In Chapel on March 2, Rector Kathy Giles reflects on the importance of exercising agency in our daily choices and how independence and integrity help guide us toward lives aligned with our values.
Happy March! With two more days of academics and a few more competitions to go, it has certainly been a great Winter Term. It’s hard to understate the vast amount of good energy created and expended all over this campus. End of term is a big lift, including performances, games, races, meets, papers, tests, Pelican productions, debate tournaments — congratulations, and thanks all around! Our productivity as a community has been great, and the energy has been amazing. Nevertheless, I know I am not alone in looking forward to a break.
But separate from that feeling of running right up to and through the finish line, I’ve been feeling lately that some of my choices about how I am using my “free” time have been off and that my agency is not what it should be. Maybe I have some good reasons, such as “I’m tired,” or “there is a lot going on”; maybe there are just a lot of excuses. Last Friday, Mr. Pacelli’s mindfulness students presented us with the opportunity to practice mindfulness, which is all about agency — the choices we make that shape us, that affect our neuroplasticity and therefore our hearts, minds, and spirits. Choose to take in the good, they told us. I think that is powerfully important advice.
I suspect I am not alone in being tempted to be a scroller — maybe not in all elements of my life, and mostly when I need a break or want to be distracted or when I’m tired. I can’t blame it on the internet and cellphones. Before those technologies showed up, I was a clicker with the TV remote, and before that, I was a channel surfer on the car radio. With the flick of a finger, I can be on to something new, on to what’s next, browsing, nibbling, grazing without really thinking about what I’m doing or why. What’s new for me in this current world is that I do it even though I’m conscious of algorithms shaping my choices, ostensibly for my well-being but actually to cultivate my dependence and then my commerce. Somehow, I’ve let not only my choices but also my independence become a little compromised, as a scroller. I’m pretty fierce about my independence, usually, but when I’m tired or distracted, I become a “coper,” and I tend to feel like things just happen to me, rather than as of the choice I make. I’m always disgruntled in coper-mode. It does not feel good. I know I’m wasting my energy and worse, my time.
Several weeks ago, the Sixth Form Officers and I were talking over breakfast at the Rectory. These morning meetings are important to me, and I really appreciate the officers’ and Mr. Gregston’s time early on Tuesday mornings. I learn a lot as we share thoughts and talk through how things are going in the community. We were talking about the most important things students learn and do here, and Henry offered that the most important things for him have included developing agency and independence, along with integrity. I’ve thought a lot about that idea in the weeks since, and with thanks to Henry and the SFO team, I’d like to spend a moment this morning on agency, independence, and integrity.
A good definition of the concept of “agency” includes the idea of developing the capacity and the discipline to make one’s own decisions and choices, rather than being passively controlled by others or by eternal forces like algorithms. When we intentionally make the choices or decisions that shape our next steps, we exercise independence from the control of others. One of the most important skills we can learn in life is to make “good” decisions. What makes a decision “good” is that it is in alignment with one’s principles and beliefs, which don’t change under pressure but in fact come to define us in all kinds of situations. This quality in turn has a lot to do with our integrity. Integrity can be defined as the quality of being honest and living one’s strong moral principles AND also as the state of being whole and undivided. When our actions align with our words, and our words align with our beliefs, and our beliefs align with our actions, we have the integrity triangle, whole, undivided, and rooted in the good. And when agency, independence, and integrity align around our “why,” moving us toward what we value and care about, then we also feel the good, and we feel good. Regardless of how distracted or tired we get, we all want to be good people who make choices aligned with our values, with the courage and capacity to think and act independently while aligned strongly with our good principles and goals within.
The exercise of our agency — that capacity to make those good choices and decisions — requires real life practice. It is so much easier to scroll or click or surf and cope or just react, and many external forces — from the basketball player yelling in your face after a missed shot to the provocative post on your screen to the friend’s surprise comment that zings — can push us back into coping and passivity and reaction. But it is the “stop and think” moment, or perhaps even just the “take a deep breath” moment before we make a decision or a choice or act, that turns agency into a superpower. Imagine being Suni Williams when she learned that she was going to be stuck on the International Space Station for months. Imagine being the U.S. Olympic figure skater Ilia Malinin (also known as the Quad God) when he saved the U.S. figure skating team and won the team gold only a day later to then fall twice, in front of an audience of millions who expected perfection, and find himself out of contention for any individual medal after all the hype. “Quad God falls off the medal platform” — ouch, what a headline. For most of us, these moments don’t come with such intense public scrutiny, but we all have these intense moments to which we must respond. Sometimes these moments are big, and sometimes they are much more day-to-day. But when they happen is when our agency – the “pause, breathe, choose” of how we respond – turns out to be most important.
What I admire most in people whose agency, independence, and integrity are aligned and active is their capacity to frame and reframe experiences and ideas with fairness, positivity, and optimism. Listening to Suni Williams last week, I noted, and you probably also noted, that every third sentence she spoke seemed to begin either with “I’m so grateful” or “I’m so lucky.” She said that about almost everything she told us, including not getting into her top choice colleges, not getting her top choice assignments after graduating from the Naval Academy, and perhaps most especially, about getting stuck in space for months. Being able to see that tough situation as a positive opportunity transformed not only her experience but that of her colleagues and probably ours, as well, as we watched her from afar. Imagine what the news here in the United States would have been if she had been crushed by the news of being stuck in space, uncertain of her return; if she had succumbed to feeling trapped or isolated; if she had ranted about the incompetence of the engineers or called out the politics or personalities of the people with her on the no-personal-space International Space Station. What an amazing gift Suni gave NASA, science, and the world in embracing the situation the way she did. She also showed us what a growth mindset looks like — the belief that if you’re interested and willing to do the work, you can indeed get better at whatever your goal is. I’ve heard a lot of admiration for the way she was doing high-level science experiments, creating Halloween costumes, coming up with birthday cakes and fixing the toilet — just doing it because that was the way she chose to respond to the challenge. That mindset requires agency, independence, and integrity — and her mantra is, “I’m so grateful. I’m so lucky.”
Ilia Malinin showed everyone that same brand of agency in early development. After all, he’s just a little older than you are — he just turned 21 last month. After the Olympics’ closing ceremony, he posted on Instagram: “Everything that led up to this point felt like a waste, no purpose to continue, no faith in the world, no reason to trust myself. I let FEAR in and it ruined me. Now, time to get back up and do it again. It’s done, finished, gone. New goals and challenges await. Somethings bigger and better. GIVE ME A REASON.” He continued, “Grateful for everything and everyone that helped and supported me throughout this time. Met new people and learned many life lessons. 1: One loss doesn’t change what you have already won. 2: You learn more from failure than success. I came in being one person and left with a changed mind. Nevertheless, I had my amazing moments and memories and did not leave empty handed🏅.” I’m so grateful? Yes, grateful — even in the middle of the struggle. I let fear in, and it ruined me. Give me a reason. New goals and challenges await. More to follow from the 21-year-old Olympic gold medalist. Food for thought for the rest of us.
Agency, independence, and integrity. I’ve laid down the everyday agency challenge for myself to limit scrolling and make better choices about using my time and energy in ways that have meaning for me, in ways that feel more purposeful. Over the next couple of weeks, I need to keep my promise to Amanda Omoigui ’28 and read the two Agatha Christie books she recommended. I need to learn more about the war in the Ukraine after our Ukrainian students asked us all in chapel last week to choose to care, and Dr. Duclos showed us, through his presentation that night in the library, what choosing to care can look like. I’m looking forward to the reset that moves me out of “coper” mode and into “agent” mode. Maybe over the coming weeks with a little time to breathe you, too, might think about some ways to exercise more active everyday agency and choose to take in the good. Because as we finish up this snowy and wonderful winter, the possibilities of a new spring are at our doorstep. We can choose to take in the good. We can be so grateful because we are indeed so lucky.