Letter from the Head of School

“Have patience with everythingunresolved in your heart...”
Letter to a Young Poet—Rilke

One of the wonderful things about the academic calendar is that it offers numerous opportunities for new beginnings. During the academic year, life goes on in an ordered progression, marked by the changing seasons, the major vacation periods, the academic calendar, and the yearly calendar. Students and faculty alike have many clear opportunities during the course of the school year for a fresh start; perhaps no better or more obvious opportunity for a new beginning in all our lives is the advent of a new calendar year. As we approach 2006, I suspect we will all either make or be tempted to make a New Year’s resolution or two; I am a notorious resolution maker, and I fear breaker, as well. I suspect we have all learned that if we do decide to make New Year’s resolutions, we ought to try to be realistic about them. The wish to do everything, to be all-inclusive in whatever we attempt, is a very human wish; but also more often than not, it is not necessarily a wise wish. Careful choice of priorities is highly desirable in any human enterprise, and, therefore, two or three resolutions seem more sensible and manageable. It may also be that our own habits and circumstances cry out for just one resolution, but even if we make only one, my sense is that it should be limited and specific enough that we are not trying to do everything.

Life within a school community is a joyful one, but it does require huge portions of a quality I resolve to try to have even more of each new calendar year: patience. In our fast-paced, short-attention-span world, it is easy to think of patience as a minor thing, perhaps not even a virtue at all. But when St. Paul lists the various fruits of the spirit in Galations, the quality is listed alongside such obviously major virtues as love and peace and joy. It is also probable that we may best see the importance of patience through negative examples, that is, by examples of impatience. All of us can likely cite examples of impatience which are extremely unattractive: a parent berating a child out of impatience, a teacher unable to deal patiently with a student, the customer who treats a salesperson for the moment like something other than a fellow human being. Or one can observe the impatient driver weaving in and out of traffic or zooming away from the traffic light as though life itself depended upon saving three seconds. Just to think of these negative illustrations surely must give us some insight into the importance and value of true patience.

To be able to accept life’s misfortunes and inequities, be they large or small, without bitterness or self-pity is the mark of a mature, patient human being. Patience is surely one of the most important qualities a teacher can possess, and it is also one of the hardest things in the world to teach young people to accept when they yearn for quick mastery of a mathematical concept or a deadly accurate jump shot. In schools, where process can be long and difficult before achieving a good outcome, it is especially easy to become impatient with ourselves and with others. But even outside of schools, I’m sure all of us can find adequate scope for the practice of patience; there is no lack of opportunity. So in 2006, I will be wishing for myself and for those I know and love in this community and beyond greater “patience for all that is unresolved in your [and my] heart.”

Douglas Hale
Head of School