Raising Men: The Making of Warrior Poets

One of the greatest stories in movie history is of Uncle Argyle taking in the young boy William Wallace just after Williams’ father was killed by the English. It was the turning point in the boy’s life. As they stand at a distance watching the burial of the boy’s father and mother to a dirge played on “outlawed pipes,” young William picks up his father’s sword. 

Uncle Argyle takes the sword and puts his finger to William’s head. “First learn to use this,” he says, before holding up the long blade, “Then I’ll teach you to use this.” Why do I love that short scene so much? Because it says so much with so little about the nature of manhood, fatherhood, warriorhood. 

William was probably ready to take up a sword that moment and avenge his father’s death, and in his rage and emotion at injustice perhaps he would have joined an army of the oppressed to go off and fight that same day. And he likely would have died that same day, in the same way as his father. Since becoming a dad, I think about this a lot. This scene comes back to me all the time. 

Wallace’s father had probably modeled hard work for his son as they cultivated the family farm. He most certainly modeled bravery and duty as a fighter riding off to battle the English. But Wallace had been deprived of some deeper things. Of course, historically speaking, we don’t know a whole lot about William Wallace’s childhood or father, but I think the movie’s imaginings of these childhood scenes says some valuable things about how we raise our children.

I think you could write volumes about parenting and raising men by thinking the implications of those early minutes in the movie. It reminds me of how easy it is fall into a rut of doing certain things really well and yet failing in other areas when it comes to raising up good warrior poets. 

The truth is this—our kids will follow in our footsteps. What footsteps are we leaving behind for our kids to follow? Maybe we’re good providers and protectors, but drop the ball in other areas of developing the soul, mind, and character of our children. I think there are at least four pillars we have to establish in raising warrior poets. It’s kind of like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applied to fatherhood.

Pillar #1 for Raising Warrior Poets: Protect and Provide

You're taking care of the physical aspects. This is the baseline. The lowest tier where you're just kind of keeping them alive. You're maybe failing epically as a dad, but you pat yourself on the back and say, "I'm paying the bills aren't I? I gave them this house to live under." 

Yeah but this is the lowest form of fatherhood. At least do that and then you want to graduate to the other stuff. But our goal isn't to just barely keep our kids alive. Our goal is to raise warrior poets to be a force for good in the world, right?

Pillar #2 for Raising Warrior Poets: Social and Emotional Skills

The second thing, and this is in no particular order, is the social one. Teaching your kids how to resolve conflict, how to win friends and influence people, good manners, etc. It's EQ, which is emotional intelligence. A lot of times the high IQ people will work for high EQ people. 

Not always, it depends on the job, but emotional intelligence, being able to control your emotions, temper, anger, resolve conflict, win friends. They need to be able to stop wiggling, stay still, look someone in the eye, shake their hand, say something nice. And so the social aspect, we need to be able to help make sure that we're developing our kids in that. 

RELATED LINKS | Boyhood Is Not A Disease • The Virtue of Dangerous Poets

Pillar #3 for Raising Warrior Poets: Spiritual Development

This is the force behind all the others. You can provide well. Have good manners. But be morally bankrupt. This is where their morality is going to flow from. Do they exhibit character, love, mercy, compassion, fairness, and a sense of justice? 

This is where true wisdom comes from. There's lots of people out there with knowledge, but without the ability to apply knowledge with restraint and temperance. That's something that I think flows more out spiritual development.

Pillar #4 for Raising Warrior Poets: Mental and Intellectual Development

When it comes to education of your kid, if you just had this one great educational goal, you had them fall in love with reading, you have done an amazing job just in that piece. You need to oversee their education, making sure that you're building a proper worldview so that they see how all the pieces of different knowledge fit together and inform the person to provide direction and real balance in life. 

So it’s part of their spiritual development. It’s teaching them mental flexibility, cultivating creativity. I've been amazed as I've just been going down the journey of trying to be a better dad, how it's really challenged me to be a better man. 

I'm constantly being stretched by the tension between where I am as a man and father and where I know I need to be. I'm very aware that I’ve not arrived. I'm failing forward in that sense. But it’s about taking steps every day in the right direction. Train Hard. Train Smart. Live Free.