Jane's Pocket Change: Two Wise Men & The Persistence of Hope

I recently returned from California where I visited with alumni/ae and good friends of our school and made a presentation at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference in San Francisco. 
I recently returned from California where I visited with alumni/ae and good friends of our school and made a presentation at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference in San Francisco. 

It was a busy week, and the wisdom and ideas from conference presenters and others are still strongly present in my mind.

Two wise men in particular left me with a lot to ponder: a cab driver and a lawyer turned social justice activist. The cab driver’s name was Angelo and the lawyer is Bryan Stevenson, one of the keynote speakers at NAIS. 

Angelo was one of those great driver-conversationalists. While driving me through the streets of San Francisco, Angelo told me that he had been traveling to all the big cities of the United States for the past two years deciding where to live. He liked Boston, and even though San Francisco seemed equally expensive he felt that that was where he would make his life and his living. A few minutes later there was an unfortunate exchange between two drivers in front of us. (The weather was warm and sunny and the car’s windows were down.) There were expletives shouted out; we both agreed it was unpleasant. Angelo said they were two Über drivers mad at each other and he described the reasons for their exchanges, who appeared to have done what to whom, etc.  "That would never happen in my country," he said. "We are not afraid of losing." "Where are you from?” I asked. “Bhutan,” he replied and I mentioned what I knew about Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness priority.

If you’re not familiar with this, the four pillars of GNH philosophy in Bhutan are: sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment and the establishment of good governance. Upon reviewing these again, I recall how meaningful they are to me and to our work at CSW.

Like Angelo, NAIS keynote speaker Bryan Stevenson gave me hope. His book, Just Mercy, is about people marginalized by poverty. Stevenson believes that the opposite of poverty is justice. In his NAIS remarks he said: “Commit to staying hopeful. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. Protect your hope. Our hope is essential…... We prioritize finality over fairness in the justice system.”

In my mind, all of this is connected. Being comfortable with losing rather than being obsessed with winning allows us to engage, or as Stevenson says, allows us to value the power of proximity – learn about other people and get to know communities.

Can you imagine placing happiness at the core of our personal, institutional and global goals? Can you imagine caring about the “other” as much as we care about ourselves?

Thank you Angelo and Bryan — you made me think deeply and renew my hope. 

____________________________________________________
Pocket Change is a web diary written by Jane Moulding, head of school.

Campus News

Meet CSW Students


45 Georgian Road | Weston, MA 02493 | 781-642-8600

CSW—a gender-inclusive day and boarding school for grades 9-12—is a national leader in progressive education. We live out our values of inquiry-based learning, student agency, and embracing diverse perspectives in every aspect of our student experience. Young people come to CSW to learn how to learn and then put what they learn into action—essential skills they carry into their futures as doers, makers, innovators, leaders, and exceptional humans who do meaningful work in the world.