The Courage to Change When Everyone Wants You to Stay the Same | Danté Stewart

0:00Jonathan Fields: So what happens when a college football player becomes a minister only to realize the very faith community he's dedicated his life to isn't actually where he feels like he belongs? And what if that moment of truth reveals something far bigger about why an entire generation is walking away from organized religion and what they might be walking toward? These questions kind of crackled through the conversation I had with Dante Stewart as we explored what it really means to stand in your truth when the cost of authenticity feels devastatingly high. What started as a discussion about spirituality and religion in modern life transformed into a profound exploration of courage and belonging and the fierce grace that it takes to grow beyond the boundaries other set force.

0:44Jonathan Fields: Dante is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and minister whose work appears in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Washington Post, and more. His critically acclaimed memoir, Shouting in the Fire, examines faith, identity, and belonging in a racially fractured America. And a former college football player turned theologian and essayist, Dante brings both intellectual rigor and just raw emotional honesty to every conversation. Through powerful personal stories, he really shines a light on what becomes possible when we just trust our evolution, even as others want us to stay the same. and his surprising take on how to metabolize suffering rather than avoid it really got me thinking.

1:21Jonathan Fields: So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

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3:48Jonathan Fields: If you want to try it, head to tanasi.com and use the code goodlife for 25 % off your first order. That's T-A-N-A-S-I.com and use the code goodlife for 25 % off your first order. There's a question that I would love to get your take on. I think it was just last week. I saw one of the sort of like giant survey agencies came out with a poll that looked at religiosity over, you know, like a period of like a long window of time. And they broke it down for the first time that I saw by boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Z. And I think we've all heard that people on the whole are getting less and less religious over time.

4:31Jonathan Fields: What was really surprising for me to see was that Gen Z in particular, there's been a massive exit from religion, from basically all faiths. I'd love your take on that. What are your thoughts on that? First of all, thank you for having me on here. When I heard that I was going to get a chance to speak with y 'all. It's very much a welcome invitation. So I'm really excited to be here with y 'all. I think for me to answer that question, I can kind of only answer my own experience. I think on some level, people are tired. I think people are tired of the way in which like religion has not lived up to its own kind of ideals.

5:10And on another level, I think people were more connected, even though we're more kind of disillusioned with one another in a very real way. we're more connected between humans than we've ever been before, which means I think people are more sensitive to their religious experiences, to vastly diverse religious experiences. And I think people realize that you got options. When you got options, you realize that you can kind of allow your expression, your expression of your spirituality to kind of fit what you need. I think that that may be a part of it. I think people are exhausted. Young people are just tired of the way religion has gone.

5:47And, you know, we have seen the slow kind of leak of religion's insufficiency, you know, and it is now turned into a kind of all out massive poor. And you're talking about the way in which I'm particularly thinking about Christianity because I'm Christian, the ways in which people have linked in unnecessarily tied Christianity to politics in the most unhealthy way. And people are saying, well, if this is what you believe that your faith is to embody, then I don't want anything to do with that. And I think people are, you know, just tired of the ways in which faith has been used as a weapon to be wielded rather than a world to be ventured in and explored.

6:27You know, as I think about my own kind of relationship of faith and it's ever, ever evolving nature, you know, for me, I'm, I think as I get older, I get a little bit more sensitive and expansive to realize that like, you know, I'm not the only one that got something to offer to this world. You know, we're humans. We get to offer, you know, something to contribute to the good life. And that means that like, we have to be diverse in our approach and in our experience. And whenever that doesn't, you know, necessarily live up to his idea, then we get a chance to like change it. And I think, you know, people like, hey, I get another option.

7:03I get a better shot at this than the way I've experienced. I'm willing them to take that shot.

7:07Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that really resonates with me. And it kind of goes along with what I was thinking a little bit too. I'm curious what you think about this. Because I've kind of been looking at them. I was wondering about this stat. And I've always had this sense that even beyond religion, that young generation, Gen Z in particular, and even younger millennials, they're less willing to toe the line, you know, and more willing to say, like, to actually kick the tires and be like, how is this actually working for me? And if I look at my parents, or like grandparents, the generations above me, how has it worked out for them too?

7:39Jonathan Fields: And if this has been centered in their life and I look at them and I'm actually not, I'm not really seeing the outcomes that I'd love to see or the impact. And they look at my own life and I'm like, I'm kind of not buying into it. I feel like younger generations, and maybe this has always just been younger generations, right? It feels like they're less willing to basically just adopt what's been handed down to them as a sacred transmission. Don't question it. Don't challenge it. just do it, abide by it. And they're kind of like, I need to figure out, I want to know the why, and I want to know the how, and I need to see if this actually fits for me.

8:13Jonathan Fields: And a lot of them are deciding it doesn't. I mean, what's your take on that? Yeah, I think that's true. I know that a lot of people, you start talking about philosophy and more philosophy, there are people who say there is not, they see the limitations of utilitarianism and the usefulness of a thing. You know, and I think there is something good about actually questioning, is this thing actually working the way it was intended to work? Now, for me, and I can only speak for Christianity, I think that we have to challenge what we mean by work. I think I think the older generations, many of their ideas of working was, you know, I kind of have my kind of own individual relationship with God or I have my relationship with my church community.

9:02And, you know, my life religion is just a part another aspect of the web of experience rather than like religion should actually like do something to change the world we live in. You know, now, granted, I'm black American. So, you know, my experience of religion would be very catered to like being southern and black, which means that like religion is like almost totalizing in a sense that like God is in everything and everywhere and everything can be moved and altered and changed. and that religion can be a force for good, even if, you know, the kind of oxymoronic ways religion is used as an instrument of control.

9:44You know, I think that like younger generations, they're more willing to be like, I bet cool. That don't work for me. I'm out. See you later. Period. I think there's something useful about that, too, though, because I think like life gets boring, at least to me. I'm a writer. You know, I'm a writer. I'm a person that goes into like art museums and I can sit in art museums and like, you know, like just explore the art museums and find something generous of like sitting and returning and questioning and looking out in the world and, you know, being adventurous and things like that. So for me, you know, as a personality type, I'm kind of more adventurous and I look forward to like expansion and evolution.

10:22Some people's personality types aren't like that. But like for me, I'm like the other day I was thinking about Jesus and there's a story in the Bible where Jesus says no to his parents. and he says no to his parents. They're looking for him. And he said, I'm going about doing my father's business. Parents don't went away. He doing his own thing. And I think about that story and the other part of that story where it says like, you know, he, Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and the religion of that day, going to synagogue and things like that. Jesus, if we look at his story, that means that like, yo, he matured.

10:58He was able to say no. And he was able to grow and expand and even be different than the kind of receive religion that his parents were engaging in, the rituals that they were engaging in. Not saying that he was one to uphold the system or tear it all the way down, but I think there's something generative there to be thinking about, okay, if Jesus could do it, then why can't we? Then why can't I? If he has the growing wisdom and stature and that growing for him allowed him to grow his theology, to challenge the ways that people were embodying their faith, even if it meant that like, you know, people would think that he is wild, he's crazy, he was willing to do it.

11:37He was brave enough and crazy enough to do it. And if it's good enough for him, then it should, at least we should have grace enough for it to be good enough for young people today.

11:45Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting take. What you're describing is somebody who's sort of like looking at something that was said, this is the way to be. And, and it's him saying, I'm going to get curious about that. And it's not resonating with me. So I need to actually, I need to say no. And I need to go figure out like, what is resonant for me. And I feel like faith these days across so many traditions doesn't create the room for that. They don't create space for that. It's sort of like, this is the way it is. This is the way it's always been. There are a small number of sort of anointed people who will tell you what this means.

12:17Jonathan Fields: And whatever that translation is, isn't really supposed to be challenged. And I think a lot of folks are not okay with that anymore. Not at all. I mean, when have we ever been you know we're humans you know when have we ever been good at other people challenging us like i'm in therapy and like you know i don't like when my therapist be like well let me challenge you or something that you deeply hold and i'm a fighter too i love to fight i mean i love to squabble i love to argue i am a very opinionated individual and i think that like you You know, we're as human beings, we aren't really good at changing our minds or evolving or expanding.

12:56And I think part of it is about fear, not even bad. You know, it's like whatever we receive and whatever we embody, it works. And so it's like it's very difficult to allow yourself to go through changing your mind about something that your community. when you think about like for me when i think about morality you know i think that morality is also like a communal project right so the community you know determine what's good what's right what's fair and that's going different based on you know various communities this is me using my sociology degree from glimpse so like these communities are going to generate their own kind of standards of meaning and things like that not saying i'm not saying that they're right you know It just sometimes it is now in order for you to be someone to be like, I bet I'm going to try and like explore, be more curious.

13:45You have the possibility of like making yourself like a recipient of punishment or ostracization or whatever they call it and things like that. You can be like an outsider. I mean, some people like to be loners. It's cool. But some people who would want to generate like meaning and contribute to the community, sometimes they may struggle with being considered an outsider. And I think that like like like sometimes that fear is not about like what we actually believe. It's about what we believe that people will become if we reject the projections that we're projecting on the world about what we should be and what we should believe together.

14:23And so I think there is nothing wrong to me with changing your mind, saying like, I don't know or I haven't thought about that. Let me think a little bit deeper about that. But oftentimes we live in a culture. We just don't have grace with one another. Hey, let me be real. Like, I believe I'm a gracious person, but in a very real way, sometimes I'm not a gracious person.

14:47Jonathan Fields: Just like all of us. Yeah, exactly. So if we could just be honest, like not all of us are gracious. And I think, you know, people struggle to be patient in our change or be courageous in being willing to change because we're struggling to have this kind of communal aspect of grace. Communal morality means absolutely nothing without communal grace. and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors good life project is sponsored by cachava okay so a quick question for you were you the kid who tipped the cereal bowl back just to get that last bit of sugary milk because i have to raise my hand i was there's something about certain flavors cinnamon vanilla that saturday morning cartoon smell that just kind of teleports me straight back to being 10 years old before life got complicated that's exactly why i've been loving cachava's new flavor, cinnamon French toast.

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18:14Jonathan Fields: So you write about it in the book, Shouting in the Fire, it really opens up with this metaphor of fire. And you're using fire as a metaphor for spiritual fervor, internalized pain, for grief and grace, and then rage and redemption. Take me into this. Wow. I love the way you describe, use those words to talk about my book because the further I get away from it. And in some sense, the more I return to it. So there's a distance because it's been written so many years ago. And I still have conversations like today about it, even as I'm working on other work. And it's just so interesting now to hear the words that are, you know, used when it comes to like people thinking about my book and the word that you use, like, you know, I think you said something about grief and say it again one more time.

19:01Jonathan Fields: Yeah, it was like grief and grace. I love that grief and grace. Yeah. I mean, you could describe it in so many different ways, but it's just the metaphor of fire is really it's poignant. And I think people can kind of step, they can take that metaphor and make it feel right for whatever it represents to them. Yeah. Yeah. Because in a very real way, the book is a journey. And this is me kind of talking about my own book as I'm a character in the story. You know, the book is very much following a young man who is simply trying to find his way in the world. a young black man and that's from South Carolina who grows up in a grows up in very rural poor America and I didn't really address this in in this particular book the layers of like being from the black rural south when it comes to like economics and you know being from my small town of 2 ,000 people but here's the story of a young man who's attempting to find himself and he's fighting against the all these kind of voices of what he should become or what he should do and he listens to those voices and he becomes a thing oftentimes that he doesn't want to become until those things doesn't work anymore and he has to make the decision whether he's going to remain the same or whether he's going to be courageous enough or vulnerable enough because for me before there is ever courage there's vulnerability and the only thing that protects vulnerability is courage so there's a relationship between vulnerability and courage to me that i think is woven through the book in which like the fire is about the heat, the struggle of what it means to be young and black and American and Christian and Southern as it relates to going off to college or, you know, growing up in your own family life, going to white churches.

20:48That fire is about, you know, how hard it is and the challenges of, you know, the pain associated with fire and being burned. But it is also about an internal fire, this kind of internal spark, like a force, an energy or a voice or compulsion in which that tells the young man like this is who you are. This is what you must become. And as you are going through the fire outside of yourself, don't forget the spark that lies within. And if you can hear the voice in the flickering that lies within, you will always find what you're supposed to be in this world. And I think people who read the book, I think once they leave the book, they will be given more of themselves because, you know, being young and black and American isn't the only conditions in which we have to encounter fire or have to be reminded of our internal spark and flame.

21:47I think everybody in their lives at some point have to go through their own particular fires. And for me, I think the book is just, you know, a metaphor of I've been through the fire. I've been burned by it. I've been changed by it. Now come along. Let's go through it together.

22:05Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting the way you tee up just the notion of fire. Also, it's got these two qualities. You know, it's like it's the fire that, you know, it can either it can burn, but it can also forge. And sometimes it does both at the same time. oftentimes it does both right and we're constantly trying to avoid it but sometimes also we can't avoid it you know and it's like there's so often i feel like for so many of us there's an other side we want to be on or we want to get to and like we're trying to figure out how do we get there without going through this how do we get there like there's a i can see like there's a fire in front of me on the other side there's something i really want there's a way i want to be there's something way i want to live there whatever it is and it's like how do i get around the fire to get to that thing.

22:50Jonathan Fields: And end of the day, it really doesn't work. You kind of got to go through it. Yeah. You know, I think the poet Robert Frost is so helpful here. You know, he says the only way out is through. And I believe that to be true. I think the only way to get through the fire is to go through the fire. I'm reminded I was saying, I sent my friend this poem the other day called I Worried by Mary Oliver. I'm actually doing my MFA in poetry now. And so I've been, you know, I've been kind of maturing as a writer, you know, not just, you know, minister, but like journalist, poet, essayist, and minister, you know, really trying to deepen my craft and voice and grow myself and challenge myself.

23:39And I came across this poem by Mary Oliver the other day, I sent my friend call. I worried. And the poem is is Mary Oliver, you know, worrying about so much, worrying about whether she was going to be able to make a worrying about her health, worrying about this, worrying about that. And at the end, the last two stanzas of the poem is her picking herself up and going out and standing up and walking and moving. And I never forget sending that poem because it reminded me of an event that I did where someone asked me, you know, how do you metabolize suffering? And I think about, you know, any type of muscle or energy, the only way to get it going and to metabolize it is to move it.

24:23And I think so many people struggle. I'm preaching to myself right now in this season of my life, you know, because as much as we would like the fire of yesterday to never become the fire of them all. The fact is like, Like there's we're going to constantly in fire encounter fires in life and the fire that we passed through before should, like you say, it for just to be ready to say, OK, I've been through this before so I can get through it again. And so I think that, like, the only way to get through the fires of life that all of us are going to have to go through, the only way to, you know, metabolize our suffering or our fear is to utilize that energy to move us forward.

25:06to complain about things, you know, worry, allow yourself to worry. Cause so, so often, you know, we dissociate so much, you know, with our fear and our anger and our sadness that when it's time to move, you know, we struggle to move because we have not allowed ourselves to feel what we feel. So I think, yeah, the only way out as Robert Frost says is through.

25:28Jonathan Fields: We were talking about, um, metabolizing suffering and how a lot of people are trying to just figure out how do I opt out of it entirely, basically. And the truth of the world is we don't, you know, we're going to experience it a lot. And, but like, what do you do with that? I think is one of the big questions, you know, it's interesting, right? Because part of what you write about also is this notion and, you know, and you've written a bunch about how you've grown up, you know, a kid in South Carolina. And, and that part of the message that you took in was that in some way, shape or form, like part of your job was to shrink.

26:02Jonathan Fields: It was like, if you want safety, you know, part of, part of that comes with invisibility. And like for you, that's something that sets a pattern in motion that becomes really fraught to live that way. Oh, it 100%. And what's so wild is, you know, I feel like, I feel like I'm always wrestling with the ways in which I feel like I've had to shrink. I don't think we human beings ever get to a point. I think we do get to a point where like like Denise Levitov. Now I become myself the poet. I think we get to a point where we are becoming ourselves. But we always in some sense fighting against the version of us that felt like we had to shrink in order to be ourselves.

26:49You know, and you talk about religion put in that, you know, you talk about like the shrinking version of you is the more moral version of you. The version of you that's more free, that's more expressive is the more immoral version of you. And so we're dealing not just with, you know, wrestling through, you know, processing who we're becoming, trying to, you know, generate language for our own journeys. But we're also dealing with like dislodging ourselves from patterns of internalized shame and internalized guilt that don't belong to us. You know, so it's like I resonate so much with you thinking about shrinking because like I feel like I've I've always kind of been on a journey and we are always on a journey, especially.

27:32And I think if you're the type of person who has a temperament of like, you know, there's always more to grow toward or there's always more to learn. You know, I think that we're always going to, you know, deal with the struggle of like smallness and growth. And I feel like being a football player is a part of that, too, because it's you know, I never forget, you know, like what have you done for me lately? You know, yesterday really don't matter. You're always in competition against yourself and where you can grow and you're always fighting against yourself. Sometimes that's healthy. Sometimes it's not because sometimes there will never be a point in which you come to the feeling that like I have arrived at who I'm supposed to be.

28:15There's always this new self. It's like you got a whole season to get better. And the way you start isn't the way you should end up. Sadly, is that once you get into life in football, you got the beginning of the season and you have an end of season with life. You know, life is such a long thing. And so I think for so many of us who are used to shrinking, I think about myself. Yes. So much of what I write is about visibility is about human beings, you know, not string. Because I believe that like, I don't know, I'm just wild enough to believe that God like or life or our communities truly want the best for us.

28:56And truly wanting the best for us means that we're becoming the version that we were always intended to be. You know, every day I wake up, have a picture that's in the restroom of our home. And that picture simply says God smiles at the thought of you. And every day I look at that and I try and ingest it. I don't always believe it, you know, because like to become who you are and to stop shrinking means that like, you know, you really got to deal with how people around you got used to a small version of you. And I think that so many people who go through that, we go through it and we believe that like some sense of rejection is going to take place if I become who I am.

29:43And I just believe that sometimes, man, we've created that may be true, but like it's the story we've learned to believe about ourselves. And as writers, our job is to challenge the story, to challenge the narrative, to challenge the metaphor, to challenge the narrative arc of our lives and our growth in hopes that we encounter things and are changed by it and given more of ourselves. So when I go to the page, my simple job is this. It's like I want to attempt to be more of myself and I want to attempt to give you more yourself. And if we can do that, then like that is our whole job as humans.

30:24That's love. Love is being able to be and give everything to ourselves that we believe we deserve.

30:30Jonathan Fields: And that resonates really strongly. I guess my deeper curiosity though, is this, sometimes we shrink because we don't want to be rejected because we don't want to be, you mentioned earlier, like ostracized, kicked out. Like we want to belong in community and follow whatever the norms are. Other times we shrink for very practical reasons, like safety. Like you're a kid, you're growing up young black man in the South, right? Part of this for you isn't about being rejected. And this is some part of what you write about. It's about safety. Oh, yeah. You know, it's like showing up in a particular way that's smaller than who you are because you want to be alive.

31:03Jonathan Fields: You want to be safe. Oh, yeah. That's a harder problem to solve in my mind. Oh, yeah. It's like when you say be more visible and be who you are. And that is a huge amount of faith. If part of the reason you're shrinking is because of the perception that will make you safer and maybe the very real, the reality that it will make you safer to then go out and say, no, I'm going to be more visible. I'm going to be more of who I need to be and who I am. It's like you're challenging not just rejection. You're stepping into a place of faith that somehow you're going to be okay even showing up in that deeper, more real, authentic place.

31:40Jonathan Fields: And this was your story. That's big. That's a big move. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you know, what's funny is like I'm such a person that like I don't like to talk about myself often, you know, in my own journey that like you're right. It is big. Because when I think about it, man, to be young and black and American, like you really do like got to shrink and become invisible to survive this country, especially playing football on the level that I did and that we did. I never forget, like when Trayvon Martin was murdered, like I wasn't one of the ones who was like, you know, protesting or things like that.

32:17And we had a small group who did, but I wasn't one of the ones who did because I wanted to be safe. Like I wanted, you know, I felt like I had too much at stakes in order to put myself out there. And a lot of times, you know, it's easier to put yourself out there when you got a lot to lose. It's much harder to put yourself out there when you got everything to lose. And oftentimes being black in this country, you know, we got everything to lose. You know, this country gave us so little and we made something of it. And what little we do have, this country is constantly attempting to try and take away.

32:50We think about right now, this is in 2025 and we're still dealing with the rolling back of rights. We're still dealing with people trying to undo many of the freedoms that we so hard fought for. We still live in a country in which like books are being banned. Funding is being cut. People don't care highly about like what's going on in rural America, no matter where you in Wisconsin, with you in South Carolina, where I'm from. People oftentimes aren't just like not caring, but they're like actively against. So to me to show up in spite of that you write is the ultimate expression of faith because there's the possibility of loss and you believe you begin to believe that even if I lose something I don't lose everything and everything I don't lose is who I am as a person.

33:37I never forget. So like my granddaddy, I love my granddaddy, right? I carry his obituary wherever I go. I have some friends who I'm Christian, but I have friends who practice hoodoo and they be like, hey, bro, like make a cup of coffee to your granddaddy, you know, and sip coffee with your granddaddy. I do, you know, and I'd be like, hey, granddaddy, like I have conversations with granddaddy, everything, you know, and so like, like for me, it's being generative and life-giving. So one of the things about my granddaddy I love, you know, it's like he's a black man from South Carolina born in the 1930s in spite of like serving in this country.

34:10Now, I'll never forget when 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 happened. happened my granddaddy born in south kielina born as a baby of the great depression born in a time in which this country you know we're just years removed from one of the bloodiest periods in american history for black people 19 the early 1900s to about to the 1920s especially black southern folk 1919 was you know they were like lynching black people all over and you're talking about like he has proximity to these stories and you're talking about like being not far removed from Emmett Tillman. You're not even talking about like the stories, the smaller stories of the ways in which black people live in a constant grip of American terror all throughout the continental United States in ways that are like for every one headline, there's like 10, 15 acts of small violence that people don't report on.

35:01And people like my granddaddy in the small rural South, when the Voting Rights Act came down in 1954, 1964, or 65, after the Civil Rights Act of 64. My granddaddy got up in his pickup truck. And you want to know what my granddaddy did? My granddaddy went around town. He picked up everybody and said that no matter what we in South Carolina, I'm going to pick up everybody so that they can have a right to be fully human and to vote and make their voice known. That is a radical risk. Why? Because you are in a moment in a state where people really don't just don't want you to exist. They don't want you to change anything.

35:38So for me, I think like, yeah, it's showing up as your full self, no matter who you are, whether you're black, whether you're this, whether you're that, like it is, you're right, the ultimate form of faith because you can lose so much and yet you're not willing to lose yourself. And so for me, I'm preaching to myself right now, you know, because the older you get, I feel like the less brave you become. So it's like, I hope that I become a person that as I deepen my understanding of life it also deepens my commitment to radical choices you know because stability status quo would create a sustainable life but like risk choice imagination would create a full and whole life and i don't just want a sustainable life i want a life in which like we can take some risks to like be everything we can be.

36:34Jonathan Fields: I mean, I think so many of us want that also, you know, but it's just, you know, fear stops you. And we all have different fears and we all like come from different places and different histories where like the fears can be radically different. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Quince. So I don't know about you, but August always kind of feels like the Sunday of summer to me. Time to reset before fall hits, and that includes my closet. Quince makes that easy with ultra soft organic cotton, premium Mongolian cashmere, all tailored well enough to go from a meeting to dinner.

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39:12Jonathan Fields: So here's something I find genuinely fascinating. The places where exceptional design shows up where you least expect it, where someone decided that an everyday object, something completely ordinary, deserve the same level of intention and craft as anything else in your life. That's exactly what Kohler is doing with their smart toilets. Their Veil smart toilet doesn't look anything like what you'd picture when you hear the word toilet. It's sculptural, considered the kind of design that makes you do a double take. And the experience is designed to match, elevated, personal, quieter than you'd expect, the kind of thing that transforms your morning routine without you even fully realizing it.

39:49Jonathan Fields: That's what good design does. And Kohler has been doing it, refusing to accept that every day has to be ordinary for over 150 years. Discover Kohler smart toilets at Kohler.com. It's interesting. Your story is sort of like this, and I know you don't love talking about yourself, but I'm going to talk about you. It's fine. It's fine. It's cool. It's cool. Because it's a really powerful for example in a lot of ways you know you've talked a number of times about you know like playing football and establishing yourself and establishing a name for that and it's really moving out into the world and moving into the world of faith but the world of faith you first moved into was a world of faith that didn't fit you yeah and you did everything you basically were like let me figure this out i want to be a part of this i want to be in community like i want to try and make it so these are my people you hit a moment where you're like it's not working like Like this whole, the community, the approach, it's just not working.

40:45Jonathan Fields: And rather than, again, getting to this moment and saying, you know what, I'm going to shrink again. And because I want to fit in. Again, you said, no, I can't do this. And really started. and it meant walking away from a community, a sense of belonging, a set of beliefs that had been kind of like wrapped around you for a window of time, a season of your life, and really going out and, I'm gonna make this analogy, and maybe uncomfortable for you. You described the story of Jesus earlier in a conversation about how he looked at his parents and said, no, I gotta go like explore and figure out what's right for me.

41:22Jonathan Fields: And it's kind of like you had your own version of that. Oh, it's not uncomfortable for me at all. Yeah. That's true. But it's not untrue. I'm not comparing you to him and saying no. Oh, no, no. But saying no and saying let me figure out what works. I think that's very true about my story. I feel like I've always been this type of person, though, for me. I don't know what it is. I feel like I've never been a person that's so tied to something ultimately to where I can't walk away. I think and this is partly because of the people around me is I love people. My friend said the other day, but you just love people.

42:00And because I do love people like I pay attention to their stories and I'm like, once you get to know people beyond your own kind of community and environment, then like you get to believe that there is more possible for you than you're settling for right now. You know, a lot of times we grow up or we come into environments in which like we believe this is the only thing for us. And then the story we receive about ourselves is that there are no other alternatives and options. There is nothing more for me here. And I just think that like that may be cool for some people to live that way, to be like, all right, cool.

42:37I'm good with where I'm at. And for me, I'm like that, too. I'm good where I'm at until it don't work. And when it don't work, I'm at least willing, you know, to challenge like why it doesn't work, why it doesn't work for me. And to be like, all right, at some point, I'm just going to be like, I'm going to bounce and I'm going to bounce out and I'm going to just be like, OK, I'm going to figure out what does work. And like, I think it's all dependent on like having people around you who can become a safe place to land when you got to jump. I was talking to my friend the other day and she was using this narrative, this story of like a young man at a swimming pool.

43:19Imagine myself being a young man at a swimming pool. And I jumped in the pool before I swam before. But time had kind of done its work on me and I wasn't in the pool. And like here she is trying to get me to believe that I can swim again. But then I'm at the edge of the pool. I'm saying, oh, I can't swim. I can't do it. I can't swim. And here are all these people who are in the pool who had seen me swim, who had jumped with me before, who had seen me, you know, do beautiful breaststrokes and seen me freestyle. And they seen me even dip my foot into the water and they saw the process of me jumping in one season.

43:55But then time had gone at work and I settled in fear, came in. And she's like, yo, do realize this is that like you're afraid right now to jump again because you believe that this time is going to be the time to ruin you without realizing that you've jumped and swim so many times before. And all you got to do is trust that the people in the water will catch you and guide you where you need to go. And I think for me, I think for so many people, we get to the point where it's like we forget that like we have swam before and we've made it through and we didn't drown and it didn't destroy us. Big changes, big leaps, big bounds.

44:41It took something from us. It took a lot of courage. It took a lot of faith to do it. But like there's people in the water who's like, hey, come on, dip your foot in, jump. It's OK. And I think like for me, I've never really been a person to be like, I can't jump. I can't leap, you know, and I think for so many people, it's not that like we get complacent or we settle. is that like the muscle the faith muscle atrophies the bravery muscle atrophies because oftentimes communities can in some sense make that bravery muscle atrophy and when we so used to being somewhere that's just like that doesn't really challenge us or like doesn't really you know maybe we people who like i but i'd have mastered this it's time for me to bounce i didn't master this part of my journey it's time for me to go and oftentimes we think that like okay you're supposed to be somewhere forever when in actuality maybe it's just for a season and it's time for you to jump again because somebody else needs your bravery so on another level in this story the more you jump the more people that believe they can jump as well and so it's like if we lose that we lose our sense of self and maybe we are the ones who are to jump and not the ones that's supposed to stay on the sideline.

46:07Jonathan Fields: I have to ask you now, when your friend was sort of like sharing this story with you and saying like, okay, so like, here's what's going on. Was she talking to you about something that you're grappling with right now, a jump that you're thinking about? Yeah, she was in this moment. Are you open to sharing? No, not really. No, no, no, no, no.

46:28yeah yeah yeah yeah because it's like because for me in this present moment i mean i think i think a lot of the junk is about like don't say what do you want in life and you know are you willing to like allow yourself the vulnerability of saying what you want without the fear of like being considered a bad person without the fear of like oh they're not going to like me if i do this or well you know it just doesn't things don't work anymore or they don't work the way they should work or maybe you know you want things to look different and i think that like as i'm grappling with my own life it's so funny this podcast is having at this very moment where i'm going through one of the hardest times of my life and it's taken a lot of bravery to show up for work to show up for myself, to show up for my family, to show up for, you know, my dreams and my goals and my desires.

47:25I think it's so funny that I'm going back to like shouting in the fire because I felt like I was so brave when I was writing that book. And I feel so scared in life right now. And she was dragging me a little bit in a way to tell me, Dante, you've already jumped before. it's okay to not know all the answers to not know all the moves to not know whether you you know gonna swim or drown but she's like hey G is only three feet my boy you're a five foot you're a five foot nine five foot ten you act like life is asking you to jump into ten foot water nah bro you jump before and it's okay to jump again you know I'm much different as a human I think different.

48:16I talk different. I want different things than like, you know, when I was younger. And I think trusting the process of my evolution and my growth as a human being in this present moment is like those the big leaps of life to trust the process of my life and unfolding. And she was like, in this present moment, you know what you feel you must do. You're just afraid of the consequences. But trust yourself. You got it.

48:43Jonathan Fields: And the end of that book that we've been referencing is a declaration of becoming. And there's one line where you say I became who I was always meant to be. It feels like you're dipping back into that as we speak. yeah yeah i'm thinking even like right now as a writer you know you know as a writer i'm going through this right now where you know when i think about like writing shouting in the fire you know it's a very different moment it's in 2020 you know 2021 and it's just a very different moment for americans and as a young writer you kind of speak in your mind or whatever you feel you know and things like that and it's good it's right but then like right now i'm like I'm trying to be a storyteller in a way that like is more robust I like different type of writing now I like more like immersive journalism and poetry and essays and things like that and like I want to explore humans outside of myself which is much different like I'm working on my second book right now and it's uh I'll be done in about a month and a half with it this book is the kind the next step in my journey as a writer and a human, you know, where so much of the same themes of shouting in the fire has been explored in this book.

50:00But I'm stepping back and saying, let me travel to Uvalde. Let me travel to Vietnam. Let me travel to Charleston, South Carolina. Let me travel to these different places, New Mexico. Let me travel, you know, to these different to New york and um begin to explore like heartbreak and what heartbreak does to us and what we do with it and figure out how we can use our heartbreak as a force for creative good you know of course shouting in the fire is that you see that woven and shouting in the fire where you know heartbreak and anger and grief is used for good and as a creative force but like right now and it's like Like for me, you know, I'm just a different human than I was.

50:47And that takes a lot of bravery because like people get used to, you know, you being a certain type of way or like, you know, my work on social media is like sometimes you get tired as a writer. And sometimes you're like, well, I don't want to talk about Donald Trump today, bro. I want to I want to go watch some films and talk about Ryan Coogler or Alfred Hitchcock. You know, I want to go read some poems and let's talk about poems and things like that. let's talk about basketball you know let me talk about sports and of course those other things gonna be layered in there but it's like you know life is so interesting and I think like I'm such a curious human being that like my desires and interests change you know ever so often and it takes a lot of bravery to accept that like okay the person I was writing book one will be different and the person that I am writing book two.

51:41But like Ryan Cooler said the other day in an interview, he says, every movie I made, it was the best movie that I can make at that moment. And like, hey, this is the best I got to offer right now. And back then, that was the best I got to offer then. And then in another year, when I'm working on my young adult novel, that'd be the best thing that I can offer right then. And every version of the self matters. And I think a lot of times we think that like, okay, our journeys to becoming ourselves only matter when we become the thing we always wanted. And that's just not the case. The journey matters every day we wake up and decide we're going to take it.

52:20Jonathan Fields: Yeah. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So I always wrap with the same question here. And that is in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up for me to live a good life is to be okay with like, that life is life and that every day, you know, life presents a new opportunity to be more of who you are. And then the good life is a life in which you can look at everything you became and look at everything you came from and realize it meant something and an account for something. And that the only thing the world demands of you is for you to just try and be yourself as much as you can every day.

53:04That's the good life. That's the life that counts. it don't matter how much money you make how many books you write how many mistakes you make how much failure you have how much fear you possess if you wake up in the morning and you begin to ask yourself what can I do today to give me life that's the good life to be able to ask that question to make small steps to like live it thank you yeah thank you man

53:31Jonathan Fields: if you love this episode you'll also love the conversation we had with Rabbi Steve Leder about how to live what really matters. You can find the link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, sharing, chances are you did because you're still listening here.

54:06Jonathan Fields: Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even. Then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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57:24Thank you.