Graduation, Year End, and the Code

Whether we are graduating or not we have come to the end of the school year.  It’s a good time to stop and evaluate how we’ve done in living out the Code.  We should see the many ways in which we have done our best as individuals, teammates and members of our family, school and society – and celebrate it!  At the same time we can also identify areas in which we want to grow.  The familiar words, “if you’re not failing, you’re not attempting very much,” remind us that we have to set our sights continually higher, not because we want to fail, but because we want to become the best person we can.  These words of Theodore Roosevelt are chiseled into the stone wall of Washington National Cathedral: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man (or woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”