I am so appreciative to everyone I’ve known at the school, and for all of my experience at HVSS. I want to share four important things that I learned:
- That letting go strengthens trust and belonging in a community. Sometimes, in the democratic process, when the vote didn’t go my way, and then I let go of the defeat, really let go, later I realized that my sense of community was strengthened more deeply than if the outcome had different. It may seem at first to be counter-intuitive, but the experience of accepting diversity as a good thing expands the life of a community, whereas the experience of consensus can only confirm the life it already has.
- I experienced that I could learn whatever I wanted to learn, and that the most acute learning was from my failures.
- I learned, unequivocally, through mostly silent, even unintentional observation, that we adults have far more to learn from young people than they do from us. We are so often mired down in past truths, where they are creating the present and future truths.
- And I learned that it is safe, and very sane, to do and to believe in what feels right, regardless of what the rest of society is doing and believing. There are no crowds on the leading edge, but there is extraordinary energy and satisfaction.
I’d like to finish now with a short poem…
A New Beginning
It’s complicated, but if I don’t
try to explain, it moves right along
effortlessly.
That’s how this new beginning feels,
like the next logical step
like greased wheels
like the middle of an excellent book,
where anticipation
and satisfaction
are woven
and the pages are turning
effortlessly.
I’m not sad and not sorry
I’m satisfied and eager for more
This end releases me
and this beginning propels me
and this is the moment
where the end
becomes the beginning,
effortlessly.