They matter

Reader, the following will change your life and includes a significant spoiler, read on at your own risk. Bet that got your attention. The new academic year and term started thusly as I welcomed the children back after the summer and greeted those new to Embley. The Sports Hall for assembly was heaving. It is a real high point of the year, children returning with stories to tell and adventures to share, those new to Embley meeting their buddies and being introduced to a new circle of friends or not so new as many had been in touch with each other over the summer. So, what to share with them? How to start the year? I wonder what you would have said reader, what do you think they needed to understand?

So I took a risk and decided to tell them the secret of a life well lived. Some observations that, if followed, would not insulate them from disappointment and difficulty but would bolster them and ready them to sail through it all. How should I be the best version of myself, what is the recipe? Well, the place positively bristled with expectation, staff and students both eager, craning forward.  
 
The first observation is that they are all intrinsically lovable. This is a dispassionate disposition that recognises them as themselves and loves them not for what they can do, the skill they have or such capacities that might be noticed and command attention. No, they are intrinsically lovable for no other reason than that they are. This is the foundation from which issues forth everything else. I do like a system. 
  
As they return to Embley, they have no need to ‘fit-in’. Why? Because they ‘belong’. Where you find belonging it is through the acceptance of you as you are. If you need to be something else or behave in some particular way, you are trying to fit in, trying to change who you are to garner association will always end in tears, maybe not today or tomorrow but it will. You need to rub along with folk, of course, this is the essence of society, but the group you find kinship with will not ask you to be less then yourself. Beware the lure of ‘fitting-in’.  
  
Small habits lead to great results. Too often the path to improvement is blocked quite unconsciously with the burden of expectation. The step needed is too great, the weight of responsibility too heavy, but focusing on something modest, creating a pattern of behaviour that supports will bring disproportionate results. I do love a habit; in as much as a bad one will interrupt, a good one sustains when the will weakens.  
  
Focus on progress not perfection. Don’t make the great the enemy of the good. Handed down by Voltaire, it is timeless. Perfection is likely out of reach; one of the vagaries of being human is our noble consistency in missing the mark. But focusing on progress avoids the problem both real and imagined with being perfect. 
  
Adolescents don’t have to have life all figured out. OK in conversation at home they may seem to, they may even speak ex cathedra as if they actually do, but it’s all a myth. So too is the burden of expectation that they know it all. I am inclined to encourage them to calm down, to just relax. It is also worth noting while we are at it that what they want the most is not usually in their best interest. Often what is right for us is not what we want but likely what we need. This can take a bit of adjusting to.  
  
On the subject of friends, I suggested that the children may change, and the change is also quite natural. As interests develop, morph so too will those we share interests with. The normal currency of lived experience is that you will meet lots of people and form strong bonds with a few. This process can be mightily painful as they feel a sense of loss which they can often equate with ‘fault’ or ‘blame’ of something going ‘wrong’. Likely as not, none of the above are correct, it is just the process of growing.  
  
The phone in your pocket can be a blessing and a curse. Be careful how you use it. I will be provocative here and suggest that for many they have no need of a smart phone, the zeitgeist is going the other way by an industry induced dependency that has us all in its grasp. Let’s surf that wave with great care. 
  
My two final thoughts focused on their responsibility and their place in the world. Regarding the first, we are responsible for ourselves. And I mean it. It is not good enough to say ‘they were all doing it’, we are all our own actors, agents of change and we have the capacity to take a stand. We have choice in every situation, even the most highly emotive ones, there is still that moment of decision where we choose our action and our reaction.  
  
The final point takes us back to the first. Every child at Embley matters. Every single one of them is precious for no other reason than they are unique, individual, and endowed with gifts and talents unique to themselves. Exactly the same applies to the staff and to you, reader and all. In a world of commodity, of change, of fads and fancies that fashion spins, they are a constant and that principle is unchanging.  
 
Sitting in the Sports Hall, the children may wonder about that, they may question their place in the order of things and come to a variety of conclusions. They may disagree about phones and friends, about habits and humanity but this idea counts and transcends time and thinking. They matter and the world is better with them in it. I look forward to us having a great year ahead.