TOADTalk: A Meaningful Life
Ms. Mahoney asks, "How will you wish you had composed your days?"
As the months go by in a Thacher school year, students and faculty members learn about each other in a thousand different ways, times, and contexts: around the breakfast or formal dinner table, in a sunshiny moment on the Pergola or a sunset shared on a trail, at the whiteboard in a classroom, lab, studio or seminar circle, at practices and games and rehearsals, at coffeehouses and Open Houses, in dorm common rooms, and in Suburbans on highways or back roads on the way to community service projects, field trips, cultural excursions, or athletic events. Then there’s each faculty member’s TOADtalk. Monday morning’s all-School Assembly launches with whatever the Teacher On Active Duty wishes to share—a reflection, a story or song, a demonstration of some sort, or a simple poem. In this way, every week of the school year, the community gains a new window into the mind or heart or spirit of one of our own.
Liz Mahoney CdeP 1988, whose TOADtalk is featured below, teaches studio art, heads the Independent Study Committee, and coaches the Equestrian Team. Ms. Mahoney has worked at the School since 1998 and lives on campus with her husband and three children–one of whom is a freshman at Thacher.
We are all given an entry date into life and we all have an unknown exit date. It is our job to compose the time between.
In the grand scheme of things this is but a brief moment and our insignificance can seem overwhelming. What is our life for? And how do we make it meaningful?Throughout time humans have found a myriad of ways to numb this existential despair, most recently (besides watching Netflix) we numb with busyness. In this age of digital connectedness and modern conveniences we are busier than ever and our busyness has become our badge of honor. We start early, too. Kids are kept busy with multiple activities and grow to become busy adults. In this day and age people would have a hard time admitting it if they weren’t busy. Idle time is wasted time.
But you get to compose your life. You want to live a full life, not just a numbingly busy one. You get to decide what is really important—each day, each month, each year. What is important now may not be so in a month; what is important in the coming months may not be so in ten years. What gets your attention will change, but make a conscious effort as you go along to discover what is truly important—Important with a capital “I.” In moments of overwhelm and busyness—when it’s easier to ignore the bigger questions of our lives and plug away at being busy and doing more doing—try to think about what is truly important in the broad span of life. If you don’t have a clue how to do this, ask others about what’s important in their lives. Ask your parents or grandparents. Imagine being older and knowing you have more days behind you than ahead. How will you wish you had composed your days?
—Mary Oliver
Back
Liz Mahoney CdeP 1988, whose TOADtalk is featured below, teaches studio art, heads the Independent Study Committee, and coaches the Equestrian Team. Ms. Mahoney has worked at the School since 1998 and lives on campus with her husband and three children–one of whom is a freshman at Thacher.
We are all given an entry date into life and we all have an unknown exit date. It is our job to compose the time between.
In the grand scheme of things this is but a brief moment and our insignificance can seem overwhelming. What is our life for? And how do we make it meaningful?Throughout time humans have found a myriad of ways to numb this existential despair, most recently (besides watching Netflix) we numb with busyness. In this age of digital connectedness and modern conveniences we are busier than ever and our busyness has become our badge of honor. We start early, too. Kids are kept busy with multiple activities and grow to become busy adults. In this day and age people would have a hard time admitting it if they weren’t busy. Idle time is wasted time.
But you get to compose your life. You want to live a full life, not just a numbingly busy one. You get to decide what is really important—each day, each month, each year. What is important now may not be so in a month; what is important in the coming months may not be so in ten years. What gets your attention will change, but make a conscious effort as you go along to discover what is truly important—Important with a capital “I.” In moments of overwhelm and busyness—when it’s easier to ignore the bigger questions of our lives and plug away at being busy and doing more doing—try to think about what is truly important in the broad span of life. If you don’t have a clue how to do this, ask others about what’s important in their lives. Ask your parents or grandparents. Imagine being older and knowing you have more days behind you than ahead. How will you wish you had composed your days?
No one wishes they had been busier—engaged and alive and active but not simply busy, ignoring the opportunity to compose their life.
To close, I want to share this poem by Mary Oliver that makes this point as well as I can imagine:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
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