Looking ahead to 2022, I can’t help but feel that so much has happened in the last two years that making new year’s resolutions has – for me anyway – become a bit irrelevant. I haven’t felt able to plan too far ahead in any case, but more to the point I feel so chuffed every time I get to the end of a week, month, term and – yes, year -still sane (ish), still functioning (mainly), and still hopeful (at least most of the time), that the space for relentless self-improvement has diminished somewhat, and I’m quite glad about that actually.
But all the same, there is something that’s been niggling at me, that I need to work on and ideally set right. And that’s keeping the space not for self-improvement, but rather for fun, for joy, for silliness and for lightness. It’s been quite easy of late to be a bit ground down and I’ve found my – what I had thought to be inherent – optimism wearing thin. Perhaps you have, too, and perhaps that’s entirely understandable when living through a pandemic – but the ability to look ahead positively is a key one to hang on to, and the ability to be light and to laugh absolutely essential to being a human.
And I’m not talking about some sort of unwitting, banal or trite ‘everything’s gonna be ok’ mantra, or an inane and incessant grinning in the face of difficulty, or even a deliberate burying of one’s head in the sand whilst all around you crumbles; I’m talking about gritty optimism, a lightness that sits knowingly alongside discomfort.
Let me tell you what I mean.
So, Twitter isn’t somewhere I tend to go if I want to look ahead positively, but I saw this over the holiday and it made me think:
I like that: grounded hope. Seeing all possibilities means recognising there are bright ones, too. It doesn’t make you less of a realist to know that things can work out well – you’re getting the whole picture. It makes me feel less naïve, this idea of grounded hope – and we talk a lot about being grounded here at Wimbledon don’t we, that notion of knowing who you are, keeping a sense of perspective and understanding that compassion and kindness matter more than glitzy things like success; but, to me, being grounded also allows you truly to fly, ironically: being light of heart, hopeful and kind actually makes you more successful anyway, in my view, more of a leader and more of a human being who will have an impact but – much more importantly – you get to enjoy your life, too.
And why do I say this, and why has being light-hearted and even silly crept into my consciousness over Christmas and into my new year’s resolutions?
Well, it’s because of the great man Desmond Tutu, who died on Boxing Day, aged 90. Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian who worked tirelessly as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He grew up at a time of enormous racial oppression, conflict and violence and yet always espoused hope and peace, mediating not only in his own country to help end apartheid but also playing a key role in campaigning for gay rights, working for an end to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and the Iraq war, too. He had four children, was the first black man to be appointed either bishop or archbishop, was a teacher and a writer and won the Nobel Peace Prize. He couldn’t really have done more, or more impressive and important things, with his life.
And yet, this was a man who loved laughter, and dance, and silliness, and friendship – and I don’t think this can be better seen than in his friendship with one man in particular, the Dalai Lama. In the many records of their friendship available on YouTube and other channels, we see two these two giants of men, these two phenomenal spiritual leaders laughing with such compassion and tenderness about their fundamental differences, enjoying what it is to share a space of lightness together, knowing that truly lightness can lead to the deepest and most meaningful of connections – and that’s what 2022 is going to be about for me.
So this is my resolution: be more Tutu. And I think it should be yours, too.
Let us remember that important work, meaningful work and indeed the very best work can and probably should be carried out in a context of enjoyment – and perhaps that will allow us to keep our focus on that sense of grounded hope, knowing that great things are absolutely to come, because indeed they’re already here.
This is a shortened version of Ms Kennedy’s start of Spring Term assembly.