Nora School Graduation
June 15, 2018
Well, seniors, it’s time for the fun part of your day! I have to start by thanking you for picking a reasonable color for your caps and gowns this year. Some years we have not been so fortunate, particularly the green and purple year!
And so we gather again, at the 54th commencement of our tiny school, half of which I’ve now had the honor of addressing. I’m glad you all made it to the stage today, as that is not the case in all schools. A colleague from another school told me about the year one of his students, when told he would need to write a 5,000 word essay to graduate, got up and left the room saying “I don’t even know 5,000 words.” Fortunately, you’re a brighter group than that.
And since it’s Friday, I have to work in one last dinner table note: As the principal, spaghetti, said to the class of raviolis when they graduated, the world is full of pasta- bilities.
Today marks one of the few times in your lives that everyone will get together just for you. Birth, graduation, marriage, death are the biggies... you don’t remember the first one and you won’t enjoy the last, you’d better enjoy this one!
On Fridays, in addition to bad jokes, we usually take a few moments to practice mindfulness, in preparation for those times in life when we need to draw upon inner reserves for whatever challenges confront us. Among our practices is the metta, or gratitude meditation, which, on a day like today, is particularly appropriate.
So I invite everyone here to join us. Sit up, close your eyes or allow them to drift into a soft unfocussed gaze, and bring attention to the breath. Bring to mind the person whose presence is responsible for your being here today, the graduate on the stage or the parents in the audience. And as you hold this person in your mind, offer them this thought: may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free of suffering, may you live in peace.
And now offering the same thoughts to the entire class of 2018: may your lives be happy, may your lives be healthy, may your lives be free of suffering, may you live in peace.
Soon to be graduates, it’s important for you to remember that, as exciting as this day is for you, you did not arrive here without a great deal of love and support.
I would like to recognize those whose dedication to you included changing your diapers, reading you bedtime stories, and paying your Nora School tuition. Please stand and accept our congratulations.
There are many people who support the school behind the scenes, setting policies and ensuring that the Nora School will be thriving for the class of 2028 and 2038 as it is today, and has been since 1964. Would those members of the Board of Directors here today please stand.
I’d also like to thank my colleagues on the faculty for their hard work with these young men and women over the past four years, Allison Chang, Dr. Ave Luke-Simpson, Brennan Boothby, Chrissy Jarina, Christina Mullen, Chris Conlon Hedy Szanzer, Marcia Miller, Nisaa Abdusabur, Norman Maynard, Prose Cassells, Will Simpson. A special thank you to Yevgen Kryukov who is leaving us after three years of service. And finally a special thanks to Scott Madden, who has shephered the Class of 2018 through their post-graduate planning.
Well, that’s enough self-adulation, it’s time to talk to, and about, our soon to be graduates. You have worked hard to get here. You are survivors. Not only did you survive middle and high schools that were big, impersonal, and bureaucratic, you survived Nora, which is no easy task.
Not everyone can handle it, but you did.
There is often a misperception that being in a small school like Nora is easy, because the teachers know you and work with you and give you lots of chances, and all of that is true.
But equally true is that going to a small school is hard, because the teachers know you and work with you and give you lots of chances. There’s nowhere to hide if you haven’t written your second draft, your math homework always gets checked, and when it’s your turn to present there’s no one to hand it off to. It’s tough to stand up to that amount of scrutiny, but you have.
You’ve survived not only the classrooms, in three different buildings, but also the whitewater rafting of your sophomore year, the goal setting of the junior retreat, and writing your own recommendations and sharing your life stories on the senior retreat.
You set up your own senior community service, late though it may have been for some of you, and you learned to balance two of the most precious gifts of adulthood: freedom and responsibility. The freedom part is easy, every teenager gets that. The responsibility part is a lot harder. Too few adults understand responsibility, as witnessed by, well, lots of what’s going on in the world. Learning when to have fun and when to work, when to sleep in and when to get up, finding where the boundaries are, and which ones it’s safe to cross, these are things that your parents and teachers have to juggle every day.
You managed, if imperfectly, the four lessons with which we start every school year. These same lessons will stand you in good stead as you move forward into your adult lives: Show Up On Time. Do Your Work. Care For Your Health. Treat Others Respectfully. These fourteen words are perhaps the most important lesson you take from Nora, because you have to keep living them the rest of your life if you wish to be successful.
Your class was one of three that has had unique challenges, moving the entire school twice over your sophomore and junior years. In your time at Nora many of you have essentially gone to three different schools... Nora with one floor, Nora At Grace, and Two Floor Nora. It’s been quite a ride!
In the Tao Te Jing, Lao Tzu tells us that
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.
Never have these words been more resonant than in recent years, where knowing and mastering oneself seems increasingly rare.
We see daily displays of the difference between mastering others, in which the external validations of strength are provided by society, and the mastering, or lack of mastering, of oneself. Which is not to say that this is a place at which any of us arrive. Knowing ourselves is a lifelong journey, mastering ourselves is an ongoing challenge. But in having the wisdom to strive for this knowledge and mastery, and in using the tools we’ve tried to teach with which you can work on them, you’ll find that, indeed, the journey IS the reward.
Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, which has won three of the last four NBA championships, teaches his players four core values: Joy, Competition, Compassion, and Mindfulness. Please note that only one of these is what might be considered a “hard” value... competition, and this in a business that measures success by only that metric. Yet the most successful team in the NBA over the past four years, a team that last lost a game on April 10, promotes three other values that many might consider “soft” Joy, Compassion, Mindfulness. Note as well how little these last three values are promoted in our cultural and political discourse, Joy, Compassion, Mindfulness. Note how important they are in our own personal lives, with our friends, and with our families. And note how rare they are in the world. This is where you can make a difference.
Each of you has, in your own way, shown courage in passing through our halls. School, and life, have not always been easy for you. Despite this you persevered, and we are proud of you. Now that you have finished high school, the world is open to you, full of pasta-bilities, and it is indeed a fascinating place. When this school was founded 54 years ago, you could not have attended school together in many parts of this country. What will the next 54 years hold for your generation? How will you help to shape it? And please do shape it, get involved, because the world needs all the help it can get from bright, enlightened, joyful, mindful, compassionate people like you.
So to all of you members of the class of 2018, bonded by the unique high school experiences of the past few years, like Steve Kerr, bring Joy, Compassion, and Mindfulness to everything you do. The world is a wonderful place: there is much to love, much to learn, great needs to serve, and much delight to savor. But the world also needs your Joy, your Compassion, and your Mindfulness.
Whether you’re doing fashion design or song design, renovating houses or renovating economic policy, creating art or creating comedy, fighting for justice overseas or in America, climbing Everest or climbing the corporate ladder, studying modern video or ancient wisdom, the world is full of amazing things to explore and fascinating people to meet. You are among them. Read, take action, stay curious, and take every opportunity to do the small things to make your corner of the world a better place. Godspeed.
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