Book Club: A Better Way (chapter 4)

Belly flops hurt. Probably most or all of you have experienced that painful moment where you attempt to dive and instead the water hits your stomach with a painful smack. Ouch. Not successful.

The challenge of "A Better Way" is this: will you perform a successful dive into adulthood, or will you belly-flop?

Here's how they put it:
"The pool is your future life. The diving board is your present life. The Myth of Adolescence would have you think that now is your time to party beside the pool. But the fact is, you're already on the diving board.

"The whole purpose of the diving board is to launch us, with purpose and precision, into our futures. We will either make a successful dive into adulthood, or deliver something closer to a belly flop: a failure to launch." (page 49)

"Kidults"
This chapter of the book talks about "kidults", people in their twenties and beyond who still act like college students, living with their parents, hopping from job to job, date to date, and party to party.

This is the result of the Myth of Adolescence. Our view of the teen years doesn't just end when you graduate high school. It's a cultural mindset that continues well into adulthood. Do you want to be one of these "kidults"? Then high school is your time to have fun and party. Do you want to be a successful adult? Then don't waste these important years.

Revisiting George, David, and Clara
Last time we talked about George, David, and Clara, teens who made a difference at a very young age. Have you been able to guess who they are yet?

• George, who was the official surveyor of Culpepper County, Virginia at age 17, went on to become commander-in-chief of the entire Virginia militia by age twenty-three. He eventually became the commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and our first president. His full name? George Washington.
• David, who took over command of a captured ship at age 12, went on to become the U.S. Navy's first admiral and a Civil War hero, David Farragut.
• Clara, who cared for the sick at eleven and taught school at seventeen, went on to care for more sick in her village, and then those wounded in the Civil War. Eventually she founded the Red Cross. Her full name was Clara Barton.

"There's a reason we still know the names and stories of men and women like George Washington, David Farragut, and Clara Barton. They invested their teen years in a way that shaped them into the history makers they later became." (page 55)

We have to follow their example and use our teen years to prepare for what we hope to be in the future, equipping us for what God wants us to do later in our life.

Book Overview: Five Kinds of Hard
In the next section, the Harris brothers will start digging into the specific ways to do hard things during our teen years. They outline five of them that will be covered:

1. Things that are outside your comfort zone, like public speaking, learning a new skill, or traveling to a new place.
2. Things that go beyond what is expected or required, like aiming for an A+ in a class when you only need a C to pass, doing chores you aren't assigned, or helping clean up from an event.
3. Things that are too big to accomplish alone, big projects like forming a ministry, campaigning for something, or fighting a really big cause like abortion, poverty, or modern-day slavery.
4. Things that don't earn an immediate payoff, like working out, doing schoolwork, and obeying your parents.
5. Things that challenge the cultural norm, like dressing modestly or refusing to watch R-rated movies.

Each of these things will have a chapter dedicated to looking at them more in-depth, which we will continue to look at in the weeks to come. Next week we'll start with Chapter 5, "That First Scary Step".

What do you think? Are you ready to reclaim your teen years as the time to prepare for adulthood? What did you think of this chapter? (Were you able to guess who George, David, and Clara were before I posted this?)