![On Being Real]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_4/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":1200},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_5/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":1600},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1568407743/brewsteracademyorg/yxhdenostjdp0in5imih/Boating2.jpg","width":1720}])
It is Friday afternoon of the first week of classes and antique race boats are circling Wolfeboro Bay—their exhaust notes distracting me in fits and starts. I can only imagine how exciting it would be to be at the helm, cruising at breakneck speeds.
We’ve been at breakneck speed ourselves for the last stretch, but now an anticipated calm has suffused the campus. Students are cruising toward the weekend, eager for a chance to refuel.
As we charted our course for this year, I found myself far clearer about our north star: Legacy, a single word, seems to sum it up.
Sure, legacy is an easy trope to employ as we unroll our bicentennial year celebrations, as we cast our eyes backward wistfully and reverentially. But my focus on the idea of legacy has also led me to think seriously about how individuals implicitly go about forming their personal legacy.
Ultimately, a legacy, whether personal or institutional, derives from a long series of choices made. Recent psychological research suggests that an average person makes about 35,000 decisions a day.* Multiply that by a lifetime and we’re talking about north of a billion decisions. More than a billion decisions shaping a lifetime. More than a billion decisions shaping a legacy. Understanding the relationship between legacy and decision making, I have made a choice to focus my work with others this year on the choices we make in service to our legacy.
I want to be clear: When I think about legacy as an individual and institutional leader, I am not focused on how to ensure that history reflects a shiny image of me or of the school. My aim is to use the idea of legacy to help us be more conscious of all of the decisions we make and to be mindful about how our decisions ultimately define us—this is not a particularly novel idea, particularly to Harry Potter fans, who recall Dumbledore famously reminding Harry that “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
My litany of talks to groups of people started in late August, when I spoke to all Brewster faculty and administrators about the vital importance of keeping open lines of communication with parents and with each other as we strive to understand the students in our care ever more fully; about the need to dig deeply into relationships so that kids trust us more when the going gets tough, and so that kids can be real with us in the midst of both struggle and success.
Thereafter, I spoke to new and returning parents about the critical importance of their supporting their kids the right way, which is to say that they need to be real with their child’s advisor about the worries and hopes they have for their child; they need to let their child struggle some in order to grow; and they need to cheer their child on as we all work together to support individual students’ growth within our community.
Finally, I spoke with students last Sunday night about the fact that one’s legacy emerges, whether one likes it or not, and that the challenge is to be conscious of how one’s decisions ultimately shape that legacy. I encouraged them to think about legacy as the consequence of the millions of decisions they make at Brewster and beyond. Their first step is to decide to dig into taking care of themselves—dealing directly and honestly with their own challenges, their own “stuff,” and being real with the adults charged with their care—their parents and their teachers. As they get to know their peers more closely, their inclination will be to develop sympathy for and, ultimately, empathy with them. And as they come to understand self and other more fully, myriad choices will present themselves. I reminded them of Thoreau’s rejoinder not to focus on “doing good” but to “set about being good” as they make all of the choices their days present. I encouraged them to allow their choices to lift themselves and others up. Such is the path to a meaningful legacy.
If we can be real with ourselves and with each other—and I am confident we can be—we enter into what I think about as a subversive covenant to care for and educate our children. It’s subversive because to be real in these ways, we must undermine some of the dominant forces of our culture: the lure of overparenting and overprotecting, the tendency to mask sincerity and honesty with politeness, and the quiet fixation on the future at the expense of the present. Here’s an example: In the face of a perilous vaping epidemic sweeping the country, I have asked students to step forward and ask for help if they are struggling to stop using. I have asked parents to talk with us candidly if they are concerned that their child might be struggling to stop vaping. We need to be real with each other to care effectively for our students. We need this partnership. Committing to this subversive covenant is a decision that helps to secure all of our legacies.
Our boat has cast off from the dock. And as we leave Wolfeboro Bay and head into the open waters of The Broads, waves will surely build and break across our bow. May we have the wisdom to choose to brace ourselves and each other from the buffeting that could get us each and collectively off course. Doing so will ensure that the journey that will bring us home once again to our docks in June renders us all better for having been along for the ride.
(As we work on this covenant together, please let me know what topics you would like to explore more deeply together.)
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