A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [20]
Some people will always believe that, but for Milton, I would be peddling drugs or gangbanging on the South Side of Chicago. I reject that. Even back home, others had high expectations for me, and I had them for myself. Milton was a launching pad, but I always had some spring in my legs. Like Milton, Harvard exposed me both to great privilege and to the folly of equating that with fulfillment or salvation.
For some time, I thought the lesson of my years at Milton or even Harvard was that you had to adapt to your new environment, learn the code, if you were going to belong. But eventually I came to see that belonging has nothing to do with place. It has to do with purpose, with values. The expectations of the South Side and Milton Academy implied a choice: Be of one or the other, but not both, because they inherently conflict. That choice, however, was false and was totally unsuited for the world I wanted to experience and be part of.
I learned to focus less on where I was and more on who I am. Candor, compassion, generosity of spirit, curiosity, and learning to listen, as Louis Pasteur once wrote, “without losing your temper or your self-confidence”—these were the qualities I wanted and that I would always try to carry with me. These became the points on my compass.
That decision carries risk. It is easier to follow someone else’s star, some well-worn and recognized path. Strangers and loved ones alike question nonconformists and often true independence itself. But I have come to love taking risks, even those that seem to defy all logic. Once you take personal responsibility for your choices, once you let your values lead you, the journey itself—be it through an unfamiliar school or on a campaign trail—can be wondrous. Eventually you’ll connect with those who share your vision. You’ll find or form a community of those with similar values. And that is reward enough. Leaping into the unknown can be enriching beyond measure if, as Poppy would say, you “remember who you are and what you represent.”
Chapter 3
Dean Jeremy Knowles used to tell a story about a sculpture in Harvard Yard, by the renowned British artist Henry Moore, which sits on the green next to Lamont Library. “Standing in front of it on the path or gazing at it from the library, it looks pretty lumpy,” he would say to incoming freshmen. “A bunch of massive golden shapes, quite attractive, but meaningless, and mostly good for photographing small children in. But go out of the gate onto Quincy Street and turn left, and look back through the thirty-fourth gap in the second set of railings. Suddenly you will see a splendid and voluptuous work.”
He’d ask the students, “What’s the moral?” His answer: If you don’t understand something, the reason may be that you are simply standing in the wrong place. “So if you don’t understand a theorem in physics or a passage from Ulysses or a Schoenberg trio or your roommate’s politics, remember Henry Moore,” he’d say, “and try a new perspective.”
My move from the South Side to Milton had given me some insight into Dean Knowles’s point. Though less jarring, so had the transition from Milton to Harvard. I had learned how culture explains why people sometimes draw different conclusions from the same information, and I continued to be fascinated by the complexities of what unites us and what divides us. I’ve always tried to be a student of humanity, which required a much broader horizon, an unpredictable canvas, an exposure to disparate environments, ideas, and perspectives. I decided I needed more practice at understanding and transcending differences, and I needed it before launching a career.
I was also not quite sure exactly what career I wanted. That was not unusual for college graduates