Chapel Talk - Holderness School

Since coming back to work at Holderness, I've wanted to do a chapel talk. Every Thursday night the whole school crams into the chapel and hears from a member of the community on the topic of their choice. Since my last day is a week from tomorrow, its time to finally stand up there and speak my peace. Within the culture of the faculty and staff, a chapel talk is not to be taken lightly. Also, standing in front of peers who do this daily is a bit nerve wracking. So, this is what I'll be reading, followed by a rendition of Townes Van Zandt's "White Freight Liner Blues" with my friend Tiaan on fiddle.

Preface:

Although much of the beginning of this talk is directed to the newer members of our community, my hope is that all of you will reflect a bit on when you came to school here and how you felt during these first few weeks. Hopefully you’ll see that in doing so, you’ll learn a bit more about yourself by seeing how far you’ve come and maybe even realize how much lies ahead of you. So…

I’ll never forget my mother dropping me off at the bus stop in North Conway with a month’s worth of possessions on my back. Rather than drive me to the airport in Boston, she insisted that if I was going to make a trip of it, that I should truly start in my hometown. So off I went. After several layovers, a night in Bangkok, and less then 48 hours after I left NH, I was flying over the Indian subcontinent, staring out the window looking for the first sign of the Himalaya. After a long announcement in some Southeast Asian language, the pilot voiced in broken English that we could now see the highest mountain range in the world from the right of the aircraft. Sure enough, a wall of snowcapped peaks several hundred miles away and the same height as the plane appeared in the distance. Soon, the pilot pointed out Mt. Everest by its distinguished stripe of limestone which crosses just below its summit. As the plane approached Katmandu, it made a hard left turn, lowered its landing gears, and the runway came into view. As we made the “final approach”, the rows of either rusted out or abandoned airplanes and helicopters stretched out just to the sides of the cracked and beaten runways, making for a most anxious landing. After wading my way through customs, waiting for a bus driven by armed soldiers in riot gear, and later handing a hundred dollar bill to a rug dealer to ensure maximum exchange rate, I found myself negotiating the dusty streets of Katmandu with my best friend, completely blown away and in a fair amount of shock.

I was 18 years old and on my senior project to study agro-forestry techniques while working with the people of Nepal. In many ways that overwhelming experience was the culmination of my time at Holderness as a student.

I start with that story because for many of you in this room, your past two weeks may have several similarities, if not immediately apparent. Honestly, (without raising your hands) how many of you felt the same anxiety as your parents drove you onto campus or when you boarded that bus or plane to make the trip to the mountains of NH? How many of you are still walking around at lunch looking for the best table to sit at? How many of you are still a little unsure of what to eat while wandering around looking for that table? How many of you approach Mr. Oldack and Mr. Henwood like they are armed guards of those Nepali buses? Better yet, how many of you think that Vytautus is older than Mr. Houseman? Of course, you don’t have to be a first year student or teacher to understand what I’m getting at.

But in all seriousness, you are all engaging in the Holderness Experience. Two weeks ago Mr. Weymouth addressed the new students and encouraged all of you to embrace your homesickness and anxiety and to engage in this experience. I promise that if you take those words to heart and make the most of your time here, you will leave a much more wholesome, prepared, and confident person. You will be offered continuous opportunities to step beyond your comfort zone, try a new skill, meet new people, and test yourself both mentally and physically. After all, that is exactly what you came here to do, even if you THINK you’re here to ski, play hockey, football, snowboard, record albums, or any of the host of reasons you might have committed to coming here. Holderness will force you to go beyond those reasons, so you should commit early to taking on those challenges and making the most of them.

However, this is not as easy or simple as listening to me up here pretending to be some wise sage, full of fool proof knowledge. Hell, many of you don’t even know who I am! BUT, I’m sure you’ve been told some of this by more credible sources, either in conversation with your parents, within the admissions catalogues, or even by your new faculty members.

What I would like you to concentrate on is the value of an experience, whether it be a good one or a bad one. You will learn nothing from your time here if you cannot at least try to take the good with the bad; to value them equally. It is in those times when we confront what makes us most uncomfortable that we often find out the most about ourselves. Ask anyone who has been on OB, done pantry, played in the fourth quarter of a losing game, taken the SATs, applied to college, or spoken in front of an audience.

I’m going put to myself out on limb here, say for the sake of the experience, and quote Henry David Thoreau. Without getting too idealistic here, there is a passage from Walden that I think poignantly summarizes our desire for experience and its connection to the nature both within us and around us. Walden writes,

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet scented herbs, and is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you may have cause momentarily to bless yourself. (And then he writes:)The GREATESTt gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

-Henry David Thoreau

Walden, Or Life in the Woods

As I read that passage, I believe Thoreau is describing the wondrous joy of our daily lives and all those indescribable moments which occur throughout it. He is embracing the bad with the good and wrapping them together as they are clearly inseparable; we cannot pick and choose how these moments come to us, we can only, as he says, “greet them with joy”.

I’d like to quote another author who has made a huge impact on my life and how I interpret my experiences. Perhaps his writing will better illuminate what it is I’m asking you to understand.

Growing up in Columbia in the midst of civil war, the global economic depression, and the influx of Western culture, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was perhaps the first author to capture the oral tradition of magical realism and bring it to the page. Influenced by the stories and characters from his life, Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel, Cien Anos de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). While its definition, and more importantly its influence over culture, and particularly that of Latin America, is extremely diverse, magical realism is at its root a manner of thinking which encourages us to see life and its continuous experiences in two interwoven ways. One, in which the mundane and common experiences of our daily lives are in fact wildly magical and two, that those magical and indescribable moments of life are simply ordinary. In many ways this blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Like the passage from Thoreau, this understanding of our daily lives asks us to embrace all experiences and reflect on them with joy.

Early in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez sets his first main character, the patriarch of the Buendia family, out on an expedition to discover how far the ocean is from the village of Macondo. Like any expedition, they are met with incredible hardships and rewarded in most unexpected ways. Pay particular attention to the language and imagery used to describe the following scene, for it will allow you to better understand the magic in our daily lives:

The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders. For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood. They could not return because the strip that they were opening as they went along would soon close up with a new vegetation that almost seemed to grow before their eyes. “It’s all right,” Jose Arcadio Buendia would say. “The main thing is not to lose our bearings.” Always following his compass, he kept on guiding his men toward the invisible north so that they would be able to get out of that enchanted region. It was a thick night, starless, but the darkness was becoming impregnated with a fresh and clear air. Exhausted by the long crossing, they hung up their hammocks and slept deeply for the first time in two weeks. When they woke up, with the sun already high in the sky, they were speechless with fascination. Before them, surrounded by ferns and palm trees, white and powdery in the silent morning light, was an enormous Spanish galleon. Tilted slightly to the starboard, it had hanging from its intact masts the dirty rags of its sails in the midst of its rigging, which was adorned with orchids. The hull, covered with an armor of petrified barnacles and soft moss, was firmly fastened into a surface of stones. The whole structure seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected from the vices of time and the habits of the birds. Inside, where the expeditionaries explored with careful intent, there was nothing but a thick forest of flowers.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From “A Hundred Years of Solitude”

So, what does this all mean? What can you take from these two authors and my ramblings as you leave tonight and go to dinner? Serendipitously, the answer to that came at the tail end of a forwarded email I received today from Lance Galvin as I was putting the finishing touches on this talk. The message was from Sharlyn Harper, a friend to some of you, and a graduate of 2006. Included in the footer of her email was the phrase: “Live life to the fullest.” Now you’re saying, great another cliché! However, let me show each of you what’s in store over the course of this year, because after all, I’m not only talking to the newbies in the room.

Sophomores, you’re not rookies anymore; its time for all of you to take on the challenges of being a mentor and lead the way for the freshman class. Without being an elected leader, you’ll be working alongside the rookies; embrace the opportunities to show them the way. Take on the challenges in the classroom and on the fields as they continue to ask more and more of you.

Juniors, many of you are the leaders of the job program and all of you are going on OB in 174 days! Add to this the rigors of the college process and you have the busiest and most challenging year of any class.

Seniors, this is YOUR year. When you graduate, you’ll carry The Class of 2008 into the alumni community; believe me, it’s a badge of honor and opens many doors for you. Decide early on in the year what kind of legacy you want to leave, how will you make this school even better? Make the most of it. Engage in the Capstone Program, the lessons and opportunities afforded to you through it will last a lifetime and put you well ahead of your peers also applying to college.

And for those of you new to the school? Hold on, ‘cause its quite a ride!

If everyone here can embrace the challenges and engage yourself in each moment, each experience of your daily lives, you will achieve and discover much more then those tasks demand. Upon reflection, you’ll gain confidence to take on even greater challenges and you’ll be prepared for whatever comes down the path. To use another cliché, life is a journey. If you stay too focused on the destination or the end result, you will miss out on many of the most important “intangible and indescribable” moments of life.

As for me, I’ll be trying my best to live up to all the things I’ve just said. Leaving here a week from tomorrow after four years as a student and two years as a staff member, I’m off to adventures I can only begin to imagine. You see, I’m purposefully putting myself in a situation where I’ll be depending on my engagement in life’s experiences. I’m creating an atmosphere of pure adventure and constant change. Work and travel to Kauai, Utah, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos this year will test my ability to live up to everything I just told you. As 2009 comes into view, I hope to continue on that path; but, will new challenges come up? Will plans fall through? You bet, but I’m along for the ride, making the most of it, and I hope that all of you will do the same.

Thank you.

A sign of things to come?

Gotta get out a couple highlights from this past weekend, Labor Day 2007. As I drove around New England throughout the long weekend, I was constantly reminded of how much change is taking place in my friends lives, as well as my own.

Busting out of work early on Friday to drive to Boston and celebrate the recent engagement of two great friends, Jeff Berg and Amanda Golden, I linked up with Sara Roitman and finally made our way to dinner-very late. Amanda's mother, Pam, had cooked an incredible meal complete with homemade apple sauce. Bringin the bubbly, we toasted several times over dinner to the happy couple and their future lives together. Sitting next to Sara, sharing my own plans with the table, and listening to recent adventures by Tim McGivern and Syrah Merkow, it only helped to drive home the changes taking place all around me.

Syrah is about to land a perfect job with Harvard (fingers crossed). Sara is entering her second week of Law School at BC. Jeff and Amanda, after 7 years of dating, have taken that next step and are making wedding plans! Amanda's friend, Joelle, is headed to Buenos Aires for a few months to learn the language and find some work. Amanda's mother and father have recently moved and are starting a new stage in their own lives. After dinner we ended up running into a few other friends who are starting new programs in graduate work, just completed the bar exam, or are making plans to hit the road.

Saturday saw me grab a quick lunch with Damien and Sara, then driving up to NH to load the Subie up with boxes to store over the next couple years, and driving to the lake house on Tripp to spend the evening with the family and friends. Great dinner at the Tinkhams, good wine, a fire at the Harkins, and more reminders of major change. Not only did Evan start college last week, but he also broke his wrist and has surely started stalking some of the women on campus. Vickie and Bruce Hill just bought a house on the lake, joining the Mt. Washington Valley constituency that is slowly buying up all the property on the lake! To top it all off, Clay Bucholz - the Red Sox newest pitching prospect, threw a no hitter in only his second career start!

Sunday morning I got some much needed sleep, got up to go tubing with Luke and Chase, grabbed some breakfast at Noon, and unloaded the car after two close games of cribbage on the boat with Mom. Jumped in the car and made my way over to Biddeford Pool, for another exciting night with friends. Having severely burned myself in a bad accident this summer involving a bonfire, its been nice to visit lately and fly a little farther under the radar. Its a small town, and being "the burn guy" ain't so cool. Michael McCallister, a partner in crime and all things wacky, was busy preparing for a major change in his life: law school. Along those lines, I over heard more discussion between Adrian and Taylor about the formation and ideas behind their own dream of starting a software programming company as partners; the genesis of both their talents and passions. In addition, Taylor and Becca recently moved in with one another and are putting the finishing touches on that move. Sunday night was filled with a great meal, lots of Dark and Stormies, a little playing of the guitar with Tim and Luke, a few rousing games of spoons and quarters, and a solid nights (early morning's) sleep on the floor.

Monday was a fantastic day. Woke up to a great breakfast being made, plans to hit the beach, and the excitement to finally see a Sox game this year. After a solid morning of sobering up, pickin the guitar a bit more, and picking up the house, we trudged off to Fortune Rocks for a couple hours on the beach before the end of Labor Day weekend. Tim, Luke, Jeff, and I dug a couple holes in the sand, found some rocks, and started a new beach game resembling horseshoes. It was a blast and after a couple more dips in the ocean, everyone loaded up their cars and began the four hour (normally two) march out of ME and into Boston.

I ended up parking off Beacon St. and made my way over to the only decent bar in the neighborhood (unless you want to drop $7 on a beer and deal with popped collars) - Crossroads. Grabbed a paper, ordered a beer, and waited for word from Rob on when he expected to roll into town. The beer went down slowly after several days of drinking, but I eventually took off, talked with Garett for a bit on the walk up to Kenmore, and made my into the throngs of fans streaming over the I-90 bridge and onto Landsdowne St. No matter how many times you visit Fenway Park, the whole scene takes your breath away. The whole experience is rich in baseball tradition. I ended up grabbing a beer at Game On (not a favorite), walked out to grab some $8 sausage, and pulled up next to a guy listening to his hand held AM radio which was running through the pregame show and notes from around the league. I leaned over and asked, "Yanks lose the day game?" He answered, "Sure did, we're up 6 1/2 going into tonight". Sweet.

Rob showed up in the top of the 2nd inning and we made our way up to the Budweiser Roof Deck in right field. Having never been up there, it was great to get a new view on Fenway. Of course, the green grass, Monster, and classic back drop behind home plate gave me goose-bumps. LONG game after Dice-K started pretty hot and imploded in the 5th giving up 7 runs. Got to catch up with Dave Bolduc a little, whom I hadn't seen in years and even got to see Ethan and his girlfriend Amanda, whom stopped up for a beer in between innings. After four hours, a great night from another young buck-Jacoby Ellsbury, we walked out and made our way to the cars. Getting in at 2am didn't help get back to work on Tuesday, but any kind of work these days is petty hard when I'm consumed with thoughts and plans for the next couple years.

Getting to the game with Rob furthered two themes from the weekend; friendship (and all the relaxed fun it brings) and change. Seems Rob needs a change in the pace of his life after a few years down in CT working in insurance. Not sure its the healthiest lifestyle for him and also know that he wants to be closer to family and friends. I'm all for him changing it up and hope he takes that leap...it'd be a hypocrite if I didn't condone that.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about all the changes taking place throughout my life and the lives of those I care about. Is it too much of a cliche to say that change is constant? It makes me proud, excited, and anxious to see these friends of mine take another big step in their lives. More then anything, I want these people (and myself) to be happy, and from all accounts, these changes are all being made with that in mind. Of course, there are even more cliches to sum all that up, but more and more I think friends and family are aware that our time is precious and we have many choices in life as to how we spend it.

I'm sure this is much more to come from these feelings, but this weekend was a shining example of the excitement which comes from taking that next step down the trail...

The beginning...