Life at the Intersection of Excellence, Purpose, and Passion
Adapted from my TED Talk “Excellence, Purpose, and Passion,” (available online later this month) and from my welcome back remarks to students last week.
I knew that I was about to be humiliated the moment my classmate began her presentation.
I was in my early thirties and in a class for new and aspiring school leaders. The assignment was: “Prepare and Present Evidence of Student Achievement at Your School,” and as a veteran teacher and young administrator at a famous performing and visual arts high school, I was excited to advocate for the arts and an arts education. (I’ll admit I was also eager to show off dozens of photos of really cool young people doing epic work.)
Eager, for once in my life, to actually do some homework, I had prepared for my presentation with the same intensity I had practiced the piano in college. When presentation day came, I was inspired, I was prepared, and I was confident. That all changed the instant the first presenter began.
Remember the feeling you got in school when you were handing in a test, and the moment it was too late to change anything you realized you had done it all wrong? That’s how I felt.
In response to the prompt “show evidence of student achievement in your school,” my classmates were showing things like this:
Only then did it dawn on me that the words “student achievement” is usually a euphemism for “test scores,” and the presenters that day had all understood that their job was to show how well their schools’ students were doing on various state-mandated standardized tests.
I panicked. Even though our students tended to do really well on standardized tests, it had never occurred to me to use that data to try to prove that they were “achieving” anything.
I barely heard the discussion about percentiles and standards while I desperately tried to figure out what to do. I seriously considered feigning illness, pretending that my laptop was broken, or even just leaving.
But it was too late: it was my turn. I decided to just embrace it: ours has never been a typical school, and our students have never done “typical” work. In order to demonstrate “student achievement” in my school, I showed this:
This is a frame from a film made by Alex, who was (at the time) an 11th-grader in our Media Arts department. The film is called “A Starry Night,” and tells the story of a little boy whose mother has recently died. He lives in a bleak apartment with his father, and the two of them are trying — at times, desperately — to figure out how to be a family without Mom.
The little boy is obsessed with the idea of space travel. He spends his days dressed in a space suit playing with his spaceship toys; before bed time he stares out the windows, fixated on the stars in the night sky.
He longs to escape: literally, from the earth, and symbolically from the crushing weight of the loss he feels.
The film is brilliantly effective. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful, bittersweet and joyful. At its premiere, the audience cried and laughed, everyone touched by Alex’s prodigious empathy.
By any measure that matters, the film was a success.
The arts teacher in me recognized the film as top-level work: technically and aesthetically virtuosic, it exceeded any requirements one could have possibly articulated in a rubric. The school administrator in me marveled at how, in the making of the film, Alex demonstrated all of the so-called “21st Century Skills” — leadership, collaboration, and creativity — that young people will need to be able to get jobs. But most importantly, the human being in me recognized Alex’s work for what it most truly was: the result of the relentless pursuit of excellence, in the context of finding purpose and feeling passion.
Excellence, purpose, and passion: what could possibly be better evidence of student achievement?
By that point, I had forgotten all about the dread I felt earlier, the shame in not having any spreadsheets, the fear of failing the assignment. I was caught up in the moment, still touched by Alex’s work. That is, until one of my classmates — a principal at another school — said, “I just don’t see how any of this is relevant. None of this is the real world. It’s like you’re all living in a fairy tale.”
To this day, I wonder: when did excellence, purpose, and passion become a “fairy tale”?
For decades at The Chicago Academy for the Arts, I’ve witnessed firsthand over and over again what happens when young people learn to do things that they believe matter, do things that they deeply enjoy doing, and do things that they are inspired to do really well.
They become people like Alex, whose powerfully empathetic storytelling about the dynamics of family, isolation, and loss — in the context day-to-day life and global events — has continued to move audiences long after high school.
Alex Girav’s Taksim Square
They become people like Amari, who has learned to not only defy gravity physically, but to defy the gravitational pull of “average.” At 18, he has already started a nonprofit to bring the joy of dance to those who are suffering. He is currently in his first year at Juilliard.
They become people like Maria, whose mission to “educate, heal, and inspire” has driven her to open music schools in two states. She recently was awarded a major “Educator of the Year” award.
And they become people like Justin, who is not only one of the most sought-after songwriters in the world today, but also an advocate and activist promoting inclusion, equality, and diversity in the music industry and beyond.
These four artists — and their hundreds of peers over the last two decades — have taught me that we find our best selves, and we live our best lives, in the pursuit of excellence, at the intersection of purpose and passion.
Our best lives are when we wake up hungry for what’s in front of us that day, because it’s more interesting than sleep; when we spend our time in a state of “flow” doing things that have personal and public meaning; when we collapse exhausted at the end of the day, not looking to escape, but in the satisfaction of knowing that we tried to do difficult things really well.
Everyone should know what this feels like.
However, many of us struggle to live our best lives, because we believe that voice in our head (or that voice in the room) that tells us about our limits. The voice that says, “You can’t write a book.” Or, “You can’t run a marathon.” Or, “You can’t start a business.” The voice that says, “you can’t be happy. You can’t make a difference. You can’t change the world.”
Many of us struggle to live our best lives, because we look for the wrong things: we’re duped into thinking that “success” means “more”: more money, more status, and more stuff. We’re conditioned to be “practical,” when for so many people “practical” means eschewing the very things that actually bring us joy in life.
And many of us struggle to live our best lives, because we live in fear of discomfort. We avoid the difficult conversation, the painful self-reflection, or the scary risk that might lead to failure. Instead, we embrace instant gratification and we endlessly scroll, we endlessly shop, and we endlessly... settle.
But there’s a way out.
In a long career of helping people of all ages learn how to act on their dreams, I’ve come to believe that there are three critical ingredients to living our best lives:
Reject mediocrity. Understand that most of what you think are your limits are illusions that will disappear once you start to truly challenge them. The problem is that coming face-to-face with our “limits” is hard, uncomfortable, and often scary. Embrace the discomfort necessary for doing hard things really well. Don’t settle: there’s magic on the other side.
Allow yourself to dream big and set ridiculous goals. Purpose and passion emerge when we approach each day with a commitment to curiosity, openness, and reflection. Make your journey your number-one priority and ask yourself, every day: What do I really want? Why do I want it? Am I telling the truth?
It may help to imagine that the older version of you already exists, and that they can write you a letter. What does Future You desperately wish you would start working on something today? Spend as much time as you can doing that.
3. Never allow your happiness to be contingent “achieving” anything. The novelty of accomplishment wears off shockingly fast, and when “new” becomes “normal,” we’re emotionally right back where we started.
Instead, fall in love with the journey, and with the process. Do you want to write a novel? Learn to love showing up at the page every single day. Do you want to run marathons? Learn to find joy somewhere in every early-morning or late-night training mile. Do you want to start a nonprofit? How many days in a row can you find an hour or three to fine-tune your plan to make a difference?
Today, I challenge you to reject mediocrity, reject your limits, dream big, and love the journey. May we all find excellence, purpose, and passion.