Know Your Purpose, Follow Your Call
Over the past few months, my colleagues and I have done a tremendous amount of work to articulate the Portrait of a Crescent Graduate. This work can be distilled to three simple, yet provocative questions: Who am I? How do I lead? What is my legacy? Our challenge is to guide our boys in their personal discovery of the answers to these questions during their time at the School.
We believe these questions reflect the “Crescent Way” – the emotional glue of our school, our identity, our deepest values, our behaviour toward and with others, and what makes our community distinct from any other. By the time they graduate, we expect our students to know themselves, lead others, and leave the school and the broader community better than they found it. Each boy has his own call to follow, driven by his own passion and purpose.
This connection between personal identity and public purpose is more important today than ever before. One of the best-selling books in recent history is A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Millions of people – from elite athletes to political leaders, such as Barack Obama – have sought his counsel. His thesis – that real meaning and significance come from understanding and fulfilling our purpose on earth – is deeply relevant to our Portrait of a Crescent Graduate. (I’ll be sharing an excerpt of a Rick Warren TED Talk with our boys at assembly this month. You may wish to watch the full video here.)
As I write this, we are preparing to break for a well-deserved holiday, a time when all traditions pause to give thanks for the many blessings of life. As Pastor Warren suggests in his book, there is a fundamental difference between affluence and influence – what has been given to us and what we give to others. I’ll be inviting our boys to consider this, and I hope you will too. And, as we all turn our attention to New Year’s resolutions, hopes, dreams, and goals for 2017, we can reflect on how we can answer these three questions – Who am I? How do I lead? What is my legacy?
I’m certain that if we embrace these questions with the power of purpose, we will be able to follow our call and leave our world, not just our school, better than we found it.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy New Year!
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This connection between personal identity and public purpose is more important today than ever before. One of the best-selling books in recent history is A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Millions of people – from elite athletes to political leaders, such as Barack Obama – have sought his counsel. His thesis – that real meaning and significance come from understanding and fulfilling our purpose on earth – is deeply relevant to our Portrait of a Crescent Graduate. (I’ll be sharing an excerpt of a Rick Warren TED Talk with our boys at assembly this month. You may wish to watch the full video here.)
As I write this, we are preparing to break for a well-deserved holiday, a time when all traditions pause to give thanks for the many blessings of life. As Pastor Warren suggests in his book, there is a fundamental difference between affluence and influence – what has been given to us and what we give to others. I’ll be inviting our boys to consider this, and I hope you will too. And, as we all turn our attention to New Year’s resolutions, hopes, dreams, and goals for 2017, we can reflect on how we can answer these three questions – Who am I? How do I lead? What is my legacy?
I’m certain that if we embrace these questions with the power of purpose, we will be able to follow our call and leave our world, not just our school, better than we found it.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy New Year!
See all of Headmaster Fellin's Open Mike Blogs
