction is, "I left him behind." And she says it more than once. "It's understandable the commander of a mission, when things go wrong, they tend to say, it's my fault. I should have thought of something."
And she does. Now the crew says we all left together and it wasn't her fault, but that's a tough thing. I mean, how could she possibly know? She saw this debris take Watney away. There's no biosigns on his spacesuit. They had to take off because the MAV was about to tilt over. She had no choice. Logically, she made the right call. She has the safety of the rest of the crew. But emotionally, understandably, she's thinking, it's my fault. He's stranded there and it's my fault. It's very understandable that she would think that way.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, as Watney enters the camp one evening, a leak in the airlock causes an explosion that injures him and destroys that potato garden that he works so hard and ingeniously to create. And just as the audience, you're kind of lulled into this, things are going smoothly. These guys are all so smart. It's going to work out great. Here come crucibles. Something that we all know, right? Just because you've been through one and it's gone smoothly a bit for you or you figured it out does not mean that another one's not going to come. And although he repairs the airlock, he is again threatened by starvation. Warwick, what impact does that scene have on Watney?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So, Watney's outside trying to strengthen the outside wall of base camp. And he's in an interlock, which is between the two doors. So, basically you go through one door and pressurize that sort of tunnel, if you will, and then open the next door and get into base camp. So, as he's in the interlock between these two doors, somehow there's a tear in the tube and oxygen blows out and knocks Watney around. His soon has been punctured. His oxygen is at 5% before he can find tape to tape over the puncture. So, he gets that taped.
Well, then he heads into base camp and he sees that the whole explosion, if you will, with oxygen escaping. He sees that the whole crop has been exposed to the outside atmosphere and it's all being killed. And then he goes to the rover and tells Sanders Henderson and Annie Montrose, who's the director of media relations for NASA, he tells them all that the crops are dead and the water supply's an issue. So, this makes the rescue mission that much more challenging. The whole food supply has been radically diminished because he's lost all his potato crops. And NASA is now allowing the Aries crew the ability to communicate directly with Watney.
And so, there's this conversation that ensues and it's classic in your face banter as comrades and arms do. And it's just incredibly priceless conversation. So, Martinez on the Aries crew says to Watney, "Sorry we left you behind, but we just don't like you." And then he says, "It's a lot roomy on the Aries crew without you. We had to take up your job, but it's only botany. It's not real science. It's classic smack talk in your face." And Watney eats it up. He realizes it's all in fun. And so, Watney smiles at this batter and Martinez asks how things are going. And Watney says he just blew up the hatch and explained what happened.
But unfortunately, all of Lewis's disco music survived. Now throughout the movie to this point, the only music in base camp is Commander Lewis's disco music. And for whatever reason, Watney cannot stand his disco music. It's just driving him insane. But when it's you alone, it's disco music or nothing. Well, he decides disco music is better than nothing because he's hearing something as he's going about his day. So, in this banter between Watney and the Aries crew, it's clear that Watney has not given up no matter how bad things look at times, and still tries to have some sense of optimism despite the fact that he's lost his, well, at least a lot of his food supply and some of his water.
And so, this is just this recurring theme of optimism. And as I mentioned, hating Lewis's disco music. It's also clear from the batter how much the Aries crew thinks of Watney. And the smack talk is said in love. You only have that kind of conversation if there's a real sense of love and camaraderie between the Aries crew and Watney.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Last, another big crucible happens to NASA. And then the China National Space Administration becomes an unexpected fellow traveler to all of this that's going on. And it decides to offer a launch vehicle originally intended for the Tai Yang Shen Space Probe out of China to resupply Watney. NASA astrophysicist Rich Purnell devises an alternative plan though. What is that new plan, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, NASA is trying to send a supply vehicle up, but unfortunately the supply vehicle they send up. It blows up shortly after liftoff. So, now what are they going to do? They don't have lots of vehicles, supply vehicles are waiting. It could take months to be able to get another one up and running. So, they'd shortened the schedule to get that supply vehicle up and had not done all the final checks because they just knew that Watney didn't have time. You have to take desperate measures when it's a desperate situation. So, at this point, Watney realizes that things are not looking good. And so, we asked Lewis to pass on a message to his family in case the worst happens.
And this message is very telling about Watney's mindset, but also the legacy that he wants to leave. And this is a message he asks Lewis to pass on to his family. He says that if he dies to tell his parents, and he says, "It is a lot to ask, but he's not giving up, but he's preparing for every outcome." And he said to tell him he loves what he does and he's really good at it. Dying for something big and beautiful and greater than me. Tell him he said that he can live with that. And thank you for being my mom and dad. So, basically, he's hopeful that he'll live, but if he doesn't, he can live with the facts, so to speak, that he's dying for a cause greater than himself. That is pure life of significance. A life on purpose, dedicated to serving others.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's really remarkable. So, this legacy message shows that Watney realizes he is living for life of significance. In fact, he's willing to die for his life of significance. And he says that he can live with that. It's just remarkable. So, meanwhile, the China Space Agency is watching. And unbeknownst to NASA, China has come up with booster technology that can help. So, the head of this China Space Agency reaches out to Sanders at NASA and tells them that China's willing to help. So, NASA can get a supply vehicle launched fairly quickly after all. So, meanwhile, Purnell at JPL Pasadena has come up with a plan. So, he's this sort of uber scientist, almost a little bit nerdy and he's kind of a genius.
And this involves the Aries spaceship, which is headed back to Earth, getting gravity assist from looping around the Earth and picking up supplies from the Chinese rocket and then accelerating back to Mars. Then it's going to loop around the Earth, pick up the supplies from the Chinese rocket and head back to Mars. So, Watney, on the other hand, he would use another MAV on another part of Mars to then intercept Aries while it's orbiting Mars. So, that's the plan. It's not an easy plan, but it's doable. So, Sanders does not want the Aries crew to know of this option.
I guess Sanders is probably skeptical, plus it would mean the Aries crew having to go all the way back to Mars after they're actually orbiting the Earth. And while Henderson, on the other hand, says he believes it should be the crew's decision. Well, Sanders makes a call. No, Aries crew are not going to hear about this option from Purnell. Well, then Henderson, he goes behind Sanders' back and sends a coded message to the Aries crew. Lewis and the rest of the crew realize that they're being kept in the dark by NASA and that they could force NASA's hand. I mean, they could make a decision on their own that Sanders can't do really anything about. But Lewis says that if it was up to her, she'd do it.
She'd return and rescue Watney. But she fully realizes this is mutiny and they're going against what NASA wants. And so, she says that the crew has to be in this together. She says, "This will add 533 days to the mission before we see our families." And she says that NASA will never send us back in space again because they're defying orders, it's mutiny. And she says, "Any of the crew who are in the military will be caught marshaled." So, Lewis says, "This decision must be unanimous." They all vote yes and they're excited. They're eager to rescue their friend and colleague Watney, and they fully realize the consequences of their decision.
So, the crew somewhat cryptically tells NASA that Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man. So, basically at that point, Sanders and NASA realizes word is out. They know about Purnell's plan. So, Sanders realizes what's going on and he also realizes how it happened. It must be Henderson. He's the one that wanted to tell the Aries crew. He obviously did tell the Aries crew of Purnell's plan. But Sanders then asked for Henderson's resignation. There are consequences for doing what Henderson did. And I'm sure Henderson realized there could be consequences. And Sanders basically said, "I need your resignation." Nonetheless, Sanders reluctantly blesses Purnell's plan, which the Aries crew are emblematic.
He might think, "What choice do I have?" But he basically blesses Purnell's plan. So, a couple remarkable things happen here. Lewis and the Aries crew are willing to add 533 days to their mission before seeing their families again, and they're willing to risk their future careers with NASA. Henderson sacrifices his career for the sake of rescuing Watney. So, it's a lot of incredibly selfless behavior on the part of the Aries crew and Henderson of doing what they feel is right, even though it will be a great cost to themselves to help Watney. It's truly remarkable their attitudes and what they did.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, after waiting several months, Watney embarks on a long journey to the areas for MAV. He plans to use it to rendezvous with the Hermes, but needs to do something pretty extreme to make it work, doesn't he?
Warwick Fairfax:
He really does. So, Watney has to make a long journey to get to the MAV on the other side of Mars. He travels during the day or at night, and then he has to stop and get out the solar panel to charge the rover. And then off he goes again. It's just a long journey. So, his goal is to reach this other MAV that will then take off from the planet Mars from the surface and then link up with the airy ship once it's in orbit. And so, he leaves this following message as he leaves base camp, I believe. Everywhere I go, I'm the first. Climb that hill, first guy to do that. Four and a half billion years than me. First person to be alone on an entire planet. So, again, it's a never say die attitude from Watney.
His human optimistic personality are incredible. So, Watney then finally gets to this MAV, and he's told by NASA that to get to the right intercept velocity, he needs to make the MAV wire a lot lighter. So, Watney at NASA's direction begins to start throwing out a lot of equipment from the MAV. He throws out the controls. He unscrews everything. He even, I think sort of removes some of the outside windows to this MAV and he puts a top over the nose, which he comically calls making this MAV like a convertible without a top. And it's just incredible. Wat needs to this process before he leaves in the MAV, he cleans up his appearance, cuts his hair, shaves. He wants to look presentable.
And earlier as he was heading to the MAV, he thought of himself as a pirate since nobody really owns Mars. And then he starts thinking about when you're in International Waters, nobody owns International Waters. He kind of riffs on this whole way of thinking. And he thinks of himself as a pirate because again, he's in the middle of Mars, nobody owns that. And he asked to be called a Captain Blondebeard. The sort of captain Blackbeard in the pirate days way back when. So, he wants to be called Captain Blondebeard. It just cracks you up his sense of humor. And meanwhile, while all this is happening and he's about to take off in the MAV, the whole world is watching.
We see scenes from NASA, the Chinese Space Agency headquarters, even people in Trafalgar Square in London, they're all watching. And the MAV takes off and the G-forces are so strong and so great that Watney passes out.
Gary Schneeberger:
The daring rescue mission that follows sort of caps the film off. And remember on the Aries going through some kind of crucible experiences. It's also the film's biggest rollercoaster ride. It's truly an action packed way to bring this film in for a landing. What happens?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, the Aries crew in Watney really have to think outside the box. So, the intercept velocity between the Aries ship and the MAV is too fast. Somehow they've got to slow down, otherwise they're not going to be able to make contact. So, Lewis incredibly tells a crew member to make a bomb. That's a solution, make a bomb. And so, they're going to put this bomb in part of the ship. And when the bomb explodes, it will reduce the ship's speed. It will reduce the ship's velocity. So, meanwhile, Lewis puts on the spacesuit, which is attached to a long tether line as she seeks to grab Watney. And she tells Watney that he has to leave the ship, which is not a problem after all, it is convertible.
And the ship's windows out there, he's got a space suit on, he just needs to crawl through the open window, so to speak, and off he goes. And so, she's trying to grab Watney as he's leaving the MAV, and she's on this long tether line in her spacesuit, but this still's too far away. And so, Watney creatively thinks of cutting a hole in his suit and uses the escaping air pressure to thrust him forward. He'd mentioned it earlier to Lewis and the crew of the Aries is an option. And Lewis grabs Watney and says, "Way to go, Iron Man."
Now, this is another comment that Watney comes up with when he was earlier pitching his idea saying, "Hey, I know there's a way I could leave a MAV and reach the airy spaceship. I can be like Iron Man and puncture my suit. They turned it down initially. Now what choice do they have?" It's so funny. And so, finally they reunite and we see Lewis grab Watney. The tether line is pulled back and Lewis and Watney are pulled back onto the ship. And everybody's smiling. And one of the first things that Watney says when he's able to talk to Lewis face to face, he says, "You have terrible taste of music." Again, this whole rift about how much he hates disco music.
They all laugh and mission control at NASA yells enjoy. And the whole world is watching this and everybody around the world is also rejoicing. Watney has been successfully rescued.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that's not exactly the last scene of the film because after returning to earth, Watney becomes a survival instructor for astronaut candidates. His speech to the class could be a talk to a group of graduates if we ever created a Beyond the Crucible university, couldn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
That is so true. So, we see Watney walking into a classroom of future potential astronauts. And it's just classic in your face Watney humor. He says this, "Welcome to the astronaut candidate program. Pay attention. This could save your life. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about." And the class of course laughs. "Yes, I did survive on a deserted planet by using my own S expletive. In other words, dung, excrement, manure. You get the picture. And did I think I was going to die? Yes. At some point, everything is going to go south. You can either accept that or get to work. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to go home."
I mean, this is classic Mark Watney. He shows a remarkable sense of humor, optimism, and a willingness to never give up. When he's flying through space using a punctured hole in his suit to let the air escape, to try to reach Lewis and the Aries crew, he refers to himself as Iron Man. Perhaps he should have called himself Captain America. I think of that movie that we did a few years ago. And in fact, you mentioned this in a recent blog, Gary, that you wrote in a podcast we did a little bit ago. And there's a line in Captain America with Steve Rogers as Captain America says, "I can do this all day." He says that throughout the movie.
Well, I feel like Watney could also use those phrases because he could say, "I can do this all day." No matter what happens to him, he always thinks of a way forward. He never gives up. And it's just incredible. As Watney tells the class when things go wrong, you have to accept that and get to work and solve the problem, solve the next problem. And eventually if you solve enough problems, you get to go home. This is resilience persists It's a creativity and instead of a never say die humor at a Mount Olympus level.
It's just no matter what happens, he shrugs it off, has a smart Alec remark and says, "Okay, that sucks. That's not good. But now what? Now what do we do? What's the next plan? What's the next step?" He never gives up. He just keeps going. It's just his mindset is truly remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, we've finished the film proper. Let me ask you what I've asked you for all seven episodes prior to this. Frankly, what I've asked you for... oh, I'm going to have to do math. All the ones that came before these last seven episodes, I'm not going to do the math. How do the crucibles of the characters in the martian, particularly Mark Watney, how do they offer us insight into how to overcome, how to walk through, how to move beyond our own crucibles?
Warwick Fairfax:
One of the major themes of this movie is humor. I'm not sure that we've talked about humor as often as we have in this movie and in this podcast of how valuable a tool it can be to really helping you come back from your crucible and not be defined by your worst day. But it's certainly one of the biggest themes in this movie. And even when things are looking dire, Watney always has a wise crack, calling himself Iron Man, Captain Blondebeard. He jokingly calls himself the greatest botanist on the planet of Mars. Well, he's the only botanist. He's the only human. But of course, it's classic. I'm the greatest botanist and planet of Mars.
And then he says, he colonized Mars and then says, "In your face, Neil Armstrong." So, he's referring to Neil Armstrong back in 1969, he was the first human to set foot on the moon. But he says, "Huh, Moon? This is Mars in your face, Neil Armstrong." It's just so funny. It's all so impressive. So, when we're in our darkest moments, humor can often lighten the mood so we can clear our head and think what we need to do next. It basically flushes out the negative thoughts. It's like, "Okay, that sucked." You make a smart-aleck remark. And then what do I do next? It's such an important tool for survival and getting beyond a crucible. But Watney also shows how important it is not to dwell in the past.
He is not angry that he's been left behind on Mars. He could have said, or maybe he could have tried harder and why'd you leave me? I mean, not the best necessarily logical in this case, they had no choice. But when you've been left behind on the planet Mars with little hope for survival, most people would dwell on the negative. Most people will get angry at others. But he gets it. He would've assumed that he was dead too, especially after the biomonitor on his suit stopped working. He does not get down. He solves the problems one by one. He gets the solar panels up and running. He figures out a way to grow potatoes and produce water. He figures out a way to communicate with NASA using Pathfinder.
It's just amazing. So, after we've cleared our minds with humor and not dwelled on the past, letting go of any resentment of others, we can begin to work the plan one step at a time. Don't focus too far ahead. Think about what you need to do today. And then when you string enough action steps together, one today and then another today, you'll find these steps take you to where you want to go. Your vision will have come to pass and you'll be leading a life of significance, a life on purpose, dedicated in serving others. So, humor sort of clears the system, helps you focus, and come up with a plan. And what's the next right step I need to do today?
And when obstacles come, you always say, okay, this was awful. This wasn't fun. Crack a joke, whatever it takes to relieve the tension, and then get back on tracks and go, okay, what's the plan? What do I do now? Maybe I need a new plan. If you keep moving forward, have the sense of optimism. Don't look back. What's the next right step? And eventually, those steps will string together your journey that will lead to a life-affirming vision. It's just such a powerful mindset that Mark Watney has. It's truly incredible.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, folks, that is a wrap on our 2026 summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. Or as I called it before, the Blanchett, Duvall, and Damon Summertime Series. Is that right? It's the Blanchett, Duvall, and Damon summer movie series. We've just ended our 2026 version, but guess what? As we've said from the time we started this eight episode arc, we have three other series that came before this, and we've created a way for you to find them and enjoy them really quickly. So, as we're wrapping, just keep this in mind. You can go to Beyond the Crucible on YouTube. All right? Find Beyond the Crucible's website on YouTube and look up our three previous series to this fourth one. There's 2022s.
All the episodes are listed right there for you in a playlist. Lights, camera, crucibles. That one focuses on heroes, movies that feature heroes. You can also find 2024's summer movie series called Classic Films, Classic Crucible Lessons. Those are film classic movies that are rated as some of the best movies ever made by the American Film Institute. And then you can also find last year's summer movie series, Big Screen Big Crucibles, which as I have said several times in this series, you've heard of Chock-Full of Nuts Coffee. This is Chock-Full of Crucibles films. Go to our YouTube channel, search for the playlists. They're all there.
And you can enjoy an afternoon and an entire day really watching through all of these series. 32 and all, as I said, that is the Blanchett, Duvall, and Damon summer movie series. And we are done with the latest version of it here in 2026. We will be back, folks, to regular programming, as you might say, next week here at Beyond the Crucible. Until then, please remember that we know and understand this truth. Your crucible experiences are tough. They're hard. The people who've been through Crucibles and all these movies that we've just discussed experience that, but they're not the end of your story.
In fact, if you learn the lessons, like we unpack the lessons from these films in this series, if you learn those lessons and apply them as you move forward, it's not just not the end of your story. It's the start of a new story that can lead you to a phenomenal new destination. And that new destination, as Warwick has talked about since the onset of Beyond the Crucible, but also a lot of times in this series, that new destination is the most wonderful destination you can reach because it is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
Heroes versus villains. The latter looking to rule the galaxy, the former looking to save it.
What happens when the leader who must save everyone is still carrying the wounds of his own trauma?
In this episode, we dive into Star Trek: First Contact as part of the seventh installment of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise must lead his crew against the Borg. This very enemy once assimilated him, while fighting through the trauma that experience left behind. The stakes couldn’t be higher: the fate of the entire galaxy and the birth of warp drive hang in the balance. Picard’s journey is one of the most compelling crucible stories in all of sci-fi cinema, and the lessons it holds for anyone leading through unresolved pain are as relevant on Earth as they are in the final frontier.
Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film? Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
One of the things that Picard and the Enterprise realize is it is critical that Zefram Cochrane launched this ship called The Phoenix, go and achieve warp drive, and make contact with the Vulcans. And it's also pretty clear that the Borg don't want this to happen. They're all about defeating the Federation and really anybody in their path.
Gary Schneeberger:
Heroes versus villains, the latter looking to rule the galaxy, the former looking to save it. This week in the seventh episode of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema, we look at Star Trek first contact in which Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of the Starship Enterprise, must fight through the trauma of having been assimilated by the Borg, as he leads his team to a life of significance for the whole galaxy, ensuring the birth of Warp Drive.
How can understanding how Picard and his crew turn their trials with the Borg into triumph for all, on the side of the Federation, help us through our own crucibles? Stay tuned.
Welcome, friends, to another episode of Beyond the Crucible. You are dropping in toward the end now of our summer series. We do one every year, or at least we have for the last four or five years. And you've dropped into the latest episode of our summer series this year, which once again, you won't be surprised if you've been with other summer series for us. It's on movies. And the reason why it's on movies is we had so much fun when we focused our summer series on movies, Warwick and I have, over three of the last four years, that we want to do it again. Not only because it's fun, that's a big reason, but also because from movies, we can learn a lot about how to overcome, how to move beyond crucibles, and how to then to point yourself toward a life of significance.
And so, after spotlighting our first one of these series, we just did some hero movies, superhero movies, military hero movies, historical hero movies. Then we flipped to some of the best movies ever made, according to the American Film Institute. We talked about how the characters in those movies either overcame or didn't overcome their crucibles. And if you haven't heard that, go back, because in a couple cases, you can learn just as much about how to move beyond your crucible from those characters that don't do that in films.
And then, last year we did what I have called on a couple of occasions during this series, you've heard of Chock Full of Nuts Coffee. This was Chock Full of Crucibles. We did movies with lots of crucibles in them. And as those crucibles sort of barraged you, you could continue to learn from them and move on.
So Warwick, this year we're calling our series Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And I'm going to ask you this question, just first about movies, and then I'll ask you why this particular focus on movies.
But why are we back in theaters, this time around, to examine movies again for our summer series?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, both you, Gary, and I, we love movies and it's very different looking at movies from Beyond the Crucible perspective. Typically, when you watch a movie, you got your popcorn and you're there to have fun and enjoy. And I'm thinking, gee, what can I learn from this movie to help me lead a better life? Life is significant to life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. Typically, movies portray a protagonist who is facing significant crucibles that they're seeking to overcome.
And as you mentioned, we've covered superheroes, sports heroes, and some of the movies from the American Film Institute's top 100 movies. And it's just fascinating, when you're looking at these movies, it's really crucibles in technicolor. They're enormous challenges, challenges often of character. And how are they going to overcome these challenges and become often a better version of themselves?
So it's really rich territory to look at how do you overcome the pit of despair and get beyond it and live a life of significance? And so, really movies are often a great way to learn some powerful lessons.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And one of the things that we've said as we've been doing this, and in fact, an episode before the series started, we talked about watching movies with Beyond the Crucible goggles on, because it's a whole different experience, as you said, than just watching movies with a bucket of popcorn in front of you. It's more than just entertainment. It's also encouragement and tips and action steps you can take to get beyond crucibles. That's why we're doing it this time.
And Warwick, you're doubling down on stuff you love here on this summer series, because as I said, it's called Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And you're particularly excited about that, because that is, science fiction movies are indeed a major love of yours. Why do you love science fiction films so much? And what about them is particularly resonant about this discussion that we're having about looking at movies through Beyond the Crucible goggles?
What happens generally in science fiction films that goes to the topic we're discussing?
Warwick Fairfax:
So since I was very young, I have always loved science fiction in books, movies, TV shows. I think one of my earliest memories was going to see one of the most influential science fiction films ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It came out in 1968. What I really loved about this movie was just the way you saw future technology. You saw space shuttles with screens on the seats in front of them where you could watch a movie, which of course you can now, not necessarily on space shuttles, I'm afraid, which they don't have anymore, but you can on planes. But it didn't exist back then. There was video conferencing.
And what they did so well is they put brand names. So at the time, AT&T was Bell. And so you had Bell Teleconferencing from whatever, I think it was a space station that the hero was in. He was just talking to his family. I think his young daughter had a birthday. So they just made it seem so real with future technology, with brands that everybody was familiar with.
And I was also a fan of a lot of science fiction shows, including the original Star Trek. And maybe we'll talk about that.
Gary Schneeberger:
Good foreshadowing as always work. Good foreshadowing.
Warwick Fairfax:
And I was also a great fan of some of the classic science fiction novels, Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov. In fact, Arthur C. Clark wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And so, what I loved a lot about science fiction is yes, it explores future technology, but at its best, great science fiction, whether books written by Arthur C. Clark or Isaac Asimov, or indeed in the Star Trek TV series, they explored deep societal issues about, what is the future of the human race and how will it interact with other forms of life? And what's the role of AI?
One of the things about the original Star Trek series, it provided a medium in which issues that were really forbidden to be discussed in the '60s could be discussed. You had a white man, Captain Kirk kissing a Black woman, Uhura, who is a communications specialist. That is not something, in '66, '67, whenever that episode came out, it was pretty controversial. A lot of parts of America, unfortunately. And you even had a classic episode in which you had a race that was on an alien planet that was half white and half black on their faces. And, the only difference between the two races was which half was white and which was black.
And so, when Captain Cook said to the leaders of one of the races, "You folks, they're so similar."
He said, "What do you mean? We're totally different? It depends on which side of the face is white or black."
It was making a mockery of racism in a very clever way. So science fiction at its best takes on issues, sometimes before we're really willing to face it. So that's some of the reasons why I love science fiction.
And science fiction, certainly you see very significant crucibles. Often we're talking about the future of the galaxy, the future of the human race. Can humans survive? Will humans, as they expand across the galaxy, be a force for good or not? Will technology get to the point where it will control humans? That is prevalent throughout a lot in science fiction, including Terminator, which we talked about earlier this summer.
So, that issue of technology, which now we have AI and people are wondering what are the ethics of AI, and will AI get too powerful? So a lot of the issues that we face are covered by science fiction.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And this week, in episode seven of the series, we're looking at a movie... It's kind of like having kids. I wouldn't dare say that this movie is your favorite among the ones we've talked about, because all of them are your favorites. You like them all. But this one, let's say this, and you'll unpack this in a bit. You understand you're truly a student of this universe. And that is the movie that we're talking about. 1996's Star Trek: First Contact.
The second big screen movie to feature the cast of the TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's the second TV series that came after the original Star Trek that Warwick was talking about. And here's the summary of the movie. One of my favorite parts of the show. I'm going to miss it when after next week I can't do it again for another several months.
But this is what the Hollywood film industry calls the log line of a film. It's the most concise recitation of what the plot is about. Here's the log line for Star Trek: First Contact. When the cybermetric Borg traveled back in time to 2063 to prevent Earth's first contact with an alien species, Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise must follow them to the past, fighting to save both the timeline and the future of the Federation.
Oh my goodness, there's so much stuff in here. There's time travel. There's bad guys and there's bad space guys. There's lots of good stuff in here. So let me ask you this question as we start off, Warwick. But, before we get into this movie though, you're a big fan of Star Trek as I intimated, and particularly Star Trek: The Next Generation. Talk a little bit about why that is, because I think it'll help people understand why you're going to be able to pluck so many lessons out of this for moving beyond your crucible.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. As we've discussed, I am a big fan of science fiction, but of all the science fiction genres and series that there've been, I've always been a huge fan of Star Trek. That may be one of, if not my most favorite genre of all the different iterations that we have in science fiction.
And Star Trek, the original series, it began with the vision that Gene Roddenberry had and the series ran from 1966 to '69. Kind of fun fact is, pretty much every studio in Hollywood turned it down. But it turned out that Lucille Ball, of I Love Lucy Fame, she had a studio called Desilu Studios after, I guess, her and her husband, Desi Arnaz.
And so, every studio out there turned it down, but Lucille Ball saw something in this. And despite some of her organization saying, "I'm not really seeing it," she kept saying, "Yes, yes, yes. We are going to fund this. We're going to make it."
And so, obviously without Jude Roddenberry's vision, there wouldn't be Star Trek, but without Lucille Ball, we wouldn't have Star Trek, because nobody would provide the funding or produce it. Gene Roddenberry created this world where there was a benevolent organization called the Federation. And their mission was to explore new worlds. As they say in their opening of Star Trek, to bravely go where no one has gone before.
And so, this mission of exploration in this world, there wasn't money, there wasn't poverty. There was a sense of altruism in which people were working together to benefit all of mankind, and indeed other alien races.
Now, yes, there were malevolent cultures that really didn't have the same vision. And in various iterations of Star Trek, we had the Klingon, the Romulans, and especially the Borg, which we'll get into here. So yes, there's conflict, because their mission is to protect the Federation and all of the planets that aligned with them against evildoers that want to destroy their way of life. So yes, even benevolent organizations do have to defend themselves. The Federation obviously does.
For a science fiction fan like me, who loves thinking about future technology, but also a better world, a better society where people are honored, treasured, where excellence is rewarded, where really you can achieve your dreams with work and vision, Star Trek was certainly enticing. And just to give you an idea of what a Star Trek fan I am, other than some animated series, which I've not really watched, but all the live action series, I have pretty much watched every episode of every series dating back to when it first came out in the '60s and then reran in Australia where I'm from in the '70s.
So that means I've watched the original Star Trek, which as we mentioned, went from like 66 to 69. Star Trek: The Next Generation that went from 1987 to 1994. Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy. That's a lot of Star Trek.
And in fact, there were also six films made with the original cast and four with Star Trek: Next Generation. I've seen all of those.
Now, one of the interesting things is that, of all the Star Trek iterations, probably my favorite, I'd say definitely my favorite is Star Trek: Next Generation. And you might wonder why, because they all have the same vision. It's the Federation. It's an altruistic organization. The central meme of all of them is the same. But in Star Trek: Next Generation, you have this Shakespearean trained English actor, Patrick Stewart, playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Now, Captain Picard is actually meant to be French, although it's played by Patrick Stewart in a very English way. He doesn't even pretend to put on a French accent.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Exactly.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. But you see in earlier episodes of the series that his family have a vineyard somewhere in France and all that. But what I like about Captain Picard is, in some ways, he reminds me of my father because you see in earlier parts of the series that he is an amateur archeologist, extremely well-read in history and philosophy. And he's a very intellectual, very erudite man, but also a man of action. He is very considered, he's loyal, he listens to input from his crew. Most of the time, he's a very rational, caring, thoughtful person.
And as a part of that, sort of intellectual person that he was, he was open to input and open to understanding different perspectives that reminds me of my father was also some intellectual, but loved to learn, and love to dialogue with people who had different political or even theological views than himself.
There's an element of Patrick Stewart and Captain Jean-Luc Picard that reminds me of my father. Obviously, my father wasn't a starship captain or a man of action. He was very much the philosopher type. But that being said, I've always felt some sort of a kinship with Captain Jean-Luc Picard. So all that's to say is, I'm definitely a huge fan of Star Trek, in particular Star Trek Next Generation.
Gary Schneeberger:
I've known since we've worked together, Warwick, that you are a graduate with an MBA of Harvard Business School. I did not know until right now that you also have an MSFA, a Master of Science Fiction Arts from Starfleet Academy. I did not know that till just now.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And in fact, I have that piece of paper in a frame in my office, Starfleet Academy.
Gary Schneeberger:
We'll have to catch a glimpse of that at some other time, but we have a full agenda here, because there's lots of good tips and action steps about overcoming crucibles that we can get to here in Star Trek: First Contact. So let's start out here.
One reason that this film resonates so deeply is that, beneath its action in science fiction and all those things that you talked about, right? It's really a story about people facing crucibles, trauma, loss, fear, obsession, questions about identity. And we'll touch on all of this as we get through the film, but let's start at the beginning, which is a good place to start, right? That's why it's called the start, because you begin there.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard awakens from a nightmare in which he relives the assimilation of the cybernetic Borg six years earlier. What is that nightmare about Warwick, and how does it affect the captain?
Warwick Fairfax:
So as the movie opens, we see Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he's reliving a nightmare in which he was assimilated by the Borg six years earlier. And this is arguably the toughest time of Picard's life, the most searing crucible. So, in the TV series, Star Trek: Next Generation, Picard was captured by the Borg and was made into one of them. Now the Borg are this half human, half machine creature, and the Borg operates as a collective. So that means you lose all individuality.
It's sort of like a hive mind, almost like bees. And you have no self-control. You're almost like this drone in which you're all operating as one unit with one will. And he was renamed Locutis of Borg. And of all the things that could happen to you in science fiction, this is one of, if not the scariest, because not only do you have no individuality, and no control over what you did, in the case of Captain Picard, he was one of the premier Starfleet captains of Starfleet. That means his collective knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of Starfleet was prodigious. And the Borg used all his intelligence and all his experience to great effect, meaning that Captain Picard ended up killing enormous numbers of humans on behalf of the Borg. I mean, enormous numbers and caused huge damage to the Federation and different planets.
And so, somehow there are a few worse crucibles that you can have, is losing all sense of self and being forced to do despicable things against your will. So somehow you hope others will forgive you. And then somehow you have to forgive yourself. And you could say, "Well, I had no control," but somehow that doesn't hold a whole lot of water. It's like, "Yeah, but I still did it." Surely there was a way I could have broken free, which in the case of the book, there really is not. There's nothing you can do. There's no way out.
So, just emotionally feeling that there's something I could have done. Somehow it is my fault. It was searing. He ended up being rescued by his crew, but without being rescued, he would never have escaped. Despite him being a courageous, very strong person, you can't escape the technology and what they do to you. So it was just a horrific experience that was absolutely traumatic and was searing.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's very interesting that you talked about Picard's collective knowledge of things. And you talked then, right before that, you talked about the Borg as a collective. It's interesting, they have a guy who has a lot of... They want to capture him because he's got a lot of varied information, and they want to absorb him into this place where everybody's sort of got the same kind of information. Is that a sort of a decent assessment of what's going on here?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. We'll see later that the Borg talk about, resistance is futile. You will assimilate your culture, your intelligence into our own, so that we can better achieve perfection. It's this twisted ideology that sounds almost attractive. Who's against striving for perfection? Who's against assimilating other cultures to better our own?
Now, you could do it in an altruistic sense, in the time we live in, of learning a new language, living in a different culture so that you can better improve your own culture and your own way of thinking. That's not wrong, but the way the Borg do it is, it's not voluntary. They compel people, they force people. But they believe what they're doing is right. We're just achieving perfection. And the cost of perfection is, we assimilate you. We make you a higher evolved self than you were before. We're doing you a favor by assimilating. They're this weird ideology that they actually believe in. It's just scary.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, and that's what makes what happens next in the film scary. Picard is contacted by Starfleet, which informs him of a new Borg threat against Earth. But they don't want him to combat that threat. Starfleet does not.
Warwick, many people who've experienced a crucible struggle with how others view them afterward. What can we learn from Picard's reaction to being sidelined because of his past? Because that's really the reason why Starfleet doesn't want to send him into battle, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So given Picard's history with the Borg and having been assimilated and causing a lot of damage to Starfleet when he was one of them, in a sense, it's understandable why they didn't want to send Picard in. But it must have been very frustrating because Captain Picard is thinking, "I know the Borg better than any human. I know their weaknesses. I know their tactics. I, of all people, should be sent in and my crew of the Enterprise to combat the Borg. And the Borg are heading towards Earth. And Starfleet is sending many ships to fight the Borg. And it must have been so frustrating because the Enterprise is one of the top ships and technology and crew in all the Starfleet. How can you not send your best ship or arguably your best ship and your best crew? But Picard, while he deeply resented it and was frustrated, he did understand it.
Doesn't mean he agreed with it because Starfleet, from his perspective, did not have confidence in Picard's ability to tackle the Borg because he'd been assimilated by them, which he said introduced an unstable element that was not predictable. So he could coldly analyze and say, "I understand why. I don't agree, but I get it." But clearly he disagreed and obviously would feel put down by this, would feel like, okay, they don't have confidence in me. Surely I've proven in the six years since my ability to tackle the Borg and be a top-notch staffly captain, but it was frustrating. So I think the broader point here is sometimes we've gone through crucibles. Others may doubt our ability to face similar challenges again. I've seen what he or she has been through and I don't think they can tackle that again. I think they'd probably knockle under, they'd lose.
So I'm not going to put them in that situation again because I don't think they can hack it. And that may be right or wrong, but if you are that person where somebody in authority says, "I'm not sending you in because I don't think you can take it. I don't think you just cry uncle." You're not going to feel like, "Oh, of course I understand." You'll be thinking like, "No, no, no. I'm beyond that. Put me in, coach. Let
Me get in there. I can take this thing on. I'm not going to buckle." And when they don't listen to you, it's like, well, they don't have confidence in me. They don't trust me. I'm forever defined by my worst day because people don't have confidence in me not to fail again or buckle under again. It's humiliating, frustrating, and it certainly makes you feel put down and less than. It may be understandable, but it doesn't feel understandable to you. You feel like they don't trust me. Am I going to have to live my whole life based on that crucible? Won't anybody ever give me a chance again? To give me a break, give me a chance. That's what Captain Picard is thinking.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, and he gets a chance. He kind of seizes a chance because plans change when the Enterprise learns that the fleet, Starfleet, is losing the battle against the Borg. So, what do Picard and his crew then do to change what Starfleet has said they should do?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So Picard finds out that the fleet, they're not doing well, and the Borg is winning. Picard has specific instructions, don't enter the fray, don't enter the battle. But his sense of duty and obligation to fight the Borg is so paramount that, look, I can't let them win. The fleet is losing. They need the Enterprise. And he's thinking, "I know more than anybody how to fight the Borg and their weaknesses." And that proves to be, certainly in some ways, true.
So then being a smart man, a man of honor, he asks the crew whether they're willing to come with him because he's asking the crew to violate orders. That is not a small thing that could affect all of their careers. And the crew is of course united and says, "Let's go. We're with you." Which is very heartwarming. So, Picard enters the fray. He feels like Judy calls him to battle and he heads towards the Borg that are near Earth.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And then the Borg cube launches a smaller spherical ship towards Earth before being destroyed. That leads to a major crucible for the crew with major implications for the future, doesn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So here we have the Borg cube, which is very common. The Borg ships are in this cube shape. Now, Picard, he has extensive knowledge of the Borg and their weaknesses. So he finds a way to destroy the cube. He says, "Okay, target this particular sector of the cube."
And the crew was saying, "But that seems like it's a non-essential, non-critical part of the ship."
Well, somehow Picard, obviously, because of experience, he knows their weaknesses, and it proves to be by firing at that particular spot on the cube, it destroys them and destroys the Borg cube. But as you mentioned, not before this spherical ship leaves the cube and it hurdles towards Earth, but then this spherical ship, it may And it is to create a temporal vortex, which enables time travel. You see, the Enterprise is caught in this vortex wake and it has the ability to follow, but before it enters this temporal vortex, we can see that this Borg spherical ship, it has changed time. It has changed history. And we see that the present Earth is now being assimilated and is all Borg. There are no humans on the planet, only Borg.
And so, Picard realizes what has happened. They've gone to the path to change the future, and they have changed the future. So Picard and the Enterprise followed the Borg through this temporal vortex. And they're now in the past, they end up around Earth of 2063, and their time is the 24th century. And so in 2063, as we're told, this is 10 years after the Third World War where 600 million people died on Earth and major cities were destroyed.
So, we happen to see a colony in the woods of central Montana. And Picard and the Enterprise's mission is clear that they're in the past to stop the Borg changing the future and turning Earth into a Borg colony.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And the crew does a good job at figuring out the Borg plan. What is that plan, and what critical historical figure in the Star Trek universe does it involve?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So, obviously part of the plan is to change the future and ensure that Earth is a Borg colony. But there's another part of that Borg plan, and that is to stop a man by the name of Zefram Cochrane. And he, back in 2063, is about to launch a ship called the Phoenix and achieve warp drive. Now, warp drive in the Star Trek universe is faster than the speed of light travel. So you'll hear in various iterations, you'll say, okay, let's warp seven, warp 9.9, you can't go faster than warp 10. So that means multiples of the speed of light.
So, one of the interesting things in the Star Trek universe, there's a thing called the prime directive, which means that Federation cultures and planets, and certainly Starfleet, should not interfere with civilizations that are of pre-warp technology. So they might have steam engines, they might have cars, radios. It depends on the level of progression of their culture. But if they don't have warp drive, they're not meant to interfere with their culture and they're meant to just let it evolve on its own. That's one of the hallmarks of the Starfleet belief system.
So, in history, when the ship called The Phoenix is launched by Zefram Cochrane and achieves warp drive, a species known as the Vulcans, which it is very logical culture, they're flying by in their spaceship. When they see a ship with warp drive, now it's okay for them to make contact, because now this is a post-warp culture, post-warp civilization.
And so, in history, they do make contact, and that contact with Earth back in 2063 completely changes the trajectory of Earth culture. And so, one of the things that Picard and the Enterprise realize is it is critical that Zefram Cochrane launched this ship called The Phoenix, go and achieve warp drive and make contact with the Vulcans. And it's also pretty clear that the Borg don't want this to happen. They're all about defeating the Federation and really anybody in their path.
Not only do they want to assimilate Earth, they want to make sure the Federation never exists. It's hard to believe the Federation staff would exist without Earth of 2063 making contact with the Vulcans. So it's really twin objectives from the Borg. Assimilate Earth, and making sure that Zefram Cochran's flight that achieves warp travel never happens.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it's common in time travel movies, and we saw it when we did Back to the Future. Marty McFly leaves 1985, goes back to 1955, and his mom is not the same as she was in 1985. So, when you time travel, it's not uncommon to run into people who aren't exactly who your timeline tells you they are. And the Zefram Cochrane that the crew meets is not the hero that they studied in school. Here's a clip from the film that spotlights the differences in who he really is and who they know him as. Let's take a look and listen to that clip now.
VIDEO CLIP:
Only got an hour to go, doc. How you feeling?
I got a four alarm hangover, either from the whiskey or your laser beam, or both. But I'm ready to make history.
Joint Commander Riker.
Riker here.
We're ready to open the launch door.
Go ahead.
Oh, look at that. What, you don't have a moon in the 24th century?
Sure we do. This looks a lot different. There are 50 million people living on the moon in my time. You see Tyco City, New Berlin, even a Lake Armstrong in a day like this. And you know, doctor, Zefram-
Please, don't tell me it's all thanks to me. I've heard enough about the great Zefram Cochrane. I don't know who writes your history books or where you get your information from, but you people got some pretty funny ideas about me. You all look at me as if I'm some kind of saint or visionary or something.
I don't think you're a saint, doc. If you did have a vision. And now we're sitting in it.
You want to know what my vision is? Dollar signs. Money. I didn't build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity. You think I want to go to the stars? I don't even like to fly. I take trains. I built this ship so that I could retire to some tropical island filled with naked women. That's Zefram Cochrane. That's his vision. This other guy you keep talking about, this historical figure, I never met him. I can't imagine I ever will.
Someone once said, "Don't try to be a great man, just be a man, and let history make its own judgments."
It's rhetorical nonsense. Who said that?
You did, 10 years from now.
Gary Schneeberger:
So Warwick, what impact does that scene have on Cochrane moving forward? Because it shakes him up a bit, and puts him on a different trajectory.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Well said. It's interesting that sometimes our heroes don't measure up to the image we have of them. If we could go back in time, sometimes we'd say, "Huh, that's not what I read about." Well, maybe it depends when you saw them.
I'm reminded of young Washington and we spoke to one of the screenwriters, Dietrich Hogestratten. And if you went back in time to a young Washington in the 1740s, 1750s, I think one of the things you would see is somebody that had character, but was really not the great man that Washington became. He'd suffered defeats, humiliation. Nobody had a whole lot of confidence in Washington, be it the British army that he was at least attached to, being in the Virginia militia, or indeed his fellow soldiers in the Virginia militia.
But by the end of the movie, he's a different person. He has achieved some success. He has courage. So it depends.
At one point we sort of go back and see and make contact with our heroes. So in the case of Zefram Cochrane, yes, in the future he was considered a hero. There's a big statue of him erected on the spot in Montana where the action takes place when we're on the planet Earth. And one of the crew members on Starfleet Enterprise mentions that his high school was Zefram Cochrane High School.
And so, this all kind of weirds out Cochrane. And in an earlier scene, we see him just run off. He just doesn't want to be any part of this hero worship. And in this clip, we see him talking to William Riker, who's the first officer of the Enterprise. And he says, he's just tired of hearing about the great Zefram Cochrane. He says, "You all think I'm the saint or visionary. You got it all wrong. I mean, it's all about money for me. It's not about humanity. I don't even like to fly. I want to get rich so I can retire on some beautiful island with a whole bunch of women." That's the vision. Okay. That's it.
And, in this last part of the clip, Riker quotes somebody and the quote says this: "Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make his judgment."
And Cochrane says, "That's rhetorical nonsense. Who said that?"
And Riker says, "You, 10 years from now. It's your words." And so, I think Zefram Cochrane is being a bit harsh with himself. He says, "Look, I'm not a visionary. It's all about money." And while there's truth to that, I bet deep down there is at least a grain of a greater man in there, a grain of somebody that does have this great vision. I mean, achieving warp drive is an amazing thing that will benefit humanity. You can explore other planets in a way that's just not possible with pre-warp power.
So, I have to believe there were some good motives, even if there were just a few. And so, sometimes we undersell ourselves and say, "I'm not that great. It's all about me. There's nothing virtuous, nothing good about me."
And maybe that could be largely true, but maybe there's a grain of humanity, a grain of a desire for life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. Sometimes we undersell ourselves, as we'll see. Sometimes it requires help from others to help us see our true selves, but sometimes we're actually better than we think we are. We're not as bad as we really think we are. So that's one of the interesting elements of looking at Zefram Cochrane here in this clip.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. One of the things about his backstory I thought is interesting in light of what you just said, is that he likes to drink a little. Oh, okay. He likes to drink a lot. And with my background of having been an alcoholic, I learned the lesson that, why do you drink? Well, it's not how much you drink that makes you an alcoholic. It's why you drink.
And one of the reasons that I drank, main reason was to change the way I felt. And I wonder if Zefram Cochrane doesn't have some of that in him too, that this sort of devil may care, drinking too much guy, is trying to make up for something that he feels is missing from him. Maybe that's bad psychoanalysis. I don't know, but it seems like it might fit.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's so well said. So we see in early scenes where he's drinking, and he's got his favorite cheer on the jukebox, and sort of this basic kind of nightclub out in the woods in the wilds of Montana. And he might be trying to escape from himself thinking like, "I'm not that great," and this whole thing won't work. We lived in this post apocalypse Earth in which civilization has been largely destroyed. The cities are being destroyed. And there are factions that we hear that are all around the place attacking each other. It's not a particularly fun or pleasant place.
So, he's got to live in a world which is a shred of what it used to be where there could be factions all over the place, and his vision may come to nothing. So there are reasons why he might kind of dislike himself, dislike the world, and wants to drink to escape all of these thoughts about the dangers of the world, the destruction of much of humanity and him feeling like, "I'm just not good enough. What me? I'm a loser. I'll never amount to anything."
So yes, it's understandable in some ways why he takes to drink. It's very sad, but yes, we can guess about some of the motives behind it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. All right. Let's go back into the film. Back on the Enterprise. A group of Borg invade the ship's lower decks, assimilating some of the crew and modifying the ship. So these guys don't just assimilate and modify people. They assimilate and modify things. They're modifying the ship. What did Picard and his crew do next, and what happens to them?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, soon after the Enterprise travels back in time, they're following this Borg spherical ship. And the Enterprise destroys the Borg ship. So you think like, okay, danger over, the Borg have been defeated. We've still got to make sure that Zefram Cochrane takes off in a Phoenix and achieves warp travel, but at least one out of two parts of this mission accomplished.
Well, not so fast. So it seems that somehow the Borg had managed to sneak into the Enterprise and take over part of the crew and part of the ship. And one of the early clues to this is, when one of Picard's senior crew, Warf, tells Picard that the humidity and temperature have risen on the ship. And he quotes him exact numbers. Well, Picard is an expert on the Borg, obviously. And he knows that the humidity and the temperature that have changed on parts of the ship is exactly what the Borg like. That's what they need to flourish in.
So at that point, Picard realizes something is instantly wrong. He happened to be on Earth in the colony in Montana, because he's trying to make contact with Zefram Cochrane. So at that point, he instantly comes back to the Enterprise, and he knows that the Borg is somewhere on the ship.
So the Borg, we learn, have assimilated much of the Enterprise, including up to half the crew. And they've occupied a number of decks, including engineering. Meanwhile, the Borg is assembling a communications array on the outer hull of the ship. So Picard realizes that what they're trying to do is they're trying in the past to communicate with the Borg that then live at the time. And they're trying to summon their fellow Borg to help them conquer Earth.
Now we learned that the Borg are in the Delta Quadrant, which we know from other Star Trek series is, I don't know if it's a hundred light years away, it's a lot of light years away. Basically it would require, I don't know if it's 50, 100 years, generations to come to Earth, but the Borg, they don't really think about time the way we do. So it may take a while for the Borg in the Delta Quadrant to come, but what will happen is humanity will face the Borg hundreds of years earlier than they were ever meant to. And before they could even be remotely prepared to take on the Borg.
So clearly this is an enormous threat. And so we have Picard, Warf, and another crew member, they've done spacesuits and they're on the outer haul of the ship, and they attempt to stop the Borg assembly the communications array and then communicating with their fellow Borg all the way in the Delta quadrant.
So fortunately they do manage to destroy the communications array. And so that's one part of the mission solved. But meanwhile, we see that Commander Data, who's one of the key members of the crew, has been captured by the Borg. And somebody that we see is the Borg queen, somebody who's in charge, in one sense, of this collective. It's a bit strange because the Borg, they don't have any leader because they're a collective, but yet the Borg queen seems to be in charge. That's a bit of a hard to understand.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, think of Russia in World War II. They were a commune, right? And they had Stalin. So I think that's not unheard of.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Well, we're all equal except when we're not.
Gary Schneeberger:
Exactly. Exactly.
Warwick Fairfax:
So one of the interesting things about Data, which we know from Star Trek Next Generation series, is he's an android. He is a machine. Now he's a highly evolved machine. And in most cases, he doesn't have emotion much like Spock in the original series, Star Trek series who is Vulcan and doesn't have emotion. But Data is a machine and Data has always wanted to be human. He's always wanted to understand what it is to have emotion and empathy. And that's in his own way, he's tried to become more human.
So Data is captured by the Borg queen. So the Borg queen, she's trying to get Data to give over the encrypted computer codes of the ship, which will then allow her to have total control. And she does everything to tempt him, seduce him. I mean, she's a very clever enemy. She knows that Data wants to be human. So she kind of finds a way to graft human skin onto part of Data's arm so that he can feel like her breath over the hairs of his skin. It's just a weird thing. She's doing whatever it takes to seduce him, to control him, to get from him these computer codes. She's very evil, but she's very smart. So it's a scary, scary situation that Data finds himself in.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it starts to get scarier for everybody else too, because the Borg assimilate more decks of the Enterprise. As they do so, Warf suggests destroying the ship. And Picard angrily calls him a coward.
Picard is still rendered wobbly by his earlier encounter with the Borg, isn't he? It seems like he's triggered by his previous encounter with the Borg when the stakes for the Borg continue to get higher. And he calls out someone who's been a loyal crew member to him as a coward. Talk about that a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So here we have the Borg that keep assimilating parts of the ship, including many crew members. And, it seems that there is no way that they can stop the Borg. And so, at this point, the smart play is to abandon the ship, escape in escape pods, and destroy the ship so that the Borg can't get hold of the Enterprise because then they don't have their own ship anymore. The spherical ship has been destroyed. But if they get control of the Enterprise, then they can more easily take control of and conquer Earth. If they destroy the Enterprise, then they'll destroy the Borg. It seemed like that's a logical play, is to destroy the ship.
But Picard, he does not want to be defeated by the Borg. He sees in some sense destroying the ship as admitting defeat. And he remembers how, in a sense, they defeated him six years earlier when they assimilated him.
And so, he starts acting angrily, irrationally, and in a very mean, cruel way that's completely unlike the Captain Picard that we've known and loved throughout the movies and the TV series. And so, when he says that Warf is afraid and calls him a coward, that is a searing thing to say because those who know the original TV series, of The Next Generation, they'll know that Warf is a Klingon. And that is a warrior culture, that prides itself on courage and honor, and sacrificing yourself and your comrades. To be called a coward is the worst possible thing you can call a Klingon.
And so, when Picard calls this elite warrior a coward, it's like saying to a Navy SEAL, or some other elite warrior about times that they're a coward. Now they'll probably just laugh and think you're an idiot. A Klingon is going to kill you for that without even thinking, such is the pride they have in being a warrior.
And so what's really unfortunate to hear is Picard knows how damaging what he's saying is. And in that moment, he doesn't care. So he's thinking, "What's the most hurtful thing I can possibly say to my friend?" And he picks a good one. It was a very hurtful thing to say.
And Warf says he will kill any other man for saying this, but such is Warf's loyalty, and frankly love, of Captain Picard, that he doesn't do what he would do to any other living being. He would kill him on the spot, but not Captain Picard.
All that's to say is Picard is not acting rationally. All his senior crew know that the right decision is to destroy the ship and stop the board getting control of it. But in his rage, Picard cannot see straight. He cannot think straight. He's acting completely irrationally against the interest of his crew and against the interest of the very mission that he's there for, which is to destroy the Borg. He's acting irrationally in every possible way.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And he's also, in a very real sense, he's crossing a line from courage to obsession. And that's an interesting point to sort of broaden out to our listeners and viewers. How can people recognize when determination has become something destructive? What are the warning signs that our crucible as starting to control us instead of strengthening us? What finally snaps Picard back out of it when he finds himself in this situation?
Warwick Fairfax:
Picard is obsessed with not letting the Borg win. He can't stomach the thought of the bog getting control of his ship. And he somehow sees destroying the ship as letting the Borg win, which it's really not. Destroying the ship means the bog lose because they get destroyed, but he can't think straight. And so he just doesn't see it.
And so, his way of thinking makes no sense, but it's all fueled by rage and anger. I think what that says more broadly is, when we're filled with rage and anger. There is pretty much zero chance that we're going to make good and rational decisions. And we're also very likely to hurt those that we love and those that we work with, friends and family, everybody.
And so, we see Picard, he goes to his office just on the side of the bridge called his ready room. And someone from the colony, Lily, who happens to be on the Enterprise at this point, she enters Picard's ready room and she takes Picard on.
I mean, everybody else is just like, when Jean-Luc Picard is like this, there's no talking to him. They just realize, he's our boss, he's the captain. He's spoken. It is what it is. But not Lily.
So Lily says that everyone is saying to you that fighting the Borg is suicide. And Picard tells her of his assimilation six years ago, and says that he knows how to fight the Borg. And Lily says, "I get it. The Borg hurt you and you're going to hurt them back, almost like a kid. That guy hurt me. I'm going to hurt him back." Just this almost childish reaction that she's really calling him out on.
And Picard says in his century, they are beyond revenge. And Lily calls him on this and says, "I mean, that's rubbish." She says in effect, it's about revenge. She doesn't buy it for a second. She doesn't know Picard, but she knows somebody that's just not being honest with themselves.
And so, then she really uses an image, which she has no way of knowing is brilliant with Picard because he's a very well-read person. And she says that Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale. And Picard knows exactly what she means. This is all from the book Moby Dick. And he says, "It's not about revenge," which is of course what Captain Ahab is all about, "It's about saving the future of humanity."
And Lily yells at him and says, "Liar." She calls him out on it in the strongest possible way. You are lying to yourself, basically. And Lily tells him to blow up the ship.
This really gets to Picard and he just smashes the glass panel near him where he's got all the models of model ships. And he says, "We've made too many compromises. Not again, the line must be drawn here." He'll make them pay for what they've done.
And Lily begins to leave and says, "See you around, Ahab. Again, a very neatly timed barb, calling him Captain Ahab. And Picard begins to recite lines from Moby Dick, realizing that what Lily says is very true. And so he says that Ahab spent years hunting the white whale that crippled him, but in the end, it destroyed him and his ship. Lily said that Ahab did not know when to quit.
The message has got to Picard. He understands the image. And so Picard then goes to the bridge, and he says to his senior crew that they'll evacuate the Enterprise, and they're going to start the 15-minute order destruct sequence for the ship. And then Picard goes to Warf and apologizes, and says that Warf is the bravest man he's ever known. Clearly Picard deeply regrets what he said to Warf. And because Warf has a deep admiration, and indeed love, for Picard, he accepts the apology. Not an easy thing for Klingon to do when you've been called a cow. That's not something you kind of move on from, pretty much ever, but such is the depth of their relationship.
So I think what this shows is sometimes we can act irrationally, because we are triggered by a painful memory of a past crucible. And in those circumstances, it is not easy to think clearly and to think rationally.
And it's certainly not easy to make good decisions. Sometimes in the midst of being triggered by a past crucible, it may be impossible to make a good decision. And, you might think, "I'm a resilient, evolved human. I can pull myself out." Sometimes you may not be able to. And in the case of Picard, he's one of the strongest, most rational leaders you could ever meet. And even Captain Picard in that instance, he can't see it. If Captain Picard can't see it, I mean, that's something to think about.
So this is where a team of fellow travelers is so critical. Having an advisor, like Lily in this sense, will speak truth to power is so important. And Picard hardly knows Lily and they've just met in a sense. But she ends up being the one who goes to the mat to try to save Picard and the crew, in a sense.
And so, it's ironically not one of his longtime friends, but she goes at it. She calls him out on his lies to himself and he says, "Oh, we're beyond revenge." And she just says, "Liar." She knows exactly what it's about. It's about revenge and uses this very neat story of Captain Ahab.
So what this says is, when you go through your darkest times and you're triggered by a crucible, that is where having fellow travelers is so critical. And having a fellow traveler like Lily, who was really only just his fellow traveler, hadn't been there for very long at all, is just so critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
We talk a lot, we have talked a lot in more than 300 episodes of this show, about the importance of fellow travelers. But something else that you hit on here as you were describing what happened, is something else we talk about. I mean, there's power in fellow travelers, yes, but there's also power in apology. Fellow travelers speak truth to power, but the power sometimes needs to speak apology to those who they lead, who they may have judged wrongly. That's a big part of this as well. And it's a big part of how you move beyond a crucible sometimes, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's such a good point. Sometimes when we're triggered by a crucible, or maybe in the throes of a crucible itself, we can say very hurtful and damaging things to those we love, those we know, and those we work with, very often, when we're at our lowest point and feel hurt the most, our prime target for our anger is those we love. Makes no sense, but such is human psychology, unfortunately.
And so, when that happens, because it's more when than if, and we say things that are hurtful and devastating to those we love and know and work with, because we're in the midst of a crucible or being triggered by something that happened in the past, We need to go to those people and say, "What I said was uncalled-for. I should never have said that to you. I was wrong. I was so hurt. No excuse. Please forgive me."
That's what you do, because it's inevitable over the course of our lives that we'll say hurtful things to those we know and love. And it's nice to try and avoid it happening, and we should do whatever we can to stop it from happening. But when it does happen, because it's when, not if, we've got to clean up after ourselves. We've got to apologize and hope and pray that that person will forgive us. If they don't, well, that makes it tough, but we're not responsible for their actions, but we are responsible for ours, which is to apologize.
Gary Schneeberger:
Good bonus content here at Beyond the Crucible. All right, so let's get back to the movie. As Cochrane, Riker, and engineer Geordi La Forge prepared to activate the warp drive on The Phoenix, Picard discovers the plan the Borg queen has set into motion. And Data doesn't let that crucible get the better of him, does he?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So Picard, as we've mentioned, he's ordered the evacuation of the Enterprise, they're escaping their escape pods, and he's initiated the self-destruct sequence for the ship.
But he learns that Data has been captured by the Borg and in particular the Borg Queen. And Picard tells Lily, as she and the others are about to escape from the ship, that one of the crew members, Data, has been captured, and he wants to save Data. And Picard said that years earlier, six years earlier, that his crew risked everything to save him. And now, Picard is willing to risk his life to save his friend and fellow crew member Data. It's a very noble thing to do. The ship is being evacuated. The order destruct sequence is on, but Picard wants to find a way, before the ship blows up, of saving his friend Data. It's a very noble and self-sacrificial act that Picard is willing to take.
So meanwhile, Cochrane, Riker, and La Forge, they're about to activate the warp drive on the Phoenix. They're out in space. They've left the Earth atmosphere.
But the Borg queen, of course, she wants to stop this and destroy the Phoenix, because she does not want the Phoenix to achieve warp drive and then to make first contact with the Vulcans, which will of course change history for the better for the Earth, which of course is not good for the Borg, because they want to subjugate the people of the Earth and every other civilization they can get their hands on.
So, Picard confronts the Borg queen in his efforts to save Data. And he does an incredibly noble thing. He asks the Borg queen to let Data go in return for him freely offering himself to the Borg. Now remember, that trauma he went through six years earlier, it's Picard's worst nightmare. He's saying, the agony and the trauma that I went through, I will need to go through it again. It's one thing not to know what's going to happen. It's another to know exactly how much pain, and how terrible it's going to be. And you do it anyway to save the life of your friend. That is about as noble as he can possibly be.
And his Borg name is Locutis. Locutis the Borg. And he knows there's something about the Borg queen in which he has so many special gifts and knowledge that it's the Borg queen's advantage for him to willingly offer himself rather than just him being forcibly becoming a Borg. So, he says that you can have Locutis, and Locutis will be with you. Picard will be with you.
And the Borg queen says in this malevolent tone, "Welcome home, Locutis." It's this evil, evil tone. But it appears that Data is now with the Borg, and has given the Borg the encryption code. It appears that Data is now with the Borg and has given the encryption code to the computer, to the Borg queen, which means that the Borg will now be able to control the ship and do whatever they want to with the ship and the civilization of Earth.
So Data then sends quantum torpedoes to destroy the Phoenix, which is what obviously the Borg wants. And the Borg queen, because they don't want the Phoenix to achieve warp drive and get in contact with the Vulcans. But it turns out that those torpedoes, they miss the mark. And the Borg queen yells at Data because Data's an Android, doesn't make mistakes. Clearly it's on purpose. And so, Data says in a sort of a deadpan, low-key voice, resistance is futile, which is what the Borg always say to their victims as they're about to assimilate them.
And so, Data then shatters a pipe that has plasma in it. And Data knows that plasma will destroy all flesh. Remember the Borg, they're part human and part machine, but they need flesh. They need the human part to function. And so, Data knows it will destroy all the Borg, including the Borg queen.
Now, Picard understands what's happening. So he climbs up the conduit to try to get above where the plasma is, instead of this green gaseous substance that's all over engineering, where they're at. And the Borg queen is trying to save herself by grabbing at the feet of Picard. But Data pulls the Borg queen down, and she is killed along with the other Borg. The plasma is then vented, and Data then admits to Picard that he was tempted for a time by the Borg queen's offer of being with the Borg and being part of their collective.
And Picard asks, "Well, how long were you tempted?"
And Data says, "0.68 seconds." Doesn't seem like much, but Data says, "For an android, that's an eternity." So he might say to himself, "Man, I was tempered for 0.68 seconds." Maybe for us that might mean months. I don't know. But yeah, so Data will have to try and find a way to forgive himself for being tempted for such a long period of time, 0.68 seconds. So there we go.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's a lifetime. My goodness. So the Borg's now neutralized. And with the Borg neutralized, all that's up in the air, literally, is whether Cochrane completes his warp flight. How does that turn out?
Warwick Fairfax:
So back on the Phoenix, we know that those quantum torpedoes have missed their mark. So Cochrane initiates warp drive, and he's indeed detected by the Vulcan ship that happened to be passing nearby. And so the ship, having seen that this population of Earth has achieved warp drive technology, they then make first contact, hence the name of the movie. And the Vulcan ship lands at this colony in Montana, and they come out of their ship and they greet Cochrane.
And of course, the Vulcans say what they always do, "Live long and prosper." That's what Spock says in the original Star Trek series. That's just the natural greeting to each other. Live long and prosper, which yeah, not a bad greeting. And so, the Borg have now been destroyed. Cochrane and the Phoenix have achieved warp drive, and first contact with the Vulcans has happened. History is being preserved, and the future will be as it should be.
So the movie ends with the Enterprise then heading back to the 24th century, using the temporal vortex.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that lands the plane on the plot of Star Trek First Contact, but there's still a question to ask you. And that's the one that we always ask at the end of these summer series episodes, and that's this. How do the crucibles that the characters in this film go through, the folks in Star Trek First Contact, how do their crucibles and what they do to overcome them, move beyond them? How can they help us move beyond our own crucibles?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. One of the biggest lessons we learned in this movie, Star Trek: First Contact, is from Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We can see even a man as sane and balanced and caring and empathetic, and as great a leader as he is, can be affected by past trauma and crucibles. And, he was about to continue to fight the Borg on his ship when the rational, sane choice for the crew, for himself, for the future of humanity. I mean, this is not a small decision, would be to blow up the ship, and have everybody evacuate and initiate the self-destruct sequence.
But Picard was so filled with rage with what they did to him by assimilating him six years earlier and robbing him of his individuality and forcing him to kill enormous numbers of people and living beings, just throughout the galaxy, that he could not get over that. He could not obviously forgive them. And so, it just was not possible for him to think straight.
So I think what this shows, it's possible for past trauma and crucibles to affect us in the present, and stop us from making sane, rational decisions. It's easy to say, "I'm in this evolved being and I've gotten past my crucibles and I'm good." Well, with Captain Picard, as sane a leader as you ever come across, can be affected by past crucibles, it means all of us can. None of us should say, we're so evolved. We're so progressed in our psyche and self-knowledge that yes, we're bulletproof. Given a certain set of circumstances, any of us, I think, can face a situation where we're triggered by a past crucible, and it makes it hard, if not impossible, to make sane, rational decisions.
And so yes, maybe sometimes we can sap out of it by ourselves, but sometimes we can't. And that's where having fellow travelers, or an advisor like Lily, is so critical. I mean, she was willing to speak truth to power and go to the mat. And she hardly knew the guy. It's just amazing. And sometimes when somebody speaks truth to us, we did not want to hear it.
And a true advisor, a true fellow traveler, is willing to risk the relationship for the sake of getting through to us, because they care so deeply. So in that sense, that is the ultimate fellow traveler.
I think of really an example that we've talked about earlier, in Louis Howe, who was the key advisor to Franklin Roosevelt. As we described in that recent podcast, in 1921, Franklin Roosevelt got polio. He was paralyzed from the waist down. And in that time, if you got polio, it was considered a political death sentence. You were meant to stay home. And that was just the culture at the time, hard to understand. But in the world of the '20s and '30s, if not beyond, that was the culture.
Well, Louis Howe was Roosevelt's political advisor, helped in campaigns in the early '20s and 1920 presidential campaign, when Roosevelt was a Democratic candidate for vice president. And he wouldn't let Roosevelt give up. He just encouraged his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin, just not to give up. We can get you back in the political limelight. Your career's not over.
It's unclear exactly how much Roosevelt pushed back. It's clear that Louis Howe was willing to do whatever it took to help Franklin Roosevelt not give up and achieve Franklin Roosevelt's dreams, which led to, of course, him being president and also being president during World War II. So, such is the value of an advisor.
So, we also see other characters in their growth. Zefram Cochrane, he was a cynical, hard-drinking guy who claimed his vision for this warp-capable ship was purely for money so he could live a good life. It seemed like there were not too many redeeming qualities with Zefram Cochran, but in reality, there was some altruism in his vision. He just wasn't willing to admit it.
And there again, we see a fellow traveler. We see William Riker, the first officer of the Enterprise. And he quotes a future Cochrane, 10 years from then, saying that we should not try to be a great man or a great person, just a man, a human being, and let history make his judgment. He basically called out to the better angels and Zefram Cochran, and Cochrane would grow into being a better version of himself and less cynical. We see a number of examples of people willing to give their lives for their fellow crew members, their fellow humans. And they were all about living lives of significance.
Self-sacrifice is a common theme in this movie. The crew of the Enterprise is willing to go back in time to save the Earth from being a Borg colony, that they were willing to do whatever it took to stop the Borg winning.
Picard is willing to sacrifice his own life and freedom for Data. That is no small sacrifice, to be captured by the Borg again and forced to do what they want him to do, and potentially hurt other people. He's willing to do whatever it took to save his friend Data. So, one of the themes in this movie is, to move beyond our worst out crucible. We need friends, we need help from fellow travelers. There's no question that Captain Jean-Luc Picard needed help from Lily, a fellow traveler he'd only just met. We can see that Zefram Cochrane needed help from William Riker.
We need fellow travelers who are willing to help us. In a sense, Picard was also fellow traveler to Data. He was willing to do whatever it took to help Data be freed from the Borg and the Borg queen.
So, sometimes we might be where Captain Picard was and this sort of doom loop of anger and self-incrimination. And we might feel like there's no escape. And maybe we've tried everything we could, but maybe we need help. And that's where having friends and fellow travelers is absolutely critical.
Another lesson from this movie is sometimes we can spend our lives endlessly ruminating about the past, being angry at ourselves, angry at others. I can't believe I did that, like Picard. I can't believe that I hurt so many people and let the Borg capture my intelligence and my knowledge. It wasn't his fault, but it doesn't stop ourselves from endlessly beating ourselves up, or being angry at the things that we did have control over and the way we hurt other people.
We need to forgive ourselves. We need to give others. Yes, that doesn't mean condoning, but we have to move on. If we don't move on, how are we going to continue with the vision that's going to uplift ourself and others? We won't be able to, because we're in this endless doom loop of self-recrimination and self-loathing. That helps nobody. It doesn't help our friends, our family. It helps nobody. So we've got to find a way to forgive ourselves and move on, so that we can lead a life of significance, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others.
Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, take a look. The house lights are coming up. The house lights are coming up. That ends the feature, as it were, on this episode of Back to a Better Future: the Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. This was week seven, folks. We've got one week left.
And I'm going to call on you, Scott, because this is going to be the last time that you'll have a chance to do what I'm about to ask you to do for, if my math is right, probably 50 weeks, right? 52 weeks in a year. And we do this for... No, wait, we do this for eight weeks. My goodness. It's going to take you like 40-some weeks. I can't do the math on the fly here. It's going to be a while, Scott. So here's what I need. I need a drum roll right now so we can talk about the last episode.
Excellent. We will be back next week, folks, with our eighth and final episode of our summer movie series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And that is on the movie. I know the drum roll's probably still going. This is good. I'm dragging the moment out. The movie is The Martian, another sort of space flight film.
So, as you leave the theater, please take your popcorn boxes and your sodas with you, and we will see you next week. We'll save you an aisle seat.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement.
As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper, or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance.
Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
A farm boy, a princess, a smuggler, a druid, and a robot walk into a crucible. What happens next changed cinema forever.
In this episode, we dive into Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as part of the sixth and final installment of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. We unpack the crucibles faced by some of the most iconic characters in film history — Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, and Han Solo — and examine the tragedies unleashed by Darth Vader. Each character’s journey offers a distinct and powerful lesson about what it takes to turn setbacks into significance, and what happens when we choose the dark side instead.
Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film? Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. We also see Luke and he's grumbling a lot about his life. He just doesn't want to be on this planet. He wants to get off this rock. So we don't know much about Luke other than he's also not a happy camper and somehow just feels like, I don't know where my life is headed, but I sure don't want to be in this desolate, desert-ridden place.
Gary Schneeberger:
Those names, C-3PO and Luke, are familiar to anyone who's watched the Star Wars films, but maybe not from the vantage point we discussed them here. This week in the sixth episode of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema, we unpack the crucibles not only these two characters face in the film that kicked off the saga, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. We also look at the trials Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia and Han Solo must move beyond and the tragedies Darth Vader dishes out. How can understanding the lessons of the crucibles they overcome or caused help you turn your setbacks into significance? Stay tuned.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have joined us in the midst of our summer series, which we do every summer. And if you have not heard or seen the first several episodes, this is the sixth episode, if you haven't seen the first five, we encourage you to go to beyondthecrucible.com and look them up because there's some pretty robust conversations here. That is because we're once again focusing on the world of film. We had so much fun for the three years that we've done films. We're doing it for a fourth time this year. And after doing movies spotlighting heroes, that's sports heroes, that's historical heroes, military heroes, then we did movies that made the American Film Institute's top 100 films, so really classic films. And then last year we did just a roundup of films that really had a lot of crucibles in them.
And in each one of those series, we've just had a great time and we've brought, I hope, I pray, I think that we brought some great insights on how to manage your crucibles and move beyond them. So that's why we're doing it again this year. And this year we've decided, we've landed on something that's near and dear to the heart of our host, Warwick Fairfax, and that is science fiction films. Here's what our series is about this year. It's called Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. So, Warwick, before we get going, I'm going to ask you what I ask you every episode of this series. Why are we back in the theater talking about movies again? This is the fourth time, as I said, we've done this. And what are you hoping our listeners and viewers will take away from our discussions in this series?
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Gary, we both love movies and we really enjoy looking at movies from a Beyond the Crucible perspective. Watching a movie for fun is different than when you're watching it from Beyond the Crucible.
Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.
Warwick Fairfax:
So you're looking at what are the challenges and typically a movie portraying a protagonist that's facing significant challenges that they seek to overcome. And as you've mentioned, we've done superheroes, sports heroes, historical heroes. And as you say, we've done American Film Institute's top 100 movies last year, focus on films with significant crucibles. But yeah, it's just something that's a lot of fun to look at a movie and deconstruct it, if you will, saying, "What are the key learnings that we can have? How do the protagonist either grow in their wisdom and courage?" Or sometimes it happens, the reverse is true rather than not being defined by their worst day. They are defined by their worst day and they get an erosion of their soul and character. So movies are a lot of fun in that sense and are very helpful to us as we all learn to try to figure out how do we overcome our crucibles and live lives of significance.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you are particularly excited about the genre of film that we're talking about in this series because you are a big science fiction film fan. Science fiction everything fan, I think is fair to say. So why do you love science fiction so much? And what about science fiction films in particular make them ripe for us discussing crucibles and how we move beyond them?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I've loved science fiction since I was very young, both in movies and TV shows. And I think of that iconic movie, 2001: The Space Odyssey. It came out in 1968 and you saw future technology such as iPad-like things on the back of seats that are in front of you, which obviously didn't exist in 1968. You had talking computers that were sentient and actually caused a lot of crucibles for the folks in 2001: The Space Odyssey. You even had video conferencing.
And what 2001: Space Odyssey did so well is they put brands on them. So if you were making a video call from the Space Station back to Earth, it was a Bell Telephone, which was the former AT&T. I was also a fan of pretty much every science fiction show, including the original Star Trek, the day from 1966 to '69. And truth be told, I think I've watched pretty much every Star Trek series since. My favorite one, which we might talk about one of these days or something related to it is Star Trek: Next Generation. But I also was a big fan of great science fiction novels written by some of the classic authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
And what I love about science fiction and still do, it's not just about the future technology, which is amazing, but at its best, it explores deep societal issues that affect the human race. How will humans interact with other forms of life and technology? And it's very relevant as looking at technology as we look at AI. And a lot of folks are thinking about is AI safe? What role does that have in the future of humans? And that's something definitely is explored in science fiction. So in science fiction, we see that very significant crucibles are portrayed. Can the human race survive? Will the expansion of the human race across the galaxy be beneficial or not? And will technology get to the point where it will actually control humans? A lot of very deep issues.
Gary Schneeberger:
And here, folks, in episode six, we're looking at the 1977 film that when Warwick and I first saw it was simply called Star Wars. That was before there were several sequels and prequels made. And now it is called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. And what's interesting about this movie, it was not only the top grossing film in 1977, the year it came out. And let's put a pin in that for a second and say the last four movies that we've talked about in this series were all the number one films in their year. Right?
This one, and we back up, it was Jurassic Park. Then we back up one more. It was Terminator 2: Judgment... It was, sorry, Back to the Future and then Terminator 2: Judgment Day. So the last four movies that we've talked about were the number one film of the year that they were released. But here's another fact about Star Wars that's really, really interesting. And that is, it is the number two motion picture in terms of total box office adjusted for inflation in movie history. Two.
I'm going to read the number so I get it right. It is made, adjusted for inflation, 1 billion, 629 million. I'm not used to these big numbers. $496,559. That's how much the first Star Wars, just the first one has made adjusted for inflation. And I told you this earlier when we were preparing, Warwick, but there's only one movie ahead of it, folks. I'm going to ask you to figure what movie could be ahead of Star Wars, all time box office adjusted for inflation. Think about that for five, four, three, two, one. It was Gone With the Wind is number one at something more than 1 billion, 600 million dollars. So pretty fascinating trivia here.
Here's another bit of fascinating. This is my second favorite part of the series. My first favorite part might be Warwick getting to say protagonist, which is just that sweet, catchy Australian accent that he has just a touch-up still, but it's the log line of the film. Here's the summary. The film industry calls this the log line. It's a short, compact version of what the film is about. And this is a good one.
A young farm boy joins forces with rebels, a mercenary and a wizard to rescue a princess and destroy an evil Empire's planet-killing space station, unlocking his destiny as a Jedi Knight. That's tight. That is a very tight summary of Star Wars. But the even more famous summary of Star Wars, Warwick, really is the first thing audiences see as the iconic opening text scrolls across the screen. The openings really become a character almost itself in the Star Wars cinematic universe. What does it say as those words scroll across and up the screen? And how does it frame the action and intrigue that we're in store for?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I think back to when we saw this movie at the theaters in 1977, and the first thing you see is space with stars and these giant letters kind of roll towards you as the iconic John Williams score plays. I mean, it was quite an epic beginning to the movie. And as we hear this music, these are the lines, the words that we see scrolling towards us. It says, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." And then it continues with the story of how that there's a civil war between the Rebel Alliance and the evil Galactic Empire.
Rebel spies have stolen the secret plans of the empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, which sounds pretty ominous. And that Death Star has enough power to destroy an entire planet. Princess Leia races home with the stolen plans that can save their people and restore freedom to the galaxy while pursued by the Empire's sinister agents. Now what's interesting here is George Lucas that created Star Wars, the whole Star Wars motif harkens back to the serials that were movie theaters in the early '30s and '40s.
You go to the Saturday movie and before the main feature would play, you'd have this half hour serial. So it could be Flash Gordon, Batman, Superman. I mean, there's all sorts of heroic adventures. And it would take maybe several weeks to see the full story. Come back next week's at the part two and Flash Gordon. Will he escape from the evil Emperor Ming? I think that's who he was from what I can remember. So it definitely starts off with that kind of mindset.
And from the beginning of the movie, we are confronted with the central crucible challenge that we'll see play out. Will the Rebel Alliance be able to stop the Death Star, which threatens to destroy the Rebel Alliance and any prospect of freedom in the galaxy? Or will the evil Empire prevail? Who will win, the forces of good or the forces of evil?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. It's interesting when you mentioned that opening crawl, right? A galaxy far, far away. Here's some inside trivia that you don't know, folks, about the title of this series, which is Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. One of the ideas we kicked around in the beginning was a crucible far, far away. And it just didn't quite measure up to Back to a Better Future. But that was one of the things in considerations.
Warwick Fairfax:
So what's interesting is two of the movies that we're covering in the summer series, one is Star Wars, the original 1977 version, and a movie that we have already covered is Back to the Future. So in that sense, Back to the Future won out over Star Wars.
Gary Schneeberger:
And hopefully, you listen to that episode on Back to the Future, because it was indeed an interesting conversation. All right. So after the crawl happens on the screen, the film does quick introductions. Lucas does a great job as director and producer and writer of this film. It does quick introductions of some of the main characters to get us going on our journey. Who do we meet in these first few scenes and how does their introduction set up the plot for Star Wars?
Warwick Fairfax:
So after the opening words that we see, we see that Princess Leia's ship is captured by this large Empire ship. And for those of us who saw that movie for the first time, when you see this massive ship that looks like some huge battleship flying through space, the technology at the time was like, "Wow." I mean, you were just floored. It's like when we were looking at Jurassic Park and for the first time you saw these dinosaurs roaming around. Also, to John Williams' music, it was that kind of a moment.
And so Princess Leia Ship, it's captured by this large Empire ship. Leia gives a droid, in other words, a robot, R2-D2, the secret plans for the Death Star. And then we meet Darth Vader of the Empire soon after. Leia is captured and Darth Vader wants the stolen plans from her. And he knows that she's part of the Rebel Alliance. So meanwhile, R2-D2, who now has the secret plans and another droid, C-3PO, they flee in an escape pod to a planet below. And so we see the unfolding of a central theme in the movie. Leia wants to get the stolen plans for the Death Star back to the Rebel Alliance.
Meanwhile, Darth Vader and the Empire will stop at nothing to get those stolen plans back. You'll see that through most of the movie. They really don't think it's going to play that much difference if the Rebel Alliance gets hold of these plans because they feel that the Death Star is impregnable. But that being said, they don't want to leave anything to chance. So they're desperate to get these stolen plans back.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And then next we see R2-D2 and C-3PO. Pin in that for a second, folks. I'm confessing to you here on the podcast that when I was 12 years old when this movie first came out, and I talked about it with my friends in school, I referred to C-3PO as C-3 Po. And people, all my classmates made fun of me. And I might have a little bit of that still stuck to me, but we see R2-D2 and C-3PO. I got it right now, old former classmates. I got it right now.
They've landed on a desolate desert planet, Tatooine. And as they make their way to where they really don't know where they're going, they're just making their way around the planet, C-3PO says something that sums up not just what the droids are going through, but how it feels for all of us when we're living under the weight of a crucible. This is one of those moments that Warwick talked about at the start where you watch it for fun, you watch it in the theater, you're just having a good time, not for Beyond the Crucible purposes, you don't notice this kind of stuff, but what C-3PO says in this scene really sums up what it feels like to be hit by a crucible, doesn't it, Warwick? And what does he say?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it does indeed. So we've got this escape pod with R2-D2 and C-3PO, and it hurdles towards this desert planet. And when it lands on this planet, I mean, it's just desert sand dunes for miles and miles. And so here's C-3PO and R2-D2 trudging through the desert. And there's an interesting interplay that will play out throughout much of the movie. C-3PO, it constantly grumbles. He's like, "Why are we here?" And he's just really a wet blanket. And while we can hear what he says with R2-D2, it just really communicates through electronic swaths. So we don't know what he's saying.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
But what happens is throughout the movies, C-3PO is, amongst other things, a translation droid, explains to us what he's saying. R2-D2 is on a mission to get the stolen battle plans back to the Rebel Alliance. And he will stop at nothing to accomplish his mission. On the other hand, C-3PO seems to blame everything that goes wrong on R2-D2. And at one point he's so disgusted with R2-D2, he blames him for everything that possibly could go wrong in life. He just goes in a separate direction. And so then C-3PO says these immortal words, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot at life. What a desolate place this is."
So imagine that you have a fellow traveler and they act like C-3PO. It just gets to be annoying like sand on the gears. It's like anything you could possibly whine or complain about, C-3PO will. The glass is always half empty. The world's going to end. It's a gloomy day, even if there's not a cloud in the sky, and he's always going to complain. But despite the fact that R2-D2 certainly does not have an ideal fellow traveler, R2-D2 is loyal to the mission and he will not give up.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it's the glass that was half full is going to become less full because next, the pair are captured by the Jawa hunters. We aren't sure immediately what these creatures are going to be doing with the droids. But once again, C-3PO is not feeling that this crucible, as we say, is happening for him, not to him. He is really still living in the fact that it's happening to him. What does he say? And how is it something that's all too familiar again to us earthlings when we go through crucibles?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. For C-3PO, everything in life is happening to them. Every event that occurs around you is always for ill, is always going to harm you. That's just the way he looks at life. It's a pretty gloomy droid. And so yeah, here we have these small creatures, the Jawa hunters, and they've captured R2-D2 and C-3PO and they're inside this large transport with a whole bunch of other droids and what looks like a junkyard setting. And so C-3PO in classic fashion says, "Will this never end? There is no sign for hope. There is no sign for optimism. In the world of C-3PO, you're always defined by your worst day. And tomorrow can always be worse than today." That's just his negative view of life.
Gary Schneeberger:
So folks, think about it right now. B and R2-D2, not a C-3PO as you go through life and you encounter crucibles. That is learning number one, I think, from our discussion of Star Wars. The scene then shifts, Warwick. We meet the hero of the piece, the young man certainly with the greatest story arc in the film. And that's Luke Skywalker, whose uncle buys the droids to help him around the farm. He buys them from the Jawa hunters. Turns out they were just trying to make some money off the droids. Luke seems to be suffering from something else we talk about at Beyond the Crucible quite a bit. And that is this, is this all there is feeling about his life? How does that show up, Warwick, in what he says and does as we get to know him in the scenes that follow?
Warwick Fairfax:
So at first, Luke's uncle, he wants to buy C-3PO and some other droid that you see sparks going on and just starts failing. And so only then does C-3PO mention R2-D2. And of course, C-3PO grumbles about having to help R2-D2. Now notice when C-3PO is bought by Luke's uncle, he doesn't say, "Well, wait, hang on. You want an R2 unit? You absolutely need R2-D2." He only mentions that after this first R2 fails. So it's not like C-3PO is fine this moment. He's happy, at least, in the first instance, to abandon his comrade until, "Okay, fine, I guess maybe I need to help him since this other R2 unit's not working."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Now we also see Luke, and he's grumbling a lot about his life. And he just doesn't want to be on this planet. He wants to get off this rock. So we don't know much about Luke other than he's also not a happy camper and somehow just feels like, I don't know where my life is headed, but I sure don't want to be in this desolate, desert-ridden place. Not a whole lot of reason for hope. "What kind of life am I going to have in this rock?" As he puts it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. While doing some cleanup though on R2-D2, Luke finds something that will lead him to the adventuresome life he craves. What does he find and what happens next?
Warwick Fairfax:
So while cleaning R2-D2, Luke triggers a video message from Leia. And Leia says this, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You are my only hope." And the message just plays back again and again. And so at first, Luke's not really quite sure what this is. And then R2-D2, always through C-3PO as his interpreter, says that he, R2-D2, is the private property of Obi-Wan. And that this message, the full message is a private message for him. Now Luke thinks, "I wonder if he's referring to old Ben Kenobi."
So Luke is having dinner with his aunt and uncle, and Luke asks about Obi-Wan. And his uncle says that Obi-Wan died at the same time as Luke's father, as if a long time ago. And his uncle wants Luke to focus on preparing new droids for tomorrow and to focus on working at the farm. Now, Luke says he wants to transmit his application for the academy this year and not work another year for his uncle with the harvest and the farm. And his uncle says, "Look, Luke, I need you for one more season. So forget the academy. I need you here."
Luke is disappointed and he leaves. And after he leaves, his aunt says to his uncle that Luke is not a farmer and that he's too much of his father in him. And then his uncle says these very interesting words, he says, "Well, that's what he's afraid of, that Luke is too much of his father." The scene ends as we see Luke staring out in the night sky as he reflects and looks out on the twin sons of this planet.
And clearly Luke is frustrated. He doesn't want to be there on that rock. His uncle just wants him to stay and walk on the farm. His aunt says, "Look, Luke's not a farmer, but it just feels like Luke is trapped in this life." It does seem, as we've said, a bit of a life of quiet desperation, but maybe his uncle will let him out in a year's time. Maybe next year will never come. Who knows? But it seems like for the time being, Luke's going nowhere and he's stuck in a life that he really doesn't want to live, but what alternative is there?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. So you mentioned he was looking out at the twin sons. He falls asleep. Ah, but when he wakes up, Luke discovers the first beats of his destiny. As we call it at Beyond the Crucible, the first beats of his life of significance. So what does he discover? What happens after Luke wakes up the next morning?
Warwick Fairfax:
When Luke wakes up, he discovers that R2-D2 is gone. R2-D2 was never one to flag in pursuit of his mission. And so here's this little R2 unit and he's wandering in the desert looking for Obi-Wan. So Luke and C-3PO, they head out in the desert in some kind of hovercraft vehicle that hovers over the desert. It's kind of pretty cool and-
Gary Schneeberger:
Especially in 1977, it was pretty cool.
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, absolutely. And so they're wandering in the desert, Luke and C-3PO looking for R2-D2. Now they realize that R2-D2 must be looking for Obi-Wan because that's what is said. So what then happens is R2-D2, C-3PO and Luke, they're captured by these sand people, like little creatures. And fortunately, Obi-Wan comes on the scene. He sees what's happening and rescues him and brings him back to his place. Luke says that R2-D2 was looking for his former owner, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now Obi-Wan says he's not heard that name in many years. And Obi-Wan says that that is his name, even though Luke knows him by Ben Kenobi and that he's not dead yet, because remember his uncle said, "Obi-Wan's no longer with us. He's dead."
But he's not gone by that name in a long, long time, Obi-Wan Kenobi. So Luke's encounter with Obi-Wan would indeed change the direction of Luke's life. That's amazing how sometimes you meet one person and it can change the whole direction of your life. You're not maybe going to realize it at the time, but that absolutely happens when Luke meets Obi-Wan.
Gary Schneeberger:
Good, good point. Obi-Wan then gives him a special gift that cements the non-farming life that Luke is going to have and also explains the parameters of the battle of good versus evil that play out in the rest of, not just this film, but all of the films that follow in the Star Wars saga. Let's take a look and a listen of a clip that unpacks that moment really nicely.
Video:
Luke Skywalker: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals, thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.
Luke Skywalker: You fought in the Clone Wars?
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Yes. I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father.
Luke Skywalker: I wish I'd known him.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: He was the best star pilot in the galaxy and a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me, I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn full idealistic crusade like your father did.
C-3PO: Sir, if you'll not be needing me, I'll close down for a while.
Luke Skywalker: Sure, go ahead. What is it?
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon for the more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic before the dark times, before the Empire.
Luke Skywalker: How did my father die?
Obi-Wan Kenobi: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force.
Luke Skywalker: The force?
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Now the force is what gives the Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, talk about that that scene and its importance to what's to come for the rest of Star Wars.
Warwick Fairfax:
So this scene is a powerful scene. It gives you a bit of background to what's happened and it's the beginning of a call to action, a call to purpose for Luke. So it's an incredible scene. So here we see that Obi-Wan, he's fought in the Clone Wars as Luke's uncle did. Obi-Wan says that he once was a Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan just like Luke's father. And he says that Luke's father was the best fighter pilot in the galaxy, a cunning warrior. And Obi-Wan says Luke's father was a good friend of his.
So as we can see in this clip, Obi-Wan gives Luke a lightsaber, which Luke's father wanted Luke to have when he was old enough, but of course his uncle did not want him to have. And then Obi-Wan says these really interesting words. He says, "The lightsaber is the weapon of the Jedi Knight, an elegant weapon for a more civilized age." Really interesting phrases. And Obi-Wan goes on to say that for over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice of the Old Republic. That was before the dark times, before the Empire. The Empire really signaled the illumination of peace and justice and now has called forth the dark times.
So Luke asked how his father died. Obi-Wan looks sad and reflects on how a young Jedi, Darth Vader, who was a pupil of Obi-Wan until he turned to evil. And Darth Vader, as we've heard, he helped the Empire hunt down and destroy all the Jedi Knights or seemingly all. And Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father, so now the Jedi, all but extinct. So Darth Vader, he was seduced by the dark side of the force. And this is where we begin to learn what the force is. And Obi-Wan says, "The force is what gives the Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things." So Obi-Wan says, "It surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together."
So now Luke has learned about his history, about his father and how Darth Vader murdered his father and all but eliminated the Jedi Knights. This conversation with Obi-Wan is the beginning of the change of direction of Luke's life. This is a powerful struggle that is going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. One of the interesting sidelines here that George Lucas does, and this might be familiar to students of ancient history, is the whole Star Wars struggle is modeled after ancient Roman history.
So in ancient Rome, there was a Republic and a Senate, like there was an Old Republic and a Senate in Star Wars, and there was a quasi-democracy before Julius and Augustus Caesar took over and created the empire in some ways as the empires created in Star Wars. And just like with the Empire, the Empire in Roman times was essentially a dictatorship. So it's just fascinating how George Lucas borrows these terms of the Republic and the Empire, really echoing forth the struggle between democracy and dictatorship that happened back in ancient Rome.
Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, I would be remiss in my duties as co-host, but I didn't point out to you what just occurred here for the first time I think in Beyond the Crucible history. You got to hear our host, the creator of Beyond the Crucible, share his love of two things that just fit together like hand in glove. Science fiction and history. He brought them both together in the same way that George Lucas did. And that's truly no jokes at all. That's a special moment in the history of the podcast right there.
In the next scene, very well placed by George Lucas, we get our first look at the power and the malevolence of Darth Vader. Up until now, he's been talked about as this kind of evil influence, but we haven't seen it play out. It happens when the Empire leaders are discussing their efforts to crush the rebel resistance. And one of them criticizes the force as not a real source of power. Certainly not as strong as the Death Star. What happens next, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
So this is our first seat of Darth Vader. And here's this grim foreboding figure with this black helmet and you can't see his face and this black cloak. I mean, he's a scary figure. And so we're at a council meeting on an Empire ship where they're saying that they're vulnerable until the Death Star is completed. So we see the commander of the Death Star saying that the emperor has dissolved the Imperial Senate and the last remnants of the Old Republic and then swept away.
Fear will keep people in line, fear of the Death Star. Some say that this Death Star is the ultimate technological weapon. Now, Darth Vader then joins a conversation and says that he should not be too proud of this weapon as the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. Now, some of these folks at this council meeting are thinking, "Okay, this whole force thing that's more powerful than the ability to destroy a planet?" I mean, that makes no sense.
So one person there marks Darth Vader's sad devotion to an ancient religion, as he puts it. And that person says the force, it can't give Darth Vader clairvoyance to find the stolen plans or the rebel's hidden base. Well, Darth Vader does not take highly to being challenged. You challenge Darth Vader at your peril. And he does not like being marked or confronted. And so he uses the power of the force to basically lift this guy off the floor and he's getting choked to death.
Now this is by the force. So Darth Vader does not have his hands physically around him. He's just using the force to choke him. And he might have continued until the commander tells him to stop. So for those knowledgeable about religion, the force has familiar overturns. Some view religion as myth and legend and irrelevant in today's society. And in most religions, there are absolutely forces of good and evil that battle it out. So it echoes through the age in which we live in and some people think religion, any religion is irrelevant. Others find great solace and strength in it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Then next, R2-D2 plays Leia's full message in which she begs Obi-Wan to take the Death Star plans to the planet, Alderaan, and give them to her father, a fellow veteran for analysis. What is Luke's reaction, Warwick, to hearing the full message from Leia and the conversation he then has with Obi-Wan?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's a very interesting conversation. So after hearing the message, Obi-Wan says that Luke must learn the ways of the force if he's to accompany Obi-Wan to Alderaan. I mean, Obi-Wan doesn't ask. He just assumes, "Of course you're going to come, right? I mean, it's battle of good versus evil. What's there to think about?" But Luke says he has to go home. And Obi-Wan says that he needs Luke's help because he's getting old and that Leia also needs Luke's help.
Again, Luke says, "Can't get involved." He's got work to do. He said that he hates the empire, but he can't get involved and there's just nothing he can do. And Obi-Wan says, "That's your uncle talking." Obi-Wan urges him to learn the ways of the force. Obi-Wan says that Luke must do what he feels right, of course. It's really an interesting thing that Obi-Wan says, "Well, you must do what you think is right." It's a telling question because I'm not sure that Luke is thinking about what is right. He's just thinking about, well, what is obvious, what he needs to do, not what's right.
It's an interesting question. I don't think Luke really fully understands what Obi-Wan is saying. So at this point, Obi-Wan has laid down the challenge and the call for Luke to fight for the forces of good against evil. And at this point, Luke says, "Okay, I hear what you're saying, but no. I decline to meet the challenge. I'm just going to stay on with my life. This whole battling good and evil, that can go on, but I can't do anything. Who am I? I'm just one person, so I need to stay here." So it's not really Luke's finest moment and certainly at this point, he doesn't seem like the heroic hero in this movie.
Gary Schneeberger:
So let's break, put a pin in this just for a second out of the movie and just talk to our listeners and viewers, because what you just described is something that we all have dealt with. Right? There's advice from someone like Luke's uncle who says, "You don't want to go into that. Stay away from that calling." And then there's advice from someone like Obi-Wan who says, "No, this is your destiny. Step into it." And if we're being honest, these are things that can happen to us pretty much every day. One voice says, "Go for it." One voice says, "Stay away from it." How do we walk our way through that satisfactorily?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think for all of us, there'll be the cries for fear and caution maybe from within. It may be from family members, friends. You can't do it. The fight is too big. It's not your fight. You don't have it. Who are you? Be cautious. Stay here. Don't follow your own destiny, your own path. I know what your destiny is. It's to be a farmer. Stay here.
Well, not everybody that grows up on a farm wants to be a farmer. Many do. Some are like, "Do I want to be a farmer?" Or it could be any profession. You don't always want to do what your father and grandfather or grandmother do. You sometimes want to follow your own path. And so you have some people that are calling for fear and caution and safety. Others are saying, "You have a destiny. You have a higher purpose. There's a battle for good against evil."
And so we have a choice to make every day and throughout our lives, are we going to listen to the voices of fear and caution? Or are we going to listen to the voices and hopefully some within ourselves that call us to courage and adventure to a higher purpose? Which voices are we going to listen to? The voices we listen to are fear and caution versus courage and destiny and purpose. It determines the course of our life and our legacy. So every day we get to make a choice. We're going to go with fear and caution or courage, destiny, and purpose. It's a choice we have to make.
Gary Schneeberger:
And Luke has to make that choice and does indeed make that choice in the next scene. He quickly changes his mind after Imperial Stormtroopers murder his family and destroy his home while searching for the droids. Warwick, how does that all develop? What happens next?
Warwick Fairfax:
So the death of Luke's aunt and uncle, it changes everything. Obi-Wan really tries to console Luke by saying that Luke couldn't have done anything to save his aunt and uncle. If he tried, if he'd been there, he would've been killed too. So Luke says he wants to come to Alderaan. He wants to become a Jedi like his father. There's nothing for him now. So this crucible has become the catalyst for a complete change in the direction of Luke's life.
We talk a lot about it didn't happen to you, it happened for you. Well, Luke maybe unknowingly is embracing that way of looking at life. Now that his aunt and uncle have been killed, he realizes, well, there's nothing for him now. And he does feel called to a higher purpose to fight for the forces of good against evil. He's not saying, who am I? Do I have the capability? It's really not relevant at the moment. It's like, what do I need to do? Who do I need to become? What's the next step? And so Luke really changes from, there's nothing I can do, to I have to become a Jedi like my father and fight for freedom and justice.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. But there are other people who will come up in the very next scene who don't have the same perspective that Luke develops. The party, the group ends up in a bar populated by, it's a very popular scene in the Star Wars universe, by several interesting creatures this bar is populated by, and one human who will prove important to Luke in Leia's mission. Warwick, talk about what happens in that bar and who they meet there.
Warwick Fairfax:
So in this bar, we see here's Luke, Obi-Wan, the two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, and they need a ship to get to the planet of Alderaan because they want to get the secret plans of the Death Star back to the Rebel Alliance, which is at Alderaan. And so they come across Han Solo, and he is the captain of the Millennium Falcon, and Han Solo's first mate, Chewbacca. And Chewbacca is an enormous furry creature that doesn't really talk. It just groans. But a bit like C-3PO interprets for R2-D2, Han Solo seems to be able to interpret for Chewbacca.
So as we see Han Solo in the opening scenes of his presence in the movie, it seems that he's only about himself and money. That's all he cares about. So when the group led by Obi-Wan says that they need a ship to get them to Alderaan rather than, "Gee, how can I help?" His first thought is, "Well, it's all about the money." So he negotiates to get 2,000 or whatever currency they have now, and then 15,000 when they get to Alderaan.
If Obi-Wan hadn't offered a good deal, Han Solo would be like, "Forget it." If Obi-Wan had said, "But this is all about fighting the evil empire and helping the Rebel Alliance," Han Solo's attitude would've been, "So? What does that have to do with me?" We'll find out he's a smuggler. He's in it for the money. It's like the patriotic speeches of country and sacrifice. It's like, why? So yeah, he's not a particularly endearing character at this point in the movie. It's all about himself and money. That's the Han Solo that we meet.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. But he's also, like pretty much everybody else in the movie, at least on the not bad guy side of things. He's someone who's facing a crucible of his own. And this crucible that he's facing at this moment has really nothing to do with the Empire's plans to snuff out the resistance. What is that trial that Han Solo is facing as we meet him?
Warwick Fairfax:
So we find out, surprise, surprise, that Han Solo owes a lot of money to Jabba. He's a smuggler. And so he's always trying to pay people. And sometimes his adventures don't work out. And we learned that on a previous smuggling operation, I think he lost some cargo, didn't get through. And so Jabba wants to be paid. And Han Solo manages to convince Jabba to hold off and he'll give him an extra 15% based on the proceeds of his current mission with Obi-Wan and Leia and just kind of leave me alone for a moment. I promise you, I'll give you what I owe you plus 15%.
So this seems to be the life of Han Solo. It's all about the money and keeping bad guys like Jabba or these smugglers at bay, keeping the creditors at bay. It's all about one more mission, get the money and somehow hold off people like Jabba from getting on his back. And it's just a miserable existence. One mission to the next, dealing with people like Jabba. So that's the life of Han Solo at this point in the movie.
Gary Schneeberger:
But you do, as the audience get the idea that maybe what's going on with Han Solo is his character has never developed because his character's never been tested. So let's just wait for a full determination on his character until the movie plays itself out. Then, Warwick, they all go and get on the Millennial Falcon to head to Alderaan. But the Empire has obliterated the planet after Leia told them it was the home base for the resistance, even though it was not. But the journey to Alderaan does serve perhaps a better purpose for Luke and his tutelage under Obi-Wan. What starts happening between mentor and mentee on that journey?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. This is a really interesting moment in the movie. We see in a scene with Leia and Darth Vader on the Empire ship that they're asking, "Where is the rebel base? And if you tell us, we won't destroy Alderaan." Well, she tells them. Of course she doesn't tell them the truth, but they don't quite know that at the moment. And they just destroy Alderaan anyway. It has millions of people, if not more, on this planet. I mean, she is just shocked about the elimination of life.
In fact, when that happens, Obi-Wan senses something happening in the force, a disturbance in the force, and he feels like there are a million voices crying out as they're being obliterated by the Death Star. So meanwhile, on the Millennium Falcon, we see Obi-Wan is beginning to train Luke with the lightsaber. And he says that a Jedi can feel the force flowing through them.
Now, Han Solo, ever the sort of snarky pessimist, says that hooky religions are no match for a blast by your side, exactly what he expect Han Solo to say. He says he doesn't believe there is one powerful mystical force controlling everything. He says there is no mystical field that controls his destiny. It's a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. So then Obi-Wan steps up the training of Luke by putting a helmet on him where he can't see anything. It blocks his whole vision. And he tells Luke to let go of your consciousness and act on instinct. Let go of your conscious self. He says that your eyes can deceive you and not to trust them.
He tells Luke to stretch out his feelings and Luke actually does better in his training. So Luke, unlike Han Solo, he's embracing the ways of the force and his legacy. And he's training his mind, body, and spirit for the battle ahead, the battle between good and evil. That's one of the things we'll see in this movie, is not all just about Luke receiving training about how to be a fighter and use technology and all that. Nothing against that. But the focus of Obi-Wan's training of Luke is really more on the internal of the soul and the spirit and self-control, self-consciousness. That is the focus of Obi-Wan's training. As we'll find, that training will be absolutely vital in Luke's mission as the movie unfolds.
Gary Schneeberger:
You might say Obi-Wan makes sure he does the soul work. I've heard that somewhere else. Where have I heard that?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. It's so true. And so for most of us, the really bigger battle is the battle within the soul, the soul work. Are we going to lead a life for good or for evil? Is it all going to be about us and money and power? Is it going to be about helping our friends and neighbors, serving a higher purpose, whether it's in our company, a business or a nonprofit? The battle for most of us is really a battle of within. Are we going to go on a path of money and power and fame? Are we going to follow a path that leads to serving others and some higher purpose? And that's really the battle of the soul that ultimately determines the direction of our lives and our legacy. And that's what's going on here, is Obi-Wan is training Luke, really doing a lot of soul work.
Gary Schneeberger:
They're still not out of the woods yet, or out of the space travel problem yet because the ride is anything but smooth for them. The Death Star's tractor beam captures the Millennium Falcon, but Luke and his companions managed to avoid detection and infiltrate the station. But Darth Vader is on the Death Star too. We're starting to get good versus evil converging in each other's presence. And he senses Obi-Wan's presence and begins searching for him.
As Obi-Wan deactivates the tractor beam that's pulling the Millennium Falcon in, Luke persuades Han Solo and Chewbacca to help him rescue Leia, who is scheduled for execution after refusing to reveal the true location of the rebel base. And, Warwick, Luke doesn't appeal to the better angels of Han Solo's nature here, does he? Because he's just not sure that Hans got them yet.
Warwick Fairfax:
Now that is so true. I mean, altruism seems like it's not going to work with Han Solo. So with R2-D2's help, they managed to find where Leia's being held captive on the Empire ship. So of course, Han Solo, ever the non-hero says he doesn't want to help or get involved. I mean, meanwhile, the Empire Stormtroopers are looking for them on the ships. It's not like he doesn't have any role to play or not like he just sit back and do nothing, but somehow he feels like he doesn't want to get involved. Well, a bit too late for that.
But anyway, so Luke tells Han Solo that Leia is rich and powerful and that Han Solo will get a reward. That's about the only thing that's going to motivate Han Solo. So now, Han Solo is suitably motivated and is willing to help and will do what he can to free Leia. So it's like, "You want my help? What are you going to pay me?" It's like altruism doesn't seem to exist at the moment in Han Solo. It's all about the money and what's in it for him. Give him a good enough deal. Okay, I'll help you. It'll cost you something. Cost you a lot, but sure will help you in those circumstances. So it doesn't really paint a particularly rosy picture of Han Solo's character.
Gary Schneeberger:
No. He continues taking a half a step forward and 15 steps back. But hang in there, folks. It'll turn. Obi-Wan then disables the tractor beam and faces Darth Vader in battle. This is one of the most rousing scenes in the film. It's something we see and hear a lot at Beyond the Crucible two. Our past can keep pursuing us if we don't confront it. And that's what Obi-Wan does here. How does that play out, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
So while Leo, Hans Solo, Luke, R2-D2, C-3PO, they're heading to the Millennium Falcon to try to get away, Obi-Wan faces Darth Vader. Now, both of them realize this is a destiny to have this epic battle. And Darth Vader, as he's in the middle of fighting, Obi-Wan said the circle is now complete. "When I left you, I was but the learner, but now I am the master," says Darth Vader. Obi-Wan says, "Only a master of evil, Darth."
As they fight, Darth Vader taunts Obi-Wan, "Your powers are weak, old man." Obi-Wan says these immortal words, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you possibly could imagine." Now, Obi-Wan almost seemed to let Darth Vader kill him after these words. He just seems to put down his lightsaber. And so this is all happening while the rest of the group is getting on the Millennium Falcon.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. They're scadabling.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And so Obi-Wan sacrifices his life, both for Luke and for the cause of helping good prevail over evil. Somehow Obi-Wan realizes by sacrificing his life, he's actually going to help the cause of the Rebel Alliance, help the cause of good, and help the cause of the force, if you will. So as Luke flees to the Millennium Falcon, for the first time we hear Obi-Wan voice in his ear. Obi-Wan has been killed, but yet we still hear his voice, you assume through the power of the force, and Obi-Wan says to Luke, "Run, Luke. Run." And this voice in Luke's ear from his mental will continue as the movie unfolds in an extremely helpful and empowering fashion for Luke.
Gary Schneeberger:
Next up, those Death Star schematics that have been all about people chasing each other across the universe, they're examined and they reveal a weakness in a small exhaust port leading directly to the station's reactor. It's only two meters wide, two meters wide, a little hole. And a plan is hatched to drop a torpedo into it to destroy the Death Star. Warwick, this is a poetic moment in the movie from a beyond the crucible perspective. It shows that you don't always need a big effort to begin moving beyond your crucible in a big way. How does that play out in the rest of the film?
Warwick Fairfax:
So the group are now on the Millennium Falcon. Fortunately, Obi-Wan deactivated the tractor beam and they're able to escape from this empire ship. And they have the plans for the Death Star, which R2-D2 has. And at this point, you hear Han Solo say that he's in it for the money and not for revolution. And later, Leia says to Luke about Han Solo, "I wonder if he cares about anything or anybody." At this point, the answer I think would be, "Well, no."
So once they arrive at the rebel base, Luke gets equipped to be one of the fighter pilots. We hear early in the movie that he's an experienced pilot and he just has natural ability. So as Luke is about to take off, he wonders what Han Solo will do. And Han Solo says this, "You don't think that I would be fool enough to stick around here, do you?" And Han Solo actually asked Luke to come with him. He figures Luke could be helpful to him in his smuggling operation because he's a pretty handy person. So Luke says that they need a good pilot like Han Solo, and he's turning his back on them. And Han Solo says, "What good is a reward if you're not around to use it? Besides, attacking the battle station is not my idea of courage. It is more like suicide."
So Han Solo is like, "Forget it. It's not my fight. It's suicide. I'm out of here." But there is a sign of hope because as Luke walks off, Han Solo says, "May the force be with you." Now remember, this is somebody who thinks this is some kooky, ancient religion. It's irrelevant. So whether he believes in the force or not, I think at least it shows a sign of respect for Luke and for what he believes in. So Luke is understandably disappointed that Han Solo won't be fighting with them. And Leia says these words, "He, Han Solo, has to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him."
And those are very wise words. And that's true for all of us. We have to choose our own path. Nobody can choose it for us. The consequences are also, in one sense, our choice because each path we follow does have consequences. If you follow the path of, it's all about me and money and greed, that will have consequences. And they typically won't be good. You can actually make your own crucibles worse and then manufacture more of them. Or the path that leads to good and life of significance, there still might be crucibles, but there'll be a whole lot more fulfillment and satisfaction on that path.
So Luke and the other fighter pilots, they head towards the Death Star. They fly low over the Death Star to try and make the shot down that small exhaust port. It's an almost impossible shot. It's not going to be easy as the Empire's fighters are all over them, including one which is piloted by Darth Vader. Earlier on, we learned that Darth Vader is an excellent pilot, and that definitely is true. And one by one, Darth Vader shoots down the rebel fighters. If Darth Vader's on your tail, you're in trouble.
And so Luke is about to take his shot, but at this point, Darth Vader is on his tail. The chances of Darth Vader missing at this point, no matter how good Luke is as a pilot, is slim. It's one of the things you see in the movie, is there are these channels in the outside of the Death Star and a bit like going in a plane and a fighter plane down a canyon. There's no room for maneuver. You can't juke your way out of range of people pursuing you. So you're in a very tough situation.
And then out of nowhere, here comes Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon. He distracts the Empire fighters, including Darth Vader, kind of spins out of control, and Luke actually has a clear shot. So Luke has his targeting computer all set. But now we hear the voice of Obi-Wan telling Luke this, he says, "Use the force, Luke. Let go. Luke, trust me." And then Luke turns off his targeting computer. Now remember, this shot is an incredibly difficult shot. And what does he do? He turns off his targeting computer. It makes no sense. But Luke sends his torpedoes into the shaft. And while all this is happening, one of the things that George Lucas does, which is so brilliant, we constantly see the movie shift from the Death Star to the rebel fighters.
And what we understand is that this Death Star is on the other side of the orbit of a planet, and it has to get around the orbit of that planet to be in range at the rebel base, which is on a moon on the far side of this planet. So we see during this part of the movie, a countdown of when the rebel base will be in range. So at first, it's 30 minutes, then 15 minutes, then 5, and then 30 seconds. And just as Luke is about to fire these torpedoes down that narrow shaft on the Death Star, we see that the Death Star is in range at the rebel base.
They're powering up their weapon just in the process of firing. We're talking seconds away. And so Luke's torpedoes, they go down that shaft, it's a clean shot, and the Death Star explodes just before it can fire, mere seconds before it can fire. It's an incredible shot, an incredible end to this part of the movie and the Death Star.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And what follows then is a bit of a coda to the film. That is, it ends in a triumphant ceremony in which Leia awards Luke and Han Solo medals for their heroism. At the start of this movie, if you would've said Han Solo's going to get a medal for his heroism, no one would've believed you. But that's indeed what happens. And, Warwick, Luke and Han Solo really have started living lives of significance at the end of Star Wars, haven't they?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so true. And you're very right, Gary. At the beginning of this movie, Han Solo certainly won't get any medals other than maybe cowardice, greed, self-centeredness, an anti-medal, anti-hero.
Gary Schneeberger:
Or when he bought himself.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly right. Exactly, because nobody else would give him one. But Luke, on the other hand, he's not a bad guy, but he certainly doesn't seem this heroic figure. It's like, look, I'm living my life a quiet desperation on this planet. I'm in Tatooine. I don't know that I want to be here. Maybe I'll escape one day. But really does not seem like the hero that would save the galaxy and the Rebel Alliance from the Empire. He's not a bad guy. You just wouldn't really think about him in that context.
So we see this transition from Luke as a young man working on a farm, wants to go to the academy, but he's locked into this desolate planet with his aunt and uncle. Doesn't feel he can make any difference between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire. And just like so many of us, we feel like we can't make a difference. We can't lead much of any life of significance. What does that even mean? It's meaningless for us. We're locked into a humdrum life the way he sees it.
By the end of the movie, Luke has saved the day with what Han Solo says, "It's a million to one shot with his torpedoes destroying the Death Star." Even with his targeting computer, the odds of that shot making it are a million to one. Without the targeting commuter, it probably goes up to a trillion to one. But Luke trusts the force, trusts his mentor, and makes this impossible shot. So Luke indeed learns to trust himself, trust the training of his mentor, Obi-Wan, trust in a higher power, and not just to rely on his own strength. Luke has grown tremendously in his courage, trust, and wisdom. Luke's journey shows that the key battle is the battle within. It's not just about what we do on the outside. The battle within has been won by his own courage, by the advice of his mentor Obi-Wan, and by relying on a higher power. All of those have empowered him to do the impossible.
Han Solo truly does make an amazing transformation. At the beginning of the movie, he's all about himself and money. It's all about helping number one, not about other people. He doesn't want to get involved in causes or battles. Hey, the fight pitting the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, it's not my fight. Nothing to do with me. But by the end of the movie, Han Solo is a key part of saving the day. So as Luke lines up that impossible shot to send the torpedoes down that shaft, if Han Solo hadn't been around, it's questionable as to whether Luke would've made it.
Darth Vader would've stood a very good chance of shooting Luke down. He had him right on his scope. There was nobody around to stop that shot. So Han Solo really did make the saving of Luke and the destruction of the Death Star possible. That would not have been possible without Luke. It certainly would not have been possible without Han Solo coming to help Luke save the day.
So it's really incredible. It shows you the evolution of Han Solo's character. It also shows that we should never give up on those around us, family and friends. Maybe we feel like they're going down a path of self-destruction. It could be drugs, alcohol. It could be poor choices in life. It could be just making choices of a life of quiet desperation. We know they have so much talent and ability, but they don't believe in themselves. They won't take chances. They won't take risks. And so they just take the safe route, the route that really leads to a life in which so many people would say about them what could have been. And only if they trusted themselves, trusted in a higher power, looked to others and not themselves.
Gary Schneeberger:
This whole episode, it's interesting, I said at the start, we kicked around ideas for the title of the series, and one of them was A Crucible Far, Far Away. And our discussion on this movie makes me think, we should have selected that one maybe. But it is indeed called Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema, and we're sticking with that. Warwick, how do the crucibles of the characters in Star Wars offer us insight into how to move beyond our own crucibles?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's easy to think that we can't make a difference with just some insignificant person who doesn't have the skills or the training or the pedigree to accomplish much. Maybe nobody from our family went to college. Maybe none of them left the town that we grew up in. Maybe we feel like our path on life was mapped out for us at birth. And we might feel like the battle around us is so big. How can we possibly make a difference? It's just me. I don't have the training, the skills, the courage, anything. But you look at the lives of Luke, Han Solo, Obi-Wan, Leia, R2-D2, and even C-3PO, we can see how they were willing to fight for a cause beyond themselves, to fight for good against evil. And each of them played a part and each of them were part of how good did indeed triumph over evil.
So we need to choose how we want to live our lives. Do we want to live lives of quiet desperation? Which is where we see Luke at the beginning of the movie. I can't really do much. Who am I? It's all too difficult. Do we want to live lives where it's all about money and about ourselves? Which is what we see Han Solo live his life of much of the movie. Hey, everybody's greedy. Everybody's in it for themselves. Why shouldn't I be? Why shouldn't I get a piece of the action? Nobody's going to help me. Why should I help them? That cynical, defeatist, it's all about me attitude, that could be us. Or we can make a different choice. We can decide to live lives of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
We truly seek to make a difference in the world. Now, maybe we won't save the galaxy like Luke and Han Solo did. Maybe it's just our town, our community, our home. Maybe it's fighting for a friend of ours at school or a brother or sister. One path leads to a somewhat despondent, gloomy life, while the other leads to a life of fulfillment and purpose. So each day we get to make that choice for our lives and our legacy. Is it all going to be about me, money and greed? Is it all too difficult? Am I going to live a life of quiet desperation? Or am I going to live a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, a life of significance?
Gary Schneeberger:
Did you see that folks? Look, the house lights have come up, which indicates we have reached the end of this episode of Beyond the Crucible in our series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. Next week, we will take another look at another film. And this time, Scott, give it to me, give me the drum roll, next time we're going to talk about, this is probably Warwick's favorite on the list that we have so far, and that is Star Trek: First Contact. So don't miss that. We'll be here next week. And as always, we'll save you an aisle seat.
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• Back To a Better Future: The Crucibles of …