Goodness from Hardness
As we return from Easter Break, it is with some relief that a clearer picture begins to emerge showing how our sacrifices, as historically meager as they may be, have prevented deaths and slowed the spread of this disease to a pace our hospitals can manage. While it would be premature to describe this good news as a trend, and too early to declare victory, the evidence presently available suggests that there has been a point to all of these inconveniences and disruptions.
We are carrying on at Ridgeview, making good on our motto, and earnestly hoping that we will live up to our community’s expectations of us. From this community, we have received many fine and reassuring sentiments. Our faculty are working hard. Our students are working hard. Our parents, we know, are also working hard under challenging circumstances. This combination of hard work, challenging circumstances, and social isolation can have a disheartening effect.
Among those things that I am most apt to be disheartened by are the opportunities our seniors will have to forego. I return to this thought frequently knowing that they will not present their theses from the stage in the PAC, or attend their senior prom, or be praised and ribbed at the senior banquet, nor will they be properly feted and sent into the world with their degrees at the graduation ceremony. Several of these students began their time at Ridgeview as kindergartners and all of them have made the hard but noble choice to persevere and graduate from Ridgeview. It is only natural that it should feel like a raw deal to be within sight of the finish line and be denied so many of the customary honors and prizes.
Against these kinds of thoughts, I began re-reading Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl with my daughter. I did this not because I thought their predicaments were similar, but because I needed to provide context and perspective, and I knew that Anne could speak to my daughter in a way that I could not. In the process of reading together, I came across a well-known entry from Anne in which she wrote quite simply: “Whoever is happy will make others happy too.” On its face, it seems simple enough, but most of us are now locked up with other people, many of whom are probably aggravatingly familiar by now, and it is easy to believe that we ought be permitted to be whoever we would like to be—whoever we authentically are, and whoever loves us, whoever really loves us, will just tolerate it and adjust.
It does not, however, work this way when we cannot escape and get a break from one another. Anne, I suspect, grew to know this. Her diary begins with a young girl irritated over insinuations, insults, and intended and unintended cruelties, but it ends someplace else—a place more mature, humane, and wise. Sometimes, and especially it seems, when times are hard, we must be better than our authentic selves. Instead of having some static version of ourselves that we regard as authentic, we must endeavor for our better selves to become our authentic selves. And, that self ought to be one capable of embracing the challenges of our time. That begins simply enough by being a person of good cheer, by being happy so that others stand a better chance of being so as well.
This, in part, is what I have been impressed by in speaking with our students. Their resolve. Their reluctance to complain. Their quickness to smile during one of these infernal videoconferences. Their good natures, politeness, and resilience have offered no little inspiration. While it is not a situation any of us would have contrived with which to test them, they are nevertheless rising to the challenge. They are demonstrating that this pandemic will not capsize their ambitions; they are demonstrating that they are fit to struggle.
Many will say, and understandably, that we should not want for them to struggle. As their teachers and their parents, it is for us to ensure that any obstacles in their path can be surmounted. I do not mean that it shall always be easy, but that it should always be possible. And yet, this is not the manner in which life and history proceed. It is not in the nature of genuine struggle that the outcome can be known in advance.
As Frederick Douglas wrote, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Douglas was writing about the abolition of slavery, and as with Anne Frank’s situation, ours is not identical to his. Ours is different. It always is.
There is wisdom in his words as there were in Anne’s. We cannot expect to progress without struggle, and we cannot know the outcome of our situation any more than Douglas could know the outcome of his.
What we do we know is the character of our students, and we should be inspired by those in whose lives we have had the privilege to partake. They may not have been dealt the most favorable hand, but they are well equipped to deal with this disappointment and flourish regardless. As one of my students recently reminded me, a passage from Plato’s Republic has him note: χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά—"nothing beautiful without struggle.” Indeed. These are trying times, but we are among many fit to be tried.
Apta superaque
D. Anderson
Principal
