Chronicle 2020

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

Choosing simplicity CATHERINE MI SSON Principal, Havergal College

Growing up on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia, my childhood was spent in the sunshine with an abundance of natural environments to explore. My home is situated on both the Wallis Lake and the beautiful sandy coastline of mile-long beaches. There were stretches of forest that we spent many hours exploring. With my siblings, the outdoors provided us with so many opportunities to be physically active and creatively engaged as we honed our ingenuity. Books. They were my constant childhood companion. Having exhausted my mother from asking, she taught me to read at the age of three. From then, every day of my life has had me burrowing into the imaginative worlds of eclectic authors. As seasons of my life have come and gone, reading has given me pleasure, comfort and challenge and has lifted me above the everyday. Now, in my adult years, the physical and creative combine to buoy my well-being. They are twin sources of rejuvenation and relaxation and are adaptable to any number of circumstances and environments. In 2018, I had the incredible experience of visiting South Africa and going on safari. In the crisp mornings and evenings, we travelled through the country. During the day, I wrote about the impact on me and read Nelson Mandela’s speeches, preparing to visit Cape Town and take in the history of struggle and emancipation. Looking back, I describe this experience as akin to being immersed in mindfulness: the natural world and the human spirit connecting, provoking the senses and extending my reflection on who I am and my place on Earth. Truly, it fed my feelings of being whole and healthy. In today’s 24/7 world, humans need to be intentional about their well-being. We have travelled

far as a species, but I hope we will never lose our connection with this planet from which we emerged and which sustains us in our tiny corner of the universe. Reading David Brooks’s The Second Mountain , there is a chapter on “The Wilderness,” in which he comments on the tradition of human beings going out into the natural landscape to escape personal confusion, doubt and pain. He refers to the author and theologian Belden Lane to explain this behaviour. “When I venture into wilderness, I’m surprised by how much I enjoy my own company. The person I travel with there isn’t worried about his performance. He sheds the polished persona he tries so often to project to others. […] I want to be the person I am when I’m alone in wilderness.” Reading these lines, and thinking about young people and their rising levels of anxiety, their fear that they will not be able to compete in a globalized, digitalized economy, and their discomfort with being cut off from their online tribe, I see such a pivotal role for parents and educators to intentionally nurture their capacity to remain connected to their natural environment, to be able to sit with silence in order to listen to who they are at their core. This has been driven home as we grapple with our imposed physical distancing during the pandemic. I believe that this starts with choosing simplicity: walking in the open air, reading a favourite book in the sunshine. Perhaps it is once a week; perhaps it is now and then. Role modelling for our children how to be both productive in the competitive world and comfortable with silence, and just being ourselves, sets them up to be more insightful and reflective, able to accept who they are at their core. And with that self-knowledge and acceptance, they are more likely to feel whole and well in their world.

PHOTO: LORELLA ZANETTI

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