Good morning, Year 11.
You’ve made it through to the end of lessons (for the moment anyhow) and study leave is about to begin, so 8th May 2024 has some significance. For most of you, today marks the end of a 5-year road in school at Bishops. Think back. There will be moments of which you will be justifiably proud. Inevitably, there will be other times which you will recall with rather less of a glow. Every road has bumps in it – or, this being Wiltshire, pot-holes – but I really do hope that you can look back over the past years with nostalgia and a good deal of pleasure. Yes, even to those dark days of Year 8 and 9 in Covid times.
I thought I’d read a short extract from a book by the late Malcolm Muggeridge – broadcaster and moral philosopher. It seemed appropriate to me for such a day: inspirational, uplifting language shot through with hope and aspiration. Here is Muggeridge’s short essay ‘Response to Life’.
At its highest level…happiness is the ecstasy which mystics have inadequately described. At more humdrum levels it is human love, the delights and beauties of our dear earth, its colours and shapes and sounds; the enchantment of understanding and laughing, and all other exercises of such faculties as we possess; the marvel of the meaning of everything, fitfully glimpsed, inadequately expounded, but ever-present.
Such is happiness; not compressible into a pill; not translatable into a sensation; lost to whoever would grasp it himself alone; not to be gorged out of a trough, or torn out of another’s body, or paid into a bank, or driven along an autoroute, or fired in gun-salutes, or discovered in the stratosphere. Existing, intangible, in every true response to life, and absent in every false one; propounded through the centuries in every noteworthy word and deed and thought; expressed in art and literature and music; in vast cathedrals and tiny melodies; in everything that is harmonious, and in the unending heroism of imperfect men reaching after perfection.
This is a significant day for every one of you. You’ll probably have mixed feelings – anticipation tinged with some sadness; excitement and a desire to get on with exams tempered by uncertainty about what the future – both short- and long-term – might hold. If you’re anything like me, you won’t really know where exactly you’re heading at present. A-levels and higher education both seemed a distant prospect when I was in Year 11 (or the Fifth Form as it was then!) despite the fact that my older brother and sister had told me what was in store. I didn’t have much idea of what the future might hold or what my part in it might be. Some of you will share that feeling, I’m sure. Don’t panic – it’s quite normal! Others will have set sights on achieving something amazing. Some of you will have planned the summer ahead with military precision. Others are sure to drift from day to day. No matter: after the exams are through, decompression is needed before many of you return here to take on the challenge of A-levels.
Whatever your plans are, I wish you all the good fortune in the world – with your exams and with realising your dreams. I wish you luck and a following wind as you take on that unendingly heroic task of reaching after perfection.
