Letter
Here is a portion of my most recent letter to students…
Dear Students,
I’ve been having a hard time starting this letter. In fact, I wrote another letter and decided it was boring. I didn’t want to give it to you. I suppose that happens to you, yes?—writing something and not liking it—feeling the pressure of having something due and simply having no inspiration to do it?
Question for you: what keeps you running, swimming, playing soccer, drawing pictures, playing piano, studying chemistry or whatever it is you love to do even though any one of those endeavors challenges and sometimes frustrates you?
So here we are, on a learning path. And learning, by definition, is struggle. We often see conflict or difficulty, and our first instinct is to run or turn away or avoid. But if we sit down with the struggle, look it in the eyes, and try to see inside that world—really see it—really make sense of it, we might discover a new light, a new way.
In today’s Boston Globe, I read a story about the intense cultural and religious conflicts that have occurred in South Africa and Northern Ireland. Both countries benefited, finally, not from outside interference or diplomacy, but from delegates actually sitting down with their perceived enemies, looking them in the eye, and discovering a new way.
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