As part of Darlington's Centennial Celebration, the first Chapel of each month features an alumni guest speaker. Read the full text of the speech given by Capt. Alexander "Whit" Whitaker ('77) at Darlington's Jan. 5 chapel service:
Thank you for that very warm welcome. It is always good to be back at the Lakeside, and to see familiar sights and familiar faces. Each time I return, I'm overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude. There is much that I am indebted to Darlington for, and whatever successes I've had I can trace directly to my education here. I could use all of my time, and more, listing the many good things that came from my time at Darlington. That list would include the usual: a solid academic program that prepared me for college, law school and graduate school; teachers who truly cared and took an interest in students; exposure to a wide range of sports; the very best writing training; and so forth. But the list would also have some unlikely entries: the geometry proofs I so hated as as tudent in Mrs. Rudert's class, but which were excellent preparation for anyone wanting to be a lawyer, and trigonometry she and Mr. Paxton taught me, which I then foolishly saw as having no relevence to me whatsoever, until I returned to it as a naval officer doing celestial navigation and intelligence work. You'll have such surprises, too.
But what I think I'm most grateful for is how Darlington equips its students, morally and intellectually, to make the many choices that we face when leaving the Lakeside. For with the freedom that then comes our way comes a daunting number of decisions to make, from the mundane to the monumental. How we make those choices, and the choices themselves, can affect the entirety of our existence - how we are defined as persons, how we relate to others and what purpose drives our lives.
For guidance we can look to an unlikely model: the SAT. (I know, you thought Chapel was the one place where you could escape talk of the SAT.) The SAT has many shortcomings, no doubt. But the one thing its multiple-choice questions do provide for us is a model of thinking that's not unlike what you'll face away from the test, and away from the classroom. Here's what I mean.
There are on the SAT - whatever the question - basically three types of answers. One could say they parallel the same categories of answers to the larger questions of life. There is the totally wrong answer, usually somewhat obvious and easy to avoid. It is so plainly incorrect and unattractive that we know to steer clear from it, just as in life we generally avoid self-destructive behavior.
Then there is the totally right answer, although this one is usually more difficult to discern than the obviously wrong one. It may not be what we expect - that is, our preconceived notions may keep us from readily discerning that the answer is the correct one. But it is right, and it is always available to us. At some level most of us want to choose the right answer, although perhaps we don't always show that by the industry we exhibit.
That's because to get to that right answer usually involves slogging through and eliminating the third category of answers: the appealing, wrong answers. These are just as incorrect as the obviously wrong ones, just not as plainly so. They are in fact attractive, and tempt us to choose them in various ways. They may repeat something we've heard or read many times before and thus flatter us into reflexively saying "I know that." They usually contain some truth. They may be the answer we know a friend has selected. They might make us feel smart, or superior. They always depend on our not scrutinizing them for long, and so also appeal to our inclination to be lazy. And when we choose these answers, we often do so confidently, and often know we are wrong only when it's too late.
Today I'd like to offer three examples of what I'd consider such appealing but wrong answers. One has to do with the question of how we are to think of ourselves, one with how we are to think of others and one how we are to consider belief in God. All three are frequently offered up by the culture in which we live, and often accepted without much critical thought, and - I'd suggest - often with sad and quite unintended consequences.
The first of these tells us that having good self-esteem is the key to a happy, successful life. It is certainly true that those who are happy appear also to have healthy self-esteem, and we can assume good self-esteem is a good thing. And poor self-esteem also accompanies unhappiness. Being down on oneself, paralyzed and obsessed with one's failings, is plainly unproductive, adn is in fact self-centeredness of the worst sort.
But this does not mean that merely feeling good about ourselves, or having others falsely puff us up, will bring about or ensure our happiness. The teacher who gives an F student a B is simply guaranteeing the student's failure of a mroe profound sort down the road, by robbing him of the incentive to work hard and improve. The coach that seeks to buoy a player's self-esteem by telling her that her lackluster performance is sufficient sets up that player - and her team - for an eventual loss, and the unhappiness that follows.
You see, it is not a bad thing for us to think about our failings: if we don't, we'll never recognize them as such and rid ourselves of them. This is true whether we are working on our athletic ability, our academic achievement or our moral behavior. Feeling rotten about ourselves is sometimes the exactly right reflex, particularly when it comes from having treated others poorly. To overcome shortcomings we must first recognize them; an over-emphasis on self-esteem robs us of this opportunity.
Finally, an obsession about our own self-esteem means we aren't thinking of others, and that produces its own unhappiness. Worse still, it can prompt us to demand that others act in a way that we think helps our self-esteem, to the point of exploitation.
One of my very guilty clients angrily complained aloud, "He hurt my self-esteem," after the judge gave him what I thought was a quite generous sentence. He plainly believed the judge's first obligation that day was to make him feel good about himself. I've represented and prosecuted many criminals, and while often an unhappy lot, very few of them had problems with low self-esteem. Indeed, for most of them it was their inflated sense of self, their belief in their invulnerability and their disregard of others, that led them to commit the crimes they did, and reap the consequences.
There's no evidence such over-emphasis on self-esteem does anyone any good. Indeed, researchers writing in this month's Scientific American report they "have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today's children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise."
Self-esteem is a byproduct of happiness, not its cause. You will find that the happiest and most fulfilled are those who think not about how they are esteemed, but instead focus on meeting their potential, and serving something greater than themselves. I can think of few better models of this than the teachers and staff here at Darlington, who plainly find great reward, not in worrying about their self-esteem, but in perfecting their craft, and in dedicating their lives to you - the students - and to your well-being.
The second appealing but wrong answer has to do with how we are to treat others. We are told that our ethic should be one of tolerance. This is easy to understand given all the inhumanity we see these days - much of it born of simple intolerance. But mere tolerance is at best the lowest common denominator of human interaction. It obliges us to do nothing but contend with our neighbor, perhaps the way we quietly put up with a nuisance or a bother, like a bad smell in a public place. It assumes our putting a distance between ourselves and others. And unlike the Golden Rule, or Darlingotn's motto of "service beyond self,' it carries with it no obligation to actively do anything or serve anyone beyond ourselves. Mere tolerance does nothing to preclude cruelty, or injustice or inequality - witness the many undoubtedly tolerant souls who simply stood by in an earlier generation here in the South. While the Good Samaritan stops to help the injured traveler on the roadside, the Tolerant Samaritan has done his bit by simply leaving the man alone, taking care not to be offended by what he sees and respecting his right ot exist just how he is.
And yet the concept has caught on. I suspect that's because all of us at times want to be left alone, most especially so when we're doing something others might find objectionable, or something those who care about us might think is harmful. So the bargain in the ethic of mere tolerance is the selfish hope that if I agree to keep a distance from my neighbor, he will leave me alone to do what I want to do. But the price of this bargain is high: it ensures there is no woman, no many who is not an island, each separated from all the others by a sea of indifference and detachment that will inevitably produce loneliness and lack of community.
Thankfully at Darlington you learn there is a better way of dealing with people, as the many service projects you do outside the gates show, and as the active involvement in your lives by staff and steachers who care for you makes plain.
To the question of belief in God, our culture also offers up an answer that is most appealing, but I believe likewise quite profoundly wrong. We are told that what we believe about God (and we all do believe something about God) is of no great importance, because all religions are at some level basically the same.
The noblest of instincts prompts this assertion. Religions disagreement can be the source of the worst sort of conflict, as we can readily see on each day's news, and as many of us have seen around us, probably even here in Rome. And if people would simply put those differences aside, we would all get along so much better, or so we like to presume.
Certainly there's great benefit in finding our similarities and the values we share. But the differences do exist and we can't wish them away. Religions differ in how they've withstood the tests of history, in the degree they have contributed to (or damaged) civilization, in how they manifest themselves in the actions of their adherents. Those who assert that all religions are basically the same simply ignore the stark differences in how they approach the basic questions of life. Sure, at some level all religion sincerely seeks some sort of temporal and eternal happiness. But we don't say Reagan Republicans and Michael Moore Democrats are the same because they both sincerely want to win the White House. Nor can we say that about religions that define themselves in often mutually exclusive terms. If I believe that there is only one God and he is Jim Van Es, and you believe there is only one God and he is Sam Moss, our positions cannot logically be reconciled, because Sam Moss and Jim Van Es are not the same person. Sam Moss' strong suit is not basketball, Jim Van Es does not wear bow ties. It would be intellectually dishonest and lazy - and incorrect - to assert they are the same.
Darlington's religion policy rightly addresses the damage that can be done when people denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But the assertion that all religions are somehow the same or automatically equal - which Darlington's policy properly avoids - can be deeply insulting and hurtful to believers, whatever their religion. If as a Christian I tell my Muslim friend that his religion is in fact the same as mine - and he's kind enough not to dismiss me as ignorant - he can only assume I have devalued his belief to the level as mine, which as a Muslim he necessarily believes is mistaken. Or he can assume I think him too unsophisticated to understand the two are really the same. Or he can take my assertion as a conclusion that our differences, and therefore his beliefs, are unimportant and inconsequential, a harmless folly, a mere trifle. None of these three possibilities is exactly the stuff from which harmony and mutual respect springs forth.
To assert the sameness of religious belief encourages us to avoid the tough work of learning about our own faith, of putting it to the test, of subjecting it to the crucible of debates. (If it doesn't matter, why bother?) It diminishes our incentive to get to know others well who believe differently, and to learn about their beliefs. (Again, why bother?) It is a free pass from having to engage in the give-and-take that characterizes a liberal education in search of truth, that "wisdom beyond knowledge" that Darlington insists upon. And in so doing, it ultimately allows us to avoid the hard work of learning to respectfully disagree, of demonstrating true civility, of showing that we can think someone profoundly wrong and at the same time believe them profoundly worthy of respect. In short, it fosters the very unpleasantness its proponents seek to avoid.
These are but three of the infinite number of ver yappealing, but in my view quite erroneous, answers on offer for some of the questions that will confront you in the days ahead. But unlike the SAT, as you deal with life's questions, you won't have to do so alone. To help you, you'll have the example, counsel and experiences - positive and negative - of others you know and observe. And you've got something that most others your age don't have: a Darlington education, with its free exchange of ideas, its diversity of perspectives and its variety of experiences.
You won't be the first to set off on a tough journey, looking for that right answer. Many hundreds of years ago a small group of people likewise committed to finding the truth overcame their own preconceived notions as they set off on a trek to a place they did not know. They rejected all the appealing-but-wrong answers of the day offered up by their culture. They took the risk implicit in all such undertakings, and more so. And their diligence took them to what - and who - they knew was the truth, in a small town in Palestine called Bethlehem.
I, too, like many here at Darlington, am a follower of that same Jesus, and it is in my Christian faith that I seek and have found answers - not always easy ones - to life's most important questions. Darlington also played an important part in that choice in my life, as it was here as a small child, in this chapel, that I was baptized, and here as a student where I claimed that faith as my own. Tomorrow is Epiphany, the day on which the Christian Church notes the journey of those we know call wise, because of the choice they made. I commend that same answer to you as you make your life choices.
I wish you all the very best as you begin this New Year. As I was, you are being exceedingly well prepared for life away from the Lakeside by this finest of schools. I have every confidence you will, here and in your years ahead, find great success as you seek answers that reflect wisdom more than knowledge, service beyond self and honor above everything.
Capt. Alexander Whitaker is head of general civil litigation for the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Washington, D.C. Better known to his Rome and Darlington friends as “Whit,” he graduated from Darlington in 1977 after attending both the Junior School (today’s Middle School) and the Upper School. However, his ties to Darlington began before that. The son of English teacher Alex Whitaker and former Thornwood teacher Sancy Whitaker, Whit grew up on the campus, living here until the age of 6. As a child, he lived in what is now Wilcox Hall, at McCain House and in the faculty apartments. As a Darlington student, he helped pay his tuition by working every day after school and on weekends as a soda jerk at Huff Pharmacy.
Whit went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Berry College before beginning his 23-year Navy career as an intelligence officer, serving at sea in the aircraft carrier USS America. He was later selected for a fellowship to attend law school, and became a judge advocate. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia, and later, a Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University. He has had tours in Virginia, California, Scotland, London, Japan and Washington, D.C.
This summer, he and his wife Maria and three children are slated to move to Jacksonville, Fla., where he will be commanding officer of the Navy’s legal office.
