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Blessed With a Burden

By Chris Wells, Asst. Head of School
I hope you and your families are all well and safe and enjoying—yes, enjoying—this incredible opportunity. I would say what we are experiencing is unprecedented but that is not exactly true. Societies have faced many difficulties throughout their histories. This moment is therefore unusual but not unique.

This said, I don’t want to understate what is happening. It is indeed a huge, historic event. We are all literally living through history. This event will be taught about and studied in schools for hundreds of years to come. Which begs the question: what do we have to learn, exactly, from this novel coronavirus, COVID-19?

The answer lies, I think, in considering what it means to be human, something that each of us must decide for ourselves. This virus is helping us to do this because it has created circumstances in which everything non-essential is being stripped away.

The word “human” comes from Latin at its root. “Humus” means “ground.” To be human, then, is to live with the knowledge of death. To live with the knowledge that we will, one day, end up in the ground.

To be human is to decide how best to live given this awareness. In effect, to consider the question of how best to prepare for death.

Most of the time we live with the knowledge of our own demise as an abstraction, a remote possibility. However, every so often we are confronted with the reality of the fact. Often it comes in painful ways in moments of change or loss. This might be at a funeral or following failure, which can be humbling or even humiliating (note the root of those words). When everything superfluous (non-essential) is removed, we are confronted with the essence of things and that is when we are most human, when we are aware of what really matters.

Humanity is collectively living this experience and we are, together, being forced to consider what the point of all this actually is. And that is a beautiful thing.

It’s a collective epiphany of sorts. The word “epiphany” means “insight into reality” or “essential meaning.” From Latin “epi,” meaning “upon,” and “phaino,” meaning to “shine”. What is important becomes illuminated.

The fact that we are all doing this together is rare. Usually, each of us lives an epiphany in relative isolation. Today we live in relative isolation having a collective epiphany.

Education, at its best, also performs this function. It provides illumination, leading forth, from darkness into light…

So, you—we—have been blessed with a burden, an opportunity to see things as they are, to identify what is important. But we must make the effort—the effort to learn.

Your teachers are here because they know what is important: you. Take these circumstances for what they are: an opportunity for awareness. What a beautiful thing.

Stay safe. Be smart. Wash your hands. Stay apart. All of this is temporary.
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