TRUST WITHOUT KNOWING

While I was walking one morning recently, meditating while walking, highly recommended by the late Thich Nhat Hanh, I recalled several times in my life when I stepped into a new experience without knowing what the outcome might be. I was leaving the old and familiar behind and setting off on a new path, a new direction.  The trust was based on past experiences from a young age of trying new things, many of which were successful, some of which were not.  I learned from both kinds.

In 1969, I left a job, house, friends and went back to a second round of graduate school for 4 more years of study and two more degrees. Trust without knowing.  We had no reserve funds, no house, no job and three little kids, ages 6, 4 and 9 months.  We rented a small building outside of a university town in a rural setting, a renovated shed, did some work on it so it could accommodate a family of five plus a dog.  It was a great environment for the kids with outdoor play areas, a couple of old buildings, one of which I fashioned into a chicken coop.  I found a couple of part-time jobs, we bought a car and made it through the first year and then I became a teaching assistant in the graduate program that paid for the university costs plus a small stipend. Other expenses were covered by continuing part-time jobs elsewhere.

Ten years later, I left a marriage and took 3 children to a new place, a new job, a new life. Trust without knowing.  Suffice to say here that there were adjustments and adaptations to significant change. We weathered the storm and settled in. We reconstituted our family that stayed intact for the next 15 years and enjoyed our time together that was mutually supportive and rewarding.  A professional community, helpful colleagues and meaningful work added benefits to an overall positive experience. We all got a little older and wiser, the kids went off to college and we dealt with the empty nest syndrome.

In 1985, I accepted an invitation to become head of an independent school in the Philadelphia area and for 7 years served in that capacity until an opportunity came up to work in another different kind of leadership role with a population of at-risk kids in a residential school of 1000 students and 800 employees. Trust without knowing.  The Milton Hershey School is an anomaly in many ways, not the least of which is its endowment that grew from $5 billion when I was there to a current value of $17.4 billion. It was not a place that welcomed new people who were hired to design and implement change, and after one year, I determined I could not remain in good conscience and in conflict with numerous ingrained practices. That was not the anticipated outcome but nonetheless a learning experience.

The good parts of Hershey were that with unlimited resources they provided housing, food, clothing, health care both physical and mental for all students at no cost to them or their families along with a comprehensive education.  There were many good people dedicated to helping children learn, grow and change both academically and personally.  The downside was an ingrained and long-standing culture of nepotism, and a network of those committed to maintaining the status quo of no outside intervention or accountability. I am confident that much of this has changed for the better in the intervening years.  I knew the current President when I was there, a graduate of the school, and in my experience, one of the “good guys”. I left MHS with nothing in sight and then, about two months later, a phone call came “out of the blue” with an invitation for a year’s contract in Princeton to lead another school in transition there. Secure, but only for a year, then what? Trust without knowing.

Exploring the possibilities of 3 different options, I accepted an invitation to start a new school from scratch with several other founders when we did not know in the first year (1994-95) whether or not we would succeed with something entirely new. We worked diligently on several fronts simultaneously and poured ourselves into designing and launching this new venture for four years (1994-1998). Trust without knowing.  Now, 28 years later, Bosque School https://www.bosqueschool.org/ is a thriving educational community in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has established itself as a premier independent school in the Southwest.

For 12 years I was a self-employed, independent, sub-contractor working as a consultant to schools and other non-profit organizations in the U.S and abroad. I became a founder of the Santa Fe Leadership Center that morphed through two mergers to become what is now Leadership and Design https://www.leadershipanddesign.org/ an extraordinary resource for educational professionals in areas of creative, personal and professional growth.  These last three entrepreneurial ventures all required a measure of trust without knowing and while much of the confidence was based on past experience, there were no guarantees.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not highlight stepping into a new relationship in 1996 that has helped to support, encourage and sustain me at a deep personal level that I could not have imagined 25 years ago.  S. and I trusted without knowing any eventual outcome and every year since has been full of adventures and wonder.  Sometimes it’s a wonder we have survived.  Shared values and beliefs help; continuing to explore new journeys and travels enrich the experience. We remain committed to each other and our extended family and feel enormously blessed to continue to enjoy life together in its many dimensions.  As we set out on the next, new adventure, we do not know all that will happen.  Even with the best plans, we never know for sure.  And that is OK. We trust that we have the wherewithal (whatever is needed) to manage whatever comes.  Trust without knowing.