Recently I attended a meeting with a group of Sandy Spring Friends School parents where one mom told me that she and her husband, on several occasions, have found themselves weeping from the joy they experience as a result of their daughter’s happiness at being a student at Sandy Spring. I knew exactly what they meant, and it’s a beautiful feeling. Having worked on Wall Street, I know people care deeply about their money. As Head of School here at SSFS, I know people care far more deeply about their children.
We’ll do anything for our kids. This is the Sandy Spring way. It is why our community is often described as passionate. Personally, I've not always been entirely comfortable with the concept of mixing passion and work. It has a kind of out of control, all-heart-no-brain meaning to me. Teenagers in the back seat are passionate. Fortune 500 executives aren't passionate; they're calculating. Passion implies a state of mind where you let everyone know what matters most to you while not having the slightest idea what the other guy thinks. Passion makes you weak. That's no way to win at Texas Holdem.
Recently, I've been turning over in my mind the idea of passion, especially after listening to Walter Isaacson talk about Steve Jobs. Jobs had passion. Passion for design, coherence, workmanship, utility, how things look and feel and, especially, how they make you feel. Job's passion was not an act or a tactic or a negotiating ploy. Job's passion for what he did (and he did lots of things) was unabashed, unrehearsed and often unsurpassed. He willed things to happen.
This kind of passion floats on a reservoir of courage - the courage to persist, to fail, to persist some more. It embodies how one person can make a difference and even do the seemingly impossible. Change the world.
I don't flinch any more when I hear about how Sandy Springers are passionate. It's beginning to feel like part of a life well-lived - something we would wish on our kids; something that we can all model.