Head of School’s Notebook | Momentum

February 1, 2018

There is a traffic sign on the Conejo Grade, a long steep downhill coming north out of Thousand Oaks, that reads, “Watch Downhill Speed.” It’s a well-located reminder, for the car – at least when I’m driving – accelerates quickly down the grade. I am reminded in such moments about the power of momentum. Gravity provides it on that particular stretch of the 101, but my mind is often on other agents of propulsion.

John Cusack’s character in a film about time travel comments as an older man on the experience of his adolescence. “We were young,” he says. “We had momentum.” Though he was undoubtedly thinking about a different application of the term than the CalTrans employees who placed that sign on the grade, the meaning is no different. Momentum is a powerful thing, whether we are talking about vehicles or the lives of those who drive them.

It’s a concept that is particularly relevant to our community this year, for momentum in human endeavor is generally gained through sustained effort and application. We sense it each school year building through the fall. At times thereafter we ride on its wave. But usually we are doing our best to increase it – or at least maintain it. Stops and starts don’t help. Vacations, necessary and welcome as they are, generally work against momentum. But we build it anew each time we return.

This year Mother Nature did her best to slow our momentum. She’s good at that. The first ten days after the flood and the slides, it was almost like we were walking through the mud that inundated the Central Coast. Simple things seemed harder. Our minds had lost a bit of their sharpness, unused to the daily intellectual exercise that is life on this Mesa. Athletic teams struggled particularly in the latter stages of games, unable to summon their familiar reserves of energy. As one student noted, “I’m kinda tired … and I’m not sure why.”

But the reassuring thing about momentum is that it can be built or rebuilt. It is a progressive force, capable of growing dramatically in response to the energy applied, even in defiance of any counteracting agent or inertia. That is what I have seen in the last week or so. We surely struggled for all sorts of reasons to get our feet underneath us for a while, but our footing is back and there is plenty of traction to be had.

There is nothing like this community when it sets its mind to its work and leans into its aspiration. That is what has happened in the weeks since we have returned to the Mesa. It is what is happening throughout the Central Coast. And the fact that it isn’t easy to do just makes it all the more inspiring.

We aren’t traveling downhill like those cars on the grade. Quite the opposite, in fact. But the momentum is only building on 2018. And we intend to make sure it is a year defined by far more than its tumultuous beginning.