Against Despair

Against Despair: Notes to the Student Body on February 24th, 2022

Last night I went to be around 11pm and the world was largely recognizable.  By 5:45am, everything had changed.

As many of you know, last night Russia did that which it has been threatening to do – and slowly actually doing – for weeks now.  Russia invaded Ukraine.  The relationship between Russia and Ukraine is complex and not for me to frame; what is important to know is that Ukraine formally declared independence from that which was the USSR in August of 1991 and has remained independent ever since.  What is important to know is that Poland and Canada recognized Ukraine’s independence on December 2, 1991 and that the United States did so on Christmas Day.  

What is important to know is that by the end of 1992 130 other countries had done so as well.  What is important to know is that Ukraine is an independent and autonomous nation – as independent and autonomous as ours.

At 5:45 am I had the obvious thought – that in the last two years, we’ve experienced pretty much everything.  A historic global health crisis, radical economic instability, significant social unrest, evidence of climate failure.  And today, trending on social media networks, World War 3.  Today, I might argue that if it is the case that everything that has happened over the last two years is true as we tell it, then today – this morning – it might make sense to feel something like total despair.

That nothing works anymore.  That we are experiencing some kind of collapse.  That there is no space for hope.  

That all is lost.

But here’s what is also true: nothing at all is lost.  And the world was not any different last night at 11pm than it was at 5:45am.  That is confirmation bias and absolutely nothing else.  There remain significant, significant challenges facing my generation and your generation.  And almost none of those challenges are new, and almost none of those challenges didn’t exist in one form or another last night, or last week, or last month, or on the first day of school.

And/also: we contribute directly to each of them, and the way that we contribute matters deeply.  

Here at Stone, we’ve come to say this phrase a lot lately – that every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you wish to become.  That’s from James Clear, from a book called Atomic Habits, and we believe it because we know that it’s true.  You don’t run a marathon the first day that you train; you’ll also never run a marathon without a first day of training.  You won’t land Mod 5 by working all night on April 12th.  You land it on Monday, when you begin to think about skills, questions, your relationship to work, your relationship to problem solving.  You don’t build a community by celebrating the Pioneers at graduation day.  You build it by challenging all 140 members of the community to practice – in absolutely everything you do, in every conversation and every interaction and moment – ethicality, gratitude, empathy, and vulnerability.

You can’t fix the world today.

But you must start.

And you don’t get to choose despair.  You have to choose the work itself.

Despair is attractive, and seductive, and unethical, and intellectually lazy.  And it’s not worthy of who we are, or what we’ve built.  And it denies us each of the fundamental truth of purposeful work: that the only way out is in.

I’m incredibly sad that we are experiencing yet another historic moment, I’m incredibly sad that I have to frame yet another one for you.  In all honesty, I feel like I’ve had to do this an awful lot over the last two years.  But here’s what I will also say: yesterday, a group of 8th grade students sent my a gorgeous poster which serves as the beginning of an idea to combat climate change; yesterday, our Middle School Student Body President and I had our second remarkable conversation about servant leadership; I’ve had the pleasure to watch Mateo work deeply his photography independent study this past Mod; I’ve listened to remarkable conversations between the Public Universal Friend students for the last 5 weeks; among the great honors of my life is that I get to sit in a room with Stone seniors and collaborate deeply on their senior defenses and listen to them grapple with the most difficult kind of thinking they have been challenged to do in their lives.  Among the greatest is that I get to give each of them their diplomas in 62 days.  

It’s all school work.  But it’s also deep and significant and incredibly radical practice – within it all is the radical practice of listening, the radical practice of speaking, the radical practice of collaborating, the radical practice of clarifying, the radical practice of engaging, the radical practice of disagreeing, the radical practice of working incredibly hard at difficult things.

So that we may do better work.

So that we may create change.

So that we may build a platform of doing which allows us to make the world a measurably better place.

So today.  Tomorrow.  Next week.  Next year.  I’m going to challenge you not to allow yourself the leisure of despair, and I’m going to challenge you not to run a marathon on the first day.  If it is indeed the case that every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you wish to become, then it is also the case that every action you take is a vote for the kind of world you want to create.  

Today, tomorrow, next week, next year.  Practice radical love.  Practice radical vulnerability.  Practice working as hard as you possibly can.  

And in so doing, practice making the world a measurably better place.

— Mike Simpson