Dr. Richard T. Ewing, Jr., Commencement Speech 2017

Welcome honored guests, trustees, faculty and staff, parents, alumni, and friends, and members of the Class of 2017!

This is a distinguished class in many regards. The academic achievements of so many have been exceptional. This year we have 12 students who maintained a 6.0 average throughout their high school years, an achievement matched only once before in the history of ACS. In addition, we have 33 who are graduating summa cum laude, 10 magna cum laude, and another 8 cum laude. In total, over a third of this class have earned academic distinction.

As a class, you have shown strong commitment to community outreach and service. Our seniors have contributed enormously as well to the success of our sports program.  This year for the first time, either an ACS boys team or a girls team, and often both, won every ACS Open Tournament we hosted: football, basketball, volleyball, tennis and table tennis. Senior Class athletes were involved in all of these championships and throughout the year demonstrated leadership, sportsmanship, and excellent skill and fitness.

Again I feel very proud and privileged to share with you this special time and place in recognition of your achievements. Congratulations to you one and all!  

There is no doubt that as students here you have been challenged and tempered by the demanding educational program of our school. We salute you for your perseverance and resilience. The opportunities you have had here at ACS are in many ways unique in Bulgaria. It is also true that the burdens that have been placed upon you have been many.

Facing challenges and bearing burdens in school is an experience common to us all.  At times these experiences might make us feel like camels being heavily loaded in preparation for a long journey.

When I was young in my own journey through high school I was indeed a camel. I didn’t know that I was a camel until I got to college and faced a crisis of confidence.  And then I came to realize that I wasn’t even a proper camel; I was a beast of burden driven by fear.  And it was then that I came to understand that I had to strive to be a lion if I wanted to live fully and freely. 

Students with access to a great education like me when I was young, and like all of you at ACS, have lifetime gifts of precious worth. So many young people around this world are not so blessed. With such gifts and such opportunity come responsibilities and also burdens. I came to understand as a young man that as important as it is to fulfill your responsibilities and bear your burdens well, it is not enough to be a good camel. It is not enough.

Now if you want to become a lion instead of a camel, you have to face the lion.  A friend and former colleague of mine, Joseph Lekuton, who is a current member of the Kenyan Parliament, wrote a book, Facing the Lion, about his boyhood growing up as a Maasai warrior in Northern Kenya. There, as part of his passage into manhood, he literally had to face lions in the savanna. 

Most of us don’t have to confront real lions in our passage to adulthood, I certainly didn’t, but we do have to face metaphorical ones, and they can be just as dangerous and just as frightening. In my own passage, thanks to the help of friends and family, and a wise counselor, I faced the fears – fear of failure, fear of disappointing others, and also, I as look back, fear of my own success – that were constricting my own life like blocked arteries, and keeping me, in my own mind, little other than a beast of burden. Facing the lion of those fears helped propel me to pursue a life of achievement on my own terms, to seek to create meaning and purpose in my own life, and to find, and use, my own voice.

So yes, I am here to tell you: strive to be a lion.  But I am also here to tell you that it is not enough to stop being a camel and decide to become a lion. It is a critical step to leading a full and meaningful life, but it is not sufficient. It is not enough.

The German philosopher Frederic Nietzsche famously wrote of three stages in the journey of life. The first stage, as I have just shared with you, is that of being a camel... the camel of childhood and youth. It is not a stage that can or should be avoided or shortchanged. In fact it is the stage that prepares you for what lies ahead in the long journey of life. Nietzsche believed that the heavier the load that has been carried by the camel, the stronger the lion can become. If Nietzsche is right, all of you members of the Class of 2017 can become very strong lions indeed.

Now a camel is taught to be obedient, to learn how to receive instruction, and to acquire the knowledge and information needed to function in society. When the camel is loaded, it is released and heads off into the desert. And it is there, out in a metaphorical desert, that the transformation from camel to lion must take place.

To be a lion, you have not just to act like a lion; you actually have to do the work of a lion. It turns out the lion has a very specific task to perform. That task is to kill a dragon, and not just any dragon, but the dragon that goes by the name, “Thou Shalt.”

“Thou shalt” are the rules, the knowledge, the culture that make civilized life possible.  They must be internalized for a person to live successfully and constructively in society, but they must not become a straitjacket. The child and the youth must bear the burden of Thou Shalt, learning the things they must know and must do. Along the path to adulthood, to a full and meaningful life, though, we must shove this mantle off; we must shed this snakeskin and grow a new one. 

Now comes an intriguing part of Nietzsche’s parable.  When the dragon of “Thou Shalt” has been conquered, the lion is ready for the final and most important transformation: back to being a child.

Using the words of the great poet, TS Eliot, you must “come back to the place of your birth and know it for the first time.” 

As philosophers and spiritual leaders over millennia have understood, the greatest transformation is to experience a second birth: to be reborn as a child, not the immature child or youth you were, but a mature child of wonder – that is to say, a fully realized person of awareness, understanding, deeply honed skills, creativity, and compassion – someone with unique gifts to share with the world.

As Mr. Clapp so eloquently shared with you last night, our world needs people with those special gifts, gifts of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. The world needs people, as Mr. Clapp said, of use, and honor, and compassion; the place of your birth needs such people as well, for most you, your home country of Bulgaria.