Commencement address

Hold On, Let Go, Reach Out

Mr. Chandy, President of the Board; Board Members; Dr. Laurenson, Principal; Parents and Guests, Staff and Colleagues of Woodstock School; and Class of 2009: Thank you for the privilege and honour of speaking to you at this year's commencement. After 25 years working for and with Woodstock, the word Commencement is rife with nuance for me personally. Having been associated, in greater and lesser degrees, with more than 20 graduating classes, this year's class stands in my mind's eye with now hundreds of other graduands of this school and this community and with thousands in ranks of alumni in school's history. This class looks every bit as beautiful and promising as any of those other classes.

It does not seem there is a need to explain to you the world you will be entering when you walk through those doors for the last time, "a very orderly out", in less than an hour. You know it is a world that is hurting, but also a world of opportunity and excitement. You know that it is a world that needs your intelligent engagement, your altruism for those with less privilege and voice than yourselves. It is a world where, as your dreams have often guided you, you can go and make a difference.

Rather than talk about all or any of things you face as you enter the adult world, or any of the things you might do, perhaps it is better to spend a few minutes reflecting on what you take with you as explore and engage in new worlds. What you take with you that binds you together and that will also enable you individually to be a person of integrity that others will look to for leadership and inspiration; help and encouragement; models of success not simply in a consumer world, but success in serving a community of nations.

There are many qualities and skills you take with you that will equip you in ways you have not imagined in the here and now. Most of them you have learned and imbibed from your parents and family; many of them you learned here at school living and studying together. Tenzing just mentioned a few. But the one I would like to focus on this morning is tenacity.

Tenacity is the noun from which you chose your class word, TENACIOUS. It is the word that you chose four years ago to, if not describe you as a group then, to describe what you would build into your character as a class, and I hope as individuals. Your Homeroom Teacher, Mr. Seefeldt, must have told you that it comes from the Latin and means 'to hold', to maintain, to endure or continue. And I hope you have noticed that he has been a leading example of just that quality. When I asked him how you came to select that word he said one of the ideas in the discussion was to hold on to each other through the years of school, that you might faithfully support each other through the ups and downs of school life. There again he has been an example of that to you.

To stop at simply defining the noun does not do justice to understanding the quality that you want to identify you or to what it might mean as you commence from this place. The Latin root is a verb, and a verb is action. The adjective implies that the action has been carried out and has become part of you. So to be a tenacious person is to be a person who holds on, does not give up or let go. A person who has the endurance and courage to maintain a task, a stand, a friendship, a value.

I think there are three aspects to the character quality of "tenacity" that will serve you and the world.

The first aspect of that quality is the obvious one: to hold on and thereby endure. You started with the idea to hold on to each other; to keep each other from falling. In the circumstances around you, tenacity was required to maintain your study and maintain your values and beliefs in a diverse community life. You maintained friendships through periodic teenage social crises. From these life experiences you take with you valuable lessons that will help you hold on in the days and years ahead. Of course you will need to choose what to hold on to; you won't want to hold on to everything you have so far encountered. I trust you will use these experiences and skills hold on to 'what is good'. Hold on to values, hold on to courage, hold on to faith, hope and love. If you hold these, and it is not always as easy as it seems, you will live well.

The second aspect is this: In order to hold on to something, you may need to let go of other things. That is an interesting aspect of a tenacious character. A positive tenacity is not about fearful clinging to what we already have or what we already are or what we want for ourselves. It is about choosing through conviction and decision what is worth holding on to and then to endure regardless of trials and consequences. Because it is easy to hold on to the wrong things; childish ways, old habits, painful experiences that stifle further growth, grudges, or ideas that have outlived their usefulness. Tenacity that holds those things becomes merely stubbornness. If we are not willing let go of those kinds of things we cannot hold on to the things of lasting, healthy, nurturing value. And maybe one of the things that needs first to be considered is that selfish holding on to what we want for ourselves.

Part of the etymology of the of the word tenacity is tendre, to stretch or extend. So the third aspect, perhaps counter intuitively, is that tenacity may require reaching out. Our highest values usually relate to others; in order to practice our values we need to reach out to others. I have often said to my classes, "You wouldn't believe what a nice person I am when I am in my house alone." No, the real test of our skills, beliefs, values, courage - is how they work in the community of our family, friends, study and work place; in the world you are now entering. Part of being tenacious is extending ourselves to others in friendship and in service.

Let me illustrate what I mean by holding on, letting go and reaching out.

Literally holding on is grasping. If we only hold ourselves or even our group, we could easily go down. Imagine being on a precipice, near falling and then clasping your arms around yourself. Will it keep you from falling? To use the falling metaphor again; on a precipice, in danger of falling, you reach out to grasp something, but of course what we hold on to is of crucial importance. It may or may not keep us from falling. In all three aspects of tenacity wisdom is required to choose what to hold on to, what to let go of and when and how to reach out.

The quality of tenacity in its combination of seeming contradictory aspects perhaps could be illustrated in another way. What came to me in thinking about this was a long, long ago experience; riding a bicycle down a hill of a dusty country road. Have you done that? I won't make you raise your hand. But from memory or imagination picture it - first slowly wobbling to the top of the hill, knuckles white from the grasp on the handle bars, arms taut to pull the handles and push the feet on the pedals, leg muscles straining to achieve just a little more power. Having worked so hard, now you edge over the top to begin the glide down. As the momentum picks up and with all the skill you have acquired in the work to get there, you begin to feel the breeze cool you and suddenly - emboldened with all the confidence of putting your full strength into the grasp of the handle bars which enabled you to pedal with all your strength, emboldened by not giving up when the climb became almost too tough, tenaciously believing you could do it - you stop pedaling, and then you take your hands off the handle bars and outstretch your arms into the wind, at the same time as holding on to the little vehicle and the laws of balance and momentum. And in that moment - holding on, letting go, reaching out - you move down the hill with exhilaration to the next rise.

We bless you as you begin, praying that with tenacity you will pursue wisdom that you may choose carefully, hold fast to dreams and extend yourself in all that you do. That with tenacity you will "act justly, love mercy, walk humbly" and "your light" in the world corporately and individually "will break forth like the dawn".

Thank you.

Kathryn Hoffmann

Kathryn Hoffmann left Woodstock in July 2009 after 25 years of service.