Welcome back everyone and welcome especially to the newest members of this community. It is great to begin a new year. This past summer, I spent a good amount of time, watching the Olympics. I love the team competitions, the individual events, the sports I would not usually get to watch. The joy of the Olympics provides an opportunity to marvel at the incredible talents of athletes from around the globe and the power of teamwork. Simon Biles, Suni Lee, Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh, Noah Lyles, Sha’Carrie Richardson: just some of the many individual athletes who captured our attention.
There are many moments that stood out to me, but I was particularly amazed at the women’s gymnastics competition on the balance beam. It is challenging to find your balance on that 4” wide beam. I would have trouble just standing in place, but these athletes perform incredible flips and twists and jumps. The commentators indicated that they stay centered and balanced by always focusing on the end of the beam. No matter where they are, whether they are upside down or right side up, they focus on the end to guide them forward. And maybe that provides some good advice as we begin a new year: focus forward, keep the end in sight and that will help us find balance in times when things might feel just a bit out of whack.
The other amazing thing about that balance beam competition is that a few gymnasts fell off the beam, including Suni Lee and Simone Biles. What was more extraordinary was how they responded. They recentered, they got back on, their teammates sheered them on, and they resumed their routine all the way to the dramatic dismounts at the end. I think there is a lesson for us in that as well. As we move through a school year, there will be times when we hit the mark and find our balance. And there will be times when we don’t. There will be times when we mess up, when we fall off the beam. And that’s how we learn together in community. We pick ourselves up, we cheer each other on, we get back on the beam, and we focus forward to the end.
For all the 10,500 athletes who competed in the Olympics, only a fraction earned medals. Yet they were all competitors, they were all Olympians, all part of the team of their country, and the greater global team of Olympic sports. At the highest level of their game, these athletes understand team before self and that competition brings about the best in them. When I was rowing in college and then coaching the sport of rowing, which I did for thirty years, I would always remind my athletes that the word competition literally means “to strive with.” We tend to think of competition as competing against, setting up a battle against the other team where there are winners and losers. That is not the essence of true competition. True competition is striving with another, giving your best to each other, working your hardest, so that together, you and your competition achieve another level, go to a place of excellence where you did not think you could go, achieve a level of synergy that allows you to rise above yourself. Being part of the team brings about the best in the self. That is the meaning of a Zulu word that I have used before, ubuntu – which means I am because we are.
OES is because we are. We create what we are each year. And we begin that beginning in this moment, at this belltower, 155 years from the time when this school first began. I love beginnings, full of hope, full of opportunity, new classes, new people, new energy, new challenges, new learning. OES is because we are together in this Beloved Community that we get to build this year one day at a time with kindness, with compassion, realizing our power for good. I hope that this year we will strive together in in partnership in all the best ways. When we fall off the beam, and we will, let’s keep striving and always focus forward on the goal at the end. I am looking forward to this year with this wonderful team.