Let me start by quoting two of my favorite men of history, Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. I can’t find the quote so I will paraphrase a statement I read in Bob Thomas’ biography of Disney. It has always stuck with me, and went something like, “If you’re not in debt, you’re not dreaming.” The Jobs quote is much more famous, he set out with Apple to, “put a dent in the universe.” Both these men represent a mindset I believe should be transferred to familial life.
I am an incredibly privileged American who knows absolutely nothing about life as survival. Most of my peers are similar.
When people don’t have to survive there are two options before them: maintain or thrive.
Put in another way: renting or denting. I believe the average American family has become a renting family. Many of them own their own homes, but perhaps apart from a few figures in their bank account most are alright leaving the world more or less the same way they started. Most are also alright ending their families the same place they started them.
This may seem unfair, but I read lots of history, and the hunger in families seeking opportunity in America to grow, to make a difference, to make a new life is astounding. For those of us who are their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the need for a new life is not as apparent. We aren’t suffering hunger, or persecution, or . . . you get the point. This can lead us to maintain the status quo.
Some businesses are run this way. Ma and pa start up the corner grocer and they start it up to serve their neighborhood and to do no more. They want to maintain and not to grow, and there is a place for this. However, when we have the capacity to be renting in the figurative sense financially, when we inherit a lifestyle of economic privilege which is capable of just being maintained, then I believe it our obligation to begin making dents in the universe in other places.
For me one of the places where the biggest dents can be made is in the realm of family life. It is here I want to invoke the spirit of Disney and Jobs upon our parental conscience.
Are we positioning ourselves and our families to simply maintain a certain lifestyle, or are we creating a family culture, which is willing to take risks, to go into metaphorical debt in order to grow something better for the future?
Does our family have vision for any brighter tomorrow we are willing to get uncomfortable for? Do our children have the opportunity to be a part of a team, like the employees of Apple, which they know is working to make a dent in the universe?
I want this for my kids and for my family. I don’t want them to spend their energies figuring out how to maintain space in this world. They have been privileged with far too much, they have far too much capacity for creativity, innovation, and impact for me to give them a renting mindset. I am committed they shall have a denting mindset instead.
They are here to live fully, and happily, and at times quietly, but there are dreams in their hearts, potentials of tomorrow which will require “going into debt,” and I want them to find the courage to do so in their father.
The Wiens are denting.
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