This article originally appeared in the spring 2016 Harker Quarterly.
I am a reformed academic. And it is springtime. Shortly, I hope to show how these two statements are related.
First, regarding the academic statement: I believe in students learning academic content from a teacher who is a subject matter expert and who loves children. I want students to graduate knowing the difference between compose and comprise, what moves a demand curve, why we might need to find the derivative of an equation, the structure of DNA, the principle causes of the Great Depression and how to conjugate verbs in another language.
Nothing warms my heart more than when a student in class asks an extremely nuanced, insightful question like, “Is synesthesia a physical or psychological phenomenon?”
Yes, I believe in problem-solving and critical thinking, but I believe these skills rest on a solid foundation of academic knowledge. I believe it is folly to say that students only need to know how “to think” because they can Google everything else. Without context and background knowledge about the Civil War or photosynthesis, how does a student know what to Google in the first place?
And it is springtime. How is spring related to being an academic? I can explain with the help of a Zen poem: “In the landscape of spring, there is neither better nor worse. The flowering branches grow naturally, some long, some short.” Does that clear things up?
Now that it is spring, flowers, trees, everything is starting to bloom. Each blooms at its own pace, some early, some late. Do we judge the early bloomers, the flowers in full bloom, as superior? The flowers and branches that have yet to fully bloom – are they inferior?
Back to academics. I came relatively late to academics. In my junior year in high school, I began to work hard because someone told me I had to go to college and I’d better prepare.
I started to fall in love with poetry and calculus. Who knew? Interestingly enough, the love followed the hard work – not the other way around. And the work followed the fear of not being prepared for college. So I owe my being an academic to fear. But that fear quickly turned into love and no one, not even I, could have predicted it would happen.
When will the students among us bloom? Does everyone have to bloom by the age of 14? 18? How many blooms does a lifetime get? Students, like flowers, need good soil, nurturing, sunlight and sometimes a stick in the ground for structure, but their blooming is unpredictable, even by the student.
We cannot be judgmental if a student hasn’t bloomed yet. Neither can we force a blooming when it is not yet time. Nor should we have preconceived notions about when or how a blooming will happen. Flowering branches grow naturally, some long and some short.
I am a reformed academic. And it is springtime. Who knew exactly how or when either would happen? We have ideas about when these things will happen. But reality has its own ideas, and they spring forth wonderfully and unpredictably all the time. Some long, some short.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome the board of trustees, administration, faculty, staff, parents, friends and family, alumni and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2015. Each year, I have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell to our graduates. Like most graduation speeches, my talk takes the form of advice, such as “Dare to Lose Your Mind” or “Be Like Curious George.” Since my talk is the only remaining formality between you and your diploma, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-space, size-12 font. I will continue, however, to make no promises about the size of my margins. I am not above manipulating the spacing between my lines either.
Today I want to make you aware of a way of life that will not guarantee success, happiness and overall good hygiene. That way of life is the philosophical life. I studied philosophy at the greatest university in the world, Boston University, which, by the way, is located in Boston. You might be familiar with some other minor universities located in that area. At Boston University I chose the very practical degree of English literature with a minor in philosophy. Upon graduation I put this practicality to use by applying for my first job as a sales associate at Foot Locker in Harvard Square. During my interview, for some reason I thought it important to share with the hiring manager my true love for philosophy. I confessed that had I discovered philosophy earlier, I would have majored in it instead of only minoring. For some reason I didn’t get the job.
So my advice for you today is not from the 1982 song by Olivia Newton-John, “Let’s Get Physical,” recently re-popularized by cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester on the hit TV show “Glee”; rather, despite its inability to promise fame, glory or even Facebook likes, my advice is “Let’s get philosophical.” By “Let’s get philosophical” I mean, think deeply about the meaning of life, your purpose, the big picture, human nature and why we are all here. Don’t be afraid to ask deep questions, like “Who am I?” or “Why do Americans eat so much cereal?” Don’t just think outside the box, but ask why there is a cereal box in the first place.
Although we cannot promise any practical results from this way of life, philosophy is not without what philosophers and economists call “utility.” The Economist magazine, in its article “Philosopher Kings,” says that business leaders would do well to look inward instead of outward and that a surprising number of CEOs studied philosophy. The online magazine salon.com, in its article “Be Employable, Study Philosophy,” says in its tagline that philosophy teaches you how to think, which is useful in any type of work. Plato famously believed that philosophers, after training in both theoretical and practical matters, make the best rulers.
Besides these practical considerations, there is serious intrinsic value to studying philosophy too, as it will deepen your life or any pursuit you have. Philosophy can make it more difficult for you to be fooled, because you will recognize the roots of any so-called new trend or idea. Consider the ancient Greek slave and stoic philosopher Epictetus’ aphorism about the power of thought: “Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.” Epictetus saw this centuries before the more recent trends of positive psychology. Philosophy can also give you perspective. Here is the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, a real-life philosopher king: “Consider both how quickly all things that are, are forgotten, and what an immense chaos of eternity was before, and will follow after all things.” Now perhaps I am morbid, but I find that sentiment extremely uplifting!
A caveat, however, for your pursuit of philosophy: Don’t expect any satisfactory answers. The beauty of philosophy is in asking the questions, not finding the answers. The great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti dedicated his life’s work to the notion that “Truth is a pathless land.” Similarly the Buddha, the most psychological and philosophical of all the religious thinkers, advised his students to “Place no head above your own,” meaning to trust your raw experience over any doctrine.
Another caveat: Don’t take your own thought too seriously. In Douglas Adams’ modern classic “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” a supercomputer named “Deep Thought” takes seven and a half million years to calculate “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” The supercomputer eventually spits out the answer everyone is waiting for, and that answer, according to Deep Thought, is the number 42. Even though this answer sent generations of numerologists on a hunt to understand why 42 is central to the universe, Douglas Adams himself said he just randomly chose an ordinary number. The 20th century philosopher Alan Watts reminds us that, “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
To conclude, have fun with philosophy and life. Think deeply but do not take yourself or your thought too seriously. Philosophy means the love of wisdom. At the end of the day, philosophy is not really limited to an academic subject – the love of wisdom is the love of life itself. If you “get philosophical,” you will not only begin to know yourself, but you will also begin to know life and all of the beauty and depth that you and the world hold. Thank you.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome the classes of 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 to the 2014 matriculation ceremony. Matriculation is a ceremony initiated with the first class of the Harker upper school, the Class of 2002. During this ceremony new students to the upper school take an oath promising to follow the Honor Code, a document written by students in the early years of the Harker upper school and updated periodically. The Honor Code outlines how students as a community wish to live together and wish to be treated by each other. Honesty and respect, for instance, are important tenets of the Honor Code.
Each year I begin matriculation with an aspiration I have for the students for the school year. Because I have basically invited myself to speak at both matriculation and graduation, and I have accepted my own invitation, I try to confine my remarks to one page of single- space, size-12 font. I am adapting my aspiration for you this year from a TED talk given by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking Fast and Slow.” Kahneman begins his TED talk by pointing out that studies of happiness are often confused by a lack of clarity around which self’s happiness we are discussing, the “experiencing self” or the “remembering self.”
What are the experiencing and remembering selves? According to Kahneman, the experiencing self is the self who lives his life from moment to moment; the remembering self is the self who thinks about his life. The experiencing self is the self the doctor inquires about when he pokes you and asks, “Does this hurt?” The remembering self is the self he inquires about when he asks how you have been feeling over the last few weeks. If you go on vacation, the self who is enjoying each moment is the experiencing self; the self who is planning the vacation beforehand and recalling it fondly while looking at pictures afterward is the remembering self. The experiencing self is your life and the remembering self thinks about your life. What is my hope for you this year? My hope for you this year is that you achieve a healthy balance between your experiencing self and your remembering self.
We need both selves. If we only had the experiencing self, we would live like a piece of music in which each note has no relation to the note that went before or the note that comes after. I think we all know people like this, and in some ways kids live more as an experiencing self. We need the remembering self to have what the philosopher Alan Watts calls “resonance.” It isn’t much good to be happy unless you know you are happy. Memory and metacognition are forms of feedback that give life resonance, just as good acoustical feedback gives our voice resonance. The remembering self is a kind of a neurological echo.
However, we can live under the tyranny of the remembering self, especially in high school. The remembering self compares with others, makes judgments, sets expectations and plans. The remembering self, when hyperactive, can create the same kind of zaniness that occurs when we have too much feedback, like when a cave produces too much echo or when we are overthinking a performance. Here is one of Alan Watts’ favorite limericks:
“There once was a man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, yet what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.”
Kahneman asks what kind of vacation you would choose if you could take no pictures and your memory would be wiped upon return? High school is a time for planning and preparing, but what kind of life would you plan if your experiencing self, not your remembering self, were choosing? Too often we choose a path based on the remembering self’s ideas, not the experiencing self’s intuition. Whichever path you choose, hopefully your experiencing self will have some say and will be there to experience the joy of your flourishing.Living too much with the remembering self can remove us from the life all around us. John Lennon sang in his song “Beautiful Boy,” “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” By achieving the right balance between the experiencing and remembering selves, we hope that you will find the life that is waiting for you, both this year and beyond. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome members of the board of trustees, administration, faculty, staff, parents, friends and family, alumni, and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2014. I have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell to our graduates each year. Like most graduation speeches, my talk takes the form of advice, like “Dare to Singletask” or “Love Like a Labrador.” Since my talk is the only remaining formality standing between you and your diplomas, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-space, size twelve font. I am so confident that I can achieve this goal that I have even spelled out the number twelve. But I will make no promises about the size of my margins.
Today I turn for inspiration to the award-winning song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen.” I know, I know, by now we all are tired of the song. My boys howl from the back seat when I play the song in the car, let down my hair, and belt out its chorus. I can do it here if you would like. But Rolling Stone Magazine calls “Let It Go” a “bona fide anthem that’s Disney’s single-biggest and best song in a generation.” Also, this year’s Oscar win for best song brings one of the writers of “Let it Go,” Robert Lopez, what the magazine calls “a rare EGOT (wins for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).” (By the way, EGOT is an unfortunate acronym; why not the more stylish TOGE or pithy GOET?)
The song is sung powerfully by Idina Menzel, or, as John Travolta mispronounced her name at the 2014 Oscars, “Adele Dazeem.” In case you didn’t know, there is now a widget that will “Travoltify” your name for free. For instance, my name Travoltified is Catherine Nicheems. “Travoltify,” unlike “selfie” and “derp,” hasn’t made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. If it does, however, it will have the unique classification of being a proper name that is also a transitive verb with only one possible direct object: another proper name. Spooky. Nonetheless, Menzel’s glorious voice makes the song so meaningful and memorable that even 2-year-olds know the words. I know you do, too.
The song and the movie have had their share of controversies. The biggest controversy is the transformation of Elsa into a slender, elegantly gowned ice diva at the moment of her liberation during this song. I will not address these controversies, but I will add one of my own: why is the male hero, an ice harvester named Kristoff, so good looking and oafishly charming? Why aren’t there any movies with stuffy administrators, like, say, heads of schools, as the heroes? Instead of Kristoff the hero could be named, well, Chris Nikoloff. I could swoop into a life or death situation, devise some policy, form a committee and save the day.
In any case, the song’s message is to, well, “let it go.” What exactly are you letting go? On one level, the song can be taken to suggest letting go of inhibitions, the past, caring what others think, or even fears. This is not unlike Buddha’s third noble truth. Buddha’s second noble truth is that we suffer because we desire, or “cling” to be exact. His third truth recommends letting go of desire, or clinging, a process called nirvana, which literally means to blow out, or “whew” as translated by Alan Watts. Buddha’s students would point out that this puts them into the paradoxical bind of desiring not to desire. Luckily there is a way out of that trap, but that is for another graduation. In any case, some of these interpretations have gotten the song into trouble, but I think there is a more precise message anyway.
For those of you who have taken psychology, you may be familiar with Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, the unconscious part of yourself that you dare not recognize but that you eventually must integrate to become whole. Elsa’s secret power that turns everything into ice is her shadow, the part of herself that she hides to conform to society’s expectations. She sings “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.” Your 2014 baccalaureate student speaker, Efrey Noten, captured this sentiment with a quote from David Wallace: “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” It is Elsa’s shadow that she accepts, after years of concealing, and lets go. When she lets her shadow go, she builds a marvelous ice castle in the mountains; her shadow is finally liberated, as is her hair when she lets it down.
Acceptance and liberation aren’t enough, however; Elsa still has to integrate her shadow. Not until she allows herself to love her sister, and her complete self, does she fully integrate her shadow and use her powers for good, like creating ice skating rinks for her adoring subjects. Also, because shadow material contains all of your so-called imperfections, integrating your shadow means dropping perfectionism, too. Elsa sings, “That perfect girl is gone.” I know that good is the enemy of great, but perfect can be the enemy of good enough, and believe me, there will be plenty of times in your life when good enough will have to be, well, good enough.
In closing, all of the weaker, less desirable parts of yourself, those parts that you hide to conform, can be sources of power, of your unique expression in the world. They are the metaphorical frogs that transform into princes, or the dragons that fight for you instead of breathing fire at you. In the movie “Shrek,” remember how helpful Dragon becomes once she discovers love with Donkey? So my advice to you today is to let it go, with the “it” being that part of yourself that no one, not even you, acknowledges. Lao Tzu, the great author of the Tao Te Ching, said the following: “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” You have spent 18 years becoming what you are and if you dare to let it go, you will discover just how wonderful who you are really is. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome members of the board of trustees, administration, faculty, staff, parents, friends and family, alumni, and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2014. I have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell to our graduates each year. Like most graduation speeches, my talk takes the form of advice, like “Dare to Singletask” or “Love Like a Labrador.” Since my talk is the only remaining formality standing between you and your diplomas, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-space, size twelve font. I am so confident that I can achieve this goal that I have even spelled out the number twelve. But I will make no promises about the size of my margins.
Today I turn for inspiration to the award-winning song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen.” I know, I know, by now we all are tired of the song. My boys howl from the back seat when I play the song in the car, let down my hair, and belt out its chorus. I can do it here if you would like. But Rolling Stone Magazine calls “Let It Go” a “bona fide anthem that’s Disney’s single-biggest and best song in a generation.” Also, this year’s Oscar win for best song brings one of the writers of “Let it Go,” Robert Lopez, what the magazine calls “a rare EGOT (wins for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).” (By the way, EGOT is an unfortunate acronym; why not the more stylish TOGE or pithy GOET?)
The song is sung powerfully by Idina Menzel, or, as John Travolta mispronounced her name at the 2014 Oscars, “Adele Dazeem.” In case you didn’t know, there is now a widget that will “Travoltify” your name for free. For instance, my name Travoltified is Catherine Nicheems. “Travoltify,” unlike “selfie” and “derp,” hasn’t made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. If it does, however, it will have the unique classification of being a proper name that is also a transitive verb with only one possible direct object: another proper name. Spooky. Nonetheless, Menzel’s glorious voice makes the song so meaningful and memorable that even 2-year-olds know the words. I know you do, too.
The song and the movie have had their share of controversies. The biggest controversy is the transformation of Elsa into a slender, elegantly gowned ice diva at the moment of her liberation during this song. I will not address these controversies, but I will add one of my own: why is the male hero, an ice harvester named Kristoff, so good looking and oafishly charming? Why aren’t there any movies with stuffy administrators, like, say, heads of schools, as the heroes? Instead of Kristoff the hero could be named, well, Chris Nikoloff. I could swoop into a life or death situation, devise some policy, form a committee and save the day.
In any case, the song’s message is to, well, “let it go.” What exactly are you letting go? On one level, the song can be taken to suggest letting go of inhibitions, the past, caring what others think, or even fears. This is not unlike Buddha’s third noble truth. Buddha’s second noble truth is that we suffer because we desire, or “cling” to be exact. His third truth recommends letting go of desire, or clinging, a process called nirvana, which literally means to blow out, or “whew” as translated by Alan Watts. Buddha’s students would point out that this puts them into the paradoxical bind of desiring not to desire. Luckily there is a way out of that trap, but that is for another graduation. In any case, some of these interpretations have gotten the song into trouble, but I think there is a more precise message anyway.
For those of you who have taken psychology, you may be familiar with Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, the unconscious part of yourself that you dare not recognize but that you eventually must integrate to become whole. Elsa’s secret power that turns everything into ice is her shadow, the part of herself that she hides to conform to society’s expectations. She sings “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.” Your 2014 baccalaureate student speaker, Efrey Noten, captured this sentiment with a quote from David Wallace: “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” It is Elsa’s shadow that she accepts, after years of concealing, and lets go. When she lets her shadow go, she builds a marvelous ice castle in the mountains; her shadow is finally liberated, as is her hair when she lets it down.
Acceptance and liberation aren’t enough, however; Elsa still has to integrate her shadow. Not until she allows herself to love her sister, and her complete self, does she fully integrate her shadow and use her powers for good, like creating ice skating rinks for her adoring subjects. Also, because shadow material contains all of your so-called imperfections, integrating your shadow means dropping perfectionism, too. Elsa sings, “That perfect girl is gone.” I know that good is the enemy of great, but perfect can be the enemy of good enough, and believe me, there will be plenty of times in your life when good enough will have to be, well, good enough.
In closing, all of the weaker, less desirable parts of yourself, those parts that you hide to conform, can be sources of power, of your unique expression in the world. They are the metaphorical frogs that transform into princes, or the dragons that fight for you instead of breathing fire at you. In the movie “Shrek,” remember how helpful Dragon becomes once she discovers love with Donkey? So my advice to you today is to let it go, with the “it” being that part of yourself that no one, not even you, acknowledges. Lao Tzu, the great author of the Tao Te Ching, said the following: “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” You have spent 18 years becoming what you are and if you dare to let it go, you will discover just how wonderful who you are really is. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome members of the board of trustees, administration, faculty, staff, parents, friends and family, alumni, and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2014. I have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell to our graduates each year. Like most graduation speeches, my talk takes the form of advice, like “Dare to Singletask” or “Love Like a Labrador.” Since my talk is the only remaining formality standing between you and your diplomas, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-space, size twelve font. I am so confident that I can achieve this goal that I have even spelled out the number twelve. But I will make no promises about the size of my margins.
Today I turn for inspiration to the award-winning song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen.” I know, I know, by now we all are tired of the song. My boys howl from the back seat when I play the song in the car, let down my hair, and belt out its chorus. I can do it here if you would like. But Rolling Stone Magazine calls “Let It Go” a “bona fide anthem that’s Disney’s single-biggest and best song in a generation.” Also, this year’s Oscar win for best song brings one of the writers of “Let it Go,” Robert Lopez, what the magazine calls “a rare EGOT (wins for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).” (By the way, EGOT is an unfortunate acronym; why not the more stylish TOGE or pithy GOET?)
The song is sung powerfully by Idina Menzel, or, as John Travolta mispronounced her name at the 2014 Oscars, “Adele Dazeem.” In case you didn’t know, there is now a widget that will “Travoltify” your name for free. For instance, my name Travoltified is Catherine Nicheems. “Travoltify,” unlike “selfie” and “derp,” hasn’t made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. If it does, however, it will have the unique classification of being a proper name that is also a transitive verb with only one possible direct object: another proper name. Spooky. Nonetheless, Menzel’s glorious voice makes the song so meaningful and memorable that even 2-year-olds know the words. I know you do, too.
The song and the movie have had their share of controversies. The biggest controversy is the transformation of Elsa into a slender, elegantly gowned ice diva at the moment of her liberation during this song. I will not address these controversies, but I will add one of my own: why is the male hero, an ice harvester named Kristoff, so good looking and oafishly charming? Why aren’t there any movies with stuffy administrators, like, say, heads of schools, as the heroes? Instead of Kristoff the hero could be named, well, Chris Nikoloff. I could swoop into a life or death situation, devise some policy, form a committee and save the day.
In any case, the song’s message is to, well, “let it go.” What exactly are you letting go? On one level, the song can be taken to suggest letting go of inhibitions, the past, caring what others think, or even fears. This is not unlike Buddha’s third noble truth. Buddha’s second noble truth is that we suffer because we desire, or “cling” to be exact. His third truth recommends letting go of desire, or clinging, a process called nirvana, which literally means to blow out, or “whew” as translated by Alan Watts. Buddha’s students would point out that this puts them into the paradoxical bind of desiring not to desire. Luckily there is a way out of that trap, but that is for another graduation. In any case, some of these interpretations have gotten the song into trouble, but I think there is a more precise message anyway.
For those of you who have taken psychology, you may be familiar with Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, the unconscious part of yourself that you dare not recognize but that you eventually must integrate to become whole. Elsa’s secret power that turns everything into ice is her shadow, the part of herself that she hides to conform to society’s expectations. She sings “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.” Your 2014 baccalaureate student speaker, Efrey Noten, captured this sentiment with a quote from David Wallace: “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” It is Elsa’s shadow that she accepts, after years of concealing, and lets go. When she lets her shadow go, she builds a marvelous ice castle in the mountains; her shadow is finally liberated, as is her hair when she lets it down.
Acceptance and liberation aren’t enough, however; Elsa still has to integrate her shadow. Not until she allows herself to love her sister, and her complete self, does she fully integrate her shadow and use her powers for good, like creating ice skating rinks for her adoring subjects. Also, because shadow material contains all of your so-called imperfections, integrating your shadow means dropping perfectionism, too. Elsa sings, “That perfect girl is gone.” I know that good is the enemy of great, but perfect can be the enemy of good enough, and believe me, there will be plenty of times in your life when good enough will have to be, well, good enough.
In closing, all of the weaker, less desirable parts of yourself, those parts that you hide to conform, can be sources of power, of your unique expression in the world. They are the metaphorical frogs that transform into princes, or the dragons that fight for you instead of breathing fire at you. In the movie “Shrek,” remember how helpful Dragon becomes once she discovers love with Donkey? So my advice to you today is to let it go, with the “it” being that part of yourself that no one, not even you, acknowledges. Lao Tzu, the great author of the Tao Te Ching, said the following: “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” You have spent 18 years becoming what you are and if you dare to let it go, you will discover just how wonderful who you are really is. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
When I was a boy, my father used to sing the song “Que Sera, Sera.” He had a nice voice, though he didn’t take singing seriously. At least, he sounded nice to me, his son. I used to believe that all fathers sounded nice to their sons until my boys disproved this theory by protesting fiercely at my singing. Apparently a son loving his father’s voice is not a biological mandate.
“Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.” A beautiful, timeless song, with deep advice, the gravity of which is somewhat sweetened away by Doris Day’s voice in her 1956 recording. “The future’s not ours to see.” I don’t know that my father even fully believed this at the time, though this was one of his favorite songs. Who among us believes that the future is not ours in any capacity? We tend to live for the future.
Which brings me to the paradox of schooling. Schools are completely engineered for the future. Schools prepare students for the future and hope to shape the future in part through graduating great students. The class is a laboratory for the future, the school an altar to an anticipated better future for our children and society.
Not that this is bad – we have to plan and prepare for the future. But as the philosopher Alan Watts reminds us, the future is good only for those who know how to live in the present. It is no good to prepare for the future if, when it arrives, we do not know how to enjoy it. Those who are always preparing for tomorrow do not see or enjoy the present. Tomorrow never comes anyway, we are told.
There is a popular quote from computer scientist Alan Kay that says, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Not according to Doris Day. Nor Steve Jobs. He said as much in his now famous 2005 Stanford commencement address in which he advised the following: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” Though Jobs is often credited with inventing the future, by his account the future was not his to see.
If you don’t believe Doris Day or Steve Jobs, try the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He predated Steve Jobs’ sentiment by about a century and a half: “The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful.” Later in this passage Schopenhauer warns us that we inadvertently look into the future for an imagined joy that usually is right in front of us.
But I suppose it cannot be helped, especially for students. Kids today live in a competitive world, it is said, and they have to prepare for it. We have college and work readiness assessments now. The Berlin Wall has fallen and the Internet has flattened the world. However, the flatter earth has not made the horizon any easier to spot; the future’s not ours to see, so we are anxious about it. We are anxious for our children and they learn how to be anxious through us.
Perhaps we need only to teach children to live in the present and the future will take care of itself. Young children do not need this teaching; they can teach us. But older kids, say around late middle school on, typically begin to assume the anxiety worn by adults. In most fairy tales a child, usually around adolescence, loses something made of gold and has to find it again.
A December 2010 edition of The Economist has as its lead article a piece capturing how life really begins at age 46, the nadir of happiness, after which things look up. Adults after middle age, one theory goes, begin to drop old ambitions and accept what good they have in their lives. It might be the height of presumption to think that we can help our children avoid this trajectory and start enjoying their lives now. But shouldn’t we try? Their future – and their present – depend on it.
This article originally appeared in the fall 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome the entire community, and in particular the classes of 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 to this year’s matriculation ceremony, a tradition that we as a community have practiced since the inaugural year of the upper school in 1998. I would also like to dedicate today’s ceremony to the memory and example of Jason Berry. The original theme of my talk was gratitude, which I believe still fits, as I am sure Mr. Berry would want us to be grateful for what we have and those who surround us. He would want us to have the best year possible.
In the early years of the upper school, when we were a smaller school, we bused the entire community to Villa Montalvo and in that lovely setting committed ourselves to the values expressed in the matriculation oath. Now we take the matriculation oath here, in what is affectionately known as the quad, tying together the values of the oath and the campus where we will honor those values.
The matriculation oath itself, though born with the upper school in 1998, reflects values dear to The Harker School since its founding by Frank Cramer in 1893 as Manzanita Hall. Lifelong learning, well-rounded programs, character and community have been the school’s mission since its beginning. We owe our gratitude to all of the students, teachers, staff and administrators who dedicated themselves to this school and its values over its long history. We are a reflection of their work; we hope to be what they hoped for; we owe it to them to carry the promise forward.
Today I am grateful for a video on gratitude sent to me by Harker parent Claude Cartee. The creator of the video, Dennis Prager, states that both goodness and happiness depend upon gratitude. He says that there has never been an ungrateful happy person in the history of humankind. By this logic it may be safe to assume that there has never been an ungrateful good person as well. We can only know this a priori of course. I am grateful I finally had an opportunity to use the phrase “a priori” in a speech.
I am also grateful for the opportunity I had this summer to travel to Tanzania with 11 wonderful students – Alyssa, Logan, Jonathan, Monica, Namrata, Lea, Shazdeh, Kenny, Parth, Raymond, Callie – and three adults – Dr. Dhoran, Dr. Kamins, and our own Ms. Anita Chetty, the true visionary of the trip. To commemorate the trip I am wearing my Tanzanian tie, a gift from the students, sporting the country’s colors, and made with small beads in the style of the Masai tribe’s traditional handicrafts. Allow me to indulge in a few inside jokes: the journalism jeep by far had the most swag; there were numerous Parth sightings; we found a Chipotle in Arusha; a leopard is difficult to “spot”; some of the big cats were “lyin’” around on the Serengeti.
This was a groundbreaking trip for Harker in many ways. It was the school’s first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, and the half-day eye clinic with the Masai tribe was our first direct service in Africa. 2013 saw another groundbreaking trip: the business and entrepreneurial trip to India. Harker students and faculty, with trips like these, are carrying on a long tradition of global citizenship, initiated in 1992 with the trailblazing exchange between the Tamagawa School in Tokyo, Japan, and The Harker School. Harker students were on five continents in this past summer alone, realizing the vision of fostering global citizenship that longtime head of school and current board chair Diana Nichols had for many decades.
I am grateful for witnessing our students’ willingness to serve during the eye clinic for the Masai villagers. Many Masai showed up to be tested for and potentially receive eye glasses that improved their near vision. We had Masai elders attend who most likely never had an eye exam or even a health exam, outside of what their traditional herbalist could offer. At the end of the clinic the elders of the Masai tribe were gathering in front of the school wearing their glasses. One 80-year-old grandmother sported a black pair of glasses with the word “sexy” written on the frame. It was heartwarming to watch our students set up their stations and get to work without complaint, like they had been working for the U.N. for years. The students also donated 15 goats to the village.
This same sense of service drove the students to raise funds to purchase books and deliver them to a village school outside Arusha. We met with the principal and the board chair of the school on a Saturday to give them the books. The principal said the books will propel his school to new heights. In a world where we can download “Moby Dick” on our cell phones while waiting in the grocery line, his students have just one book per 17 students. The school of almost a thousand students has just 14 teachers. Classes have close to 100 students in them.
The principal wanted to pass on a message to our students. He urged Harker students to take full advantage of their educational opportunities, to listen to their teachers and work hard. I deliver his message not because I doubt you will follow it or because I think you need reminding of the principal’s advice. I repeat his message for him, because I know that he would want to know that we have true gratitude for the rich academic and personal experience this community offers and that we do not take it for granted. I believe we owe it to him and his students to remind ourselves to be grateful for all we have.
This talk is perhaps not much more than the equivalent of what we used to hear from our parents at dinner: eat your vegetables because they are starving in Africa. I guess I am saying appreciate your books, your eyesight, your community, because not everyone is as fortunate as we are. There is one difference though, and that is the following: now we are hearing the same advice from real people who care that we care, and whom our students have directly met due to our global outreach.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, has said that we do not stop to be mindful of the miracle of our eyes, our ability to walk, our loved ones around us. I have often said that the world isn’t looking for more smart, evil people. The parts of our mission that speak to kindness, respect and global citizenship are as important as any, and our students are reflecting these values locally and globally every day. But it starts with gratitude, and that is what I wish for you this year. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Good morning. I would like to welcome the members of the board of trustees, administration, faculty, staff, families, friends, alumni, and the true guests of honor, the graduating Class of 2013, to this year’s commencement exercises. I currently have the privilege of saying a few words of farewell at graduation. Typically my talk takes the form of a final piece of advice, like “Dare to Singletask” or “See like a Baby.” Since my talk is the only thing that stands between you and your diplomas, I will continue the tradition of confining my remarks to one page of single-spaced, size-12 font. However, I make no promises about my margins or font choice. In fact, this year I have chosen the slim yet elegant “Adobe Garamond Pro.”
It is only fitting that I draw my advice to you today from the latest addition to our family, Kona, our new chocolate Lab. I noticed that when I say “chocolate Lab” people immediately understand that I mean a dog and not some strange room or device from Willy Wonka’s factory. Also, there is something about a chocolate Lab that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system unlike any other animal. Perhaps it is the word chocolate – so much more soothing and specific than the word “yellow” for yellow Lab or “black” for black Lab. Also, I just wanted to use the word “parasympathetic” in this talk to make it sound scientific.
What possible advice can I offer from Kona? First, having a puppy improves your social life a little. We now know some of our neighbors a little better. Many have fallen in love with Kona, offered free dog sitting, and some even take her for walks, one neighbor every day. We are talking to neighbors we never knew we had. Kona is a real draw. Why? Because she loves everyone and everything she sees. She wags her tail, draws back her ears and licks generously. We thought she would make a good watch dog, but we soon discovered that the only deterrence she presents to an intruder is licking him to death. She loves unconditionally, like a Labrador.
So my advice to you today is to love like a Labrador. I could have generalized to “love like a canine” but that just sounds too clinical. No, I mean love like a Labrador. Not only does it employ three “L’s” in a row – “alliteration” for those of you who recall your poetic devices – but it singles out perhaps the most loving of dog breeds, the Labrador.
When I say love like a Labrador, I mean to love unconditionally all that you do and all that is around you. Love your job, your significant other, your family, your garden, your driveway. This is easier said than done. The Sufi poet Rumi said that “Gratitude is the open door to abundance,” meaning that it is easy to fall asleep and take for granted what is truly wonderful around you. A Labrador is thrilled to see you in the morning, like you dropped from heaven. Of course, the outside chance that you will feed her helps. Take that same loving attitude to all that you do and you will find the abundance Rumi invokes.
Some will hear this as hopelessly naïve, or will question whether or not we can learn from a dog. No, I haven’t been spending too much time in Santa Cruz, though I hope to this summer. I think loving like a Labrador is supremely practical. If you believe in the law of attraction or karma, then love will attract love. Also, we have much to learn from the so-called “lesser species,” including plants, rivers, mountains and even potatoes. The philosopher Alan Watts dedicated an entire page in one of his books to why a potato is a superior being. It is pretty convincing.
So to conclude, love like a Labrador whatever you do, without condition, with full appreciation and without wobbling. A Zen saying goes, “Walk or sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” If you love like a Labrador, you might find that the world loves you, and that there is very little difference between you and everything you love. Thank you.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2012 Harker Quarterly.
After finishing the Radiator Springs Racers ride at Disneyland’s Cars Land (a fabulous attraction, by the way, and a great movie, too), my family and I stopped to glance at the obligatory snapshot of our astonished faces taken while on the ride. I noticed that instead of buying the photo many patrons just snapped a picture of the picture with their camera phones. I questioned why anyone would buy the actual picture when they can “take” the picture in this fashion.
Then I noticed that indeed patrons were lining up to buy the actual photo. Why? Because it is a great souvenir from Cars Land. It comes with the frame and official logo. It is bigger. And it is something you can touch, drop on your toes, hang on your children’s bedroom walls, or look at without turning on a power button. Atoms still matter.
I was recently talking with a parent who creates a photo book on her children’s birthdays, a real one you can leaf through, of their previous year. She said that if she didn’t do this, the hundreds of photos she had taken over the previous year would remain in digital form, a collection of ones and zeros in some cloud, never to be seen. Atoms still matter.
While a senior was interviewing me for the student newspaper I asked her how she and her friends read. She said that she and most of her friends still prefer to study with books made from wood pulp. “ Why,” I asked? “I don’t know,” she said. “We just do. We can take notes more easily.” I was stunned. Atoms still matter.
Why do music lovers still collect vinyl? Why do shoppers check out an item in a store before buying it online? Why does The Economist, in its October 2012 special report on the relationship between geography and technology, argue that location, real dirt that you can stomp on, plays a huge role in the proliferation of technology? Because atoms still matter.
Readers who have endured the essay this far may have noticed a pun. Atoms are matter. And as philosopher Alan Watts points out, matter is derived from the same root as the word mother. It also relates to measure and maya, which means illusion. The universe is mother to all things. Measuring those things, however useful, is illusory. You cannot touch the equator. It is not made of atoms.
How does this matter to education? Two ways. One, education is largely learning about a vast set of abstractions. (Let’s not forget that the alphabet is a form of digital technology.) And two, the digital transmission of those abstractions for almost no cost is disrupting traditional schooling.
Those abstractions we learn in school relate to the real world. We learn about a real person who died in the early 19th century named Napoleon and we learn how to construct real bridges, for example. But we can forget that the world of abstractions that we study in school – by definition – is not synonymous with the world of atoms. As is commonly said, we mistake the menu for the dinner.
We can forget how powerful abstractions are. For instance, the world has enough wealth for everyone. But when the abstractions we have created that stand for wealth, what Niall Ferguson calls “Planet Finance,” collapse, the real world of atoms is sent into a tailspin of panic and destruction. Real education, so long as it claims to educate the leaders of tomorrow, has to be grounded in the real world. Atoms still matter.
The digital transmission of the abstractions we call education will tear through traditional education like iTunes did the record industry. But live interaction with a caring teacher will always be optimal. Why? Because we are human, at least for now. Ray Kurzweil talks about the coming marriage of technology and biology in “The Singularity is Near,” but for now, our 5- and 13- and 17-year-olds are fully human and it takes a village to raise them.
In fact, the first point is dependent upon the second. How can children remain grounded in the world of atoms if they aren’t taught about the world surrounded by it? How can they learn to care about humans if they aren’t taught by and around them? Atoms still matter.
In closing, we cannot escape the world of atoms, even if we try. In fact, the digital world is based on a system of ones and zeros – on and off – that is the very fabric of our nervous system and embedded in the rhythms of nature. Leibniz based his discovery of binary math on the Yin and Yang principles he discovered in “The Book of Changes.”
So when we whirl around the world digitally we are extending our nervous system across vast distances. Or when we ride an attraction like Radiator Springs Racers we trust that the engineers, with their abstract systems of ones and zeros, held the proper respect for atoms in their minds while building the thrills of tomorrow.