A few days ago, my wife, Ruth, received an unexpected text from a friend. “Buddy check,” it said, with a blue heart emoji suffix. Ruth was so touched by the gesture that she immediately thought of another friend in a separate part of the country and sent her the same sweet message, complete with blue heart. The magic of this particular instance of the network effect is that the person who texted Ruth and the person whom Ruth texted are strangers, and yet one of them had, indirectly and unwittingly, just made the other’s day so much brighter.
“If you’ve ever received a call or text from someone you’ve lost touch with,” writes Mel Robbins in her 2024 bestseller, The Let Them Theory, “it’s one of the greatest surprises in the world. And there are people in my life that I haven’t spoken to in several years, that if I had coffee with them, we would fall right back into a deep and loving connection.” Not only are such out-of-the-blue “buddy checks” productive of loving connections, as Robbins attests, but they are reproductive of loving connections, as Ruth’s own experience proves. Kindness begets kindness begets kindness.
In the sixth book of The Aeneid, the epic Latin poem that bears his name, the Trojan hero and mythological progenitor of Rome, Aeneas, encounters in the underworld the soul of his abandoned lover, Dido of Carthage, who fell on her sword rather than live without him as he sailed for Italy. “My queen,” Aeneas pleads, “it was against my will I left your country, / And by the orders of the gods…. / I couldn’t have believed / That I would bring such pain by my departure.” Dido only glares “in fury,” her “dim form… changeless in expression.”
The 20th-century Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, however, reimagines Dido as far more discerning and magnanimous—the soul of reflection, not the histrionic mute of Virgil’s Aeneid. Yes, Akhmatova’s forsaken queen does chide Aeneas—“you forgot,” she laments, remembering her former self, “those hands stretched out to you / In horror and torment… / And the crash of blasted dreams”—but she comforts him too. “You don’t know for what you were forgiven… / Rome was created, flocks of flotillas sail on the sea.”
We will never know all the love for which we are to credit, just as we will never know all the hurt for which we are forgiven. In my “Welcoming Ms. Wabrek” survey earlier this month, I asked our students, “What have been one or two of your most memorable positive experiences during your time at MICDS?” The word “friend” features explicitly in nearly one-third of their answers and features implicitly in most others. “On the first day of school in JK, I didn’t know anyone,” recalls one fourth-grade student. “A girl walked up to me and said ‘hi’ and told me her name, and we’ve been best friends ever since. That memory has encouraged me to welcome all the new kids and invite them into our friend group.”
An eighth grader tells a similar story. “On my very first day of school I came in feeling nervous, but I made so many new friends that day and felt so welcomed by everyone.” Observes another, “During my time at MICDS, I’ve loved seeing my friends every day. This place has a very diverse group of people, and it isn’t hard to make friends.” One sixth grader says simply, “My most memorable positive experience here is making friends.”
As is true of the “buddy check” network effect, so does the prevailing culture of kindness at MICDS reproduce itself immeasurably. “I like when everyone says ‘hello’ to me in the morning, and how we all celebrate everyone’s birthdays,” says a seventh-grade student. Recalls one ninth grader who is new to our community this year, “I met some sophomores at Eliot Summer Academy, and when I see them in the halls they always make conversation with me.” A seventh grader now in his second year also remembers “the welcome I received when first starting school here,” and a sixth grader adds, “When I was new, which was only a few months ago, everyone was kind and helped me get where I needed to be.” Our teachers do their part as well, of course. “Last year,” says one third grader, “Mrs. Rotskoff made me feel good and proud of myself.”
With respect to forgiveness, one of our seniors acknowledges that “school can be stressful, especially in this kind of environment,” but she also contends that “the best memories come from learning from mistakes.” In each of our lives, should the mistakes we make disappoint the communities we inhabit or the friends we love, we must strive for growth and hope for understanding. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was indeed built. Not just this year but every year, MICDS is a complex construction project. Flocks of flotillas sail on the sea. We do not know what we are forgiven, but we ourselves can forgive, and forgiveness is reproductive of forgiveness, as kindness is reproductive of kindness. Life is hard. Friendship is dear. Buddy check!
Always reason, always compassion, always courage. Happy Halloween weekend to you and your families.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist is Beyond Meaning by Watchhouse from their latest album, Rituals (Apple Music / Spotify).