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Your Very Best
by Head of School Rick Kirschner
“Thanks for giving it your very best.”
This is one of my favorite lines from one the greatest sports movies of all time. In the movie Miracle, Herb Brooks, the coach of the U.S. Hockey team, is forced to cut the last player before he can set the final roster for the famous 1980 Olympic hockey team. This team miraculously defeats the Soviets and later wins the gold medal. Ironically, Herb Brooks himself was the final player cut from the 1960 United States Hockey Team, which was the last team to win the gold medal for the United States. Now, Coach Brooks finds himself having to make the same decision of which he was the victim twenty years prior. It is funny how often life has a way of coming full circle.
It is my suspicion that Coach Brooks thought long and hard about what he would say to Ralph Cox before cutting his team down to the Olympic mandated twenty players. He could vividly remember how hard it had been to hear those same words himself. He chose to say, “Thanks for giving it your very best.” YOUR VERY BEST, not just your best, but your very best.
Your best is a topic that interests me greatly. Any one of my students or former players can tell you about my fascination with John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. One of my most prized possessions is the copy of the Pyramid that hangs in front of my desk, personally signed by John Wooden.
Coach Wooden’s definition of success is very similar to what Coach Brooks told Ralph Cox. The great coach states at the top of the Pyramid: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
Your best. There it is again.
An old Chinese proverb reiterates this idea. “To do one’s best is the only philosophy that man will ever need.”
What is this fascination with the best? Gulfshore Life’s most popular issue every year is the “Southwest Florida’s Best” issue. If mentioned in the magazine, small businesses immediately cut it out and post it in a prominent place in their establishment as a badge of honor. Is there a difference between your best and the best? What does the best mean? The best in your opinion, the best in my opinion? What inspires us to give our very best? Is it another person? Is it something that happened to us? Is it God who inspires us to do our very best?
On the other hand, what prohibits us from giving our very best? Lack of confidence, fear of failure, fear that our best might not be good enough?
To me, giving it your very best means summoning the effort to do something and doing it to the point that you know you cannot do it any better. Sometimes, that requires great strength and endurance. Sometimes, it requires great restraint and tact. Sometimes, your very best requires patience and understanding. It is our job to figure out what is required to do our very best at any given time. Typically, we know when we have given it our best and when we have not.
Giving it your very best at Canterbury means a lot of things. It means saying hello to people on campus. It means having a positive attitude. It means treating each other well. It means studying hard and trying your hardest on teams and in your activities. It means being aware of the needs of others and helping them when possible. It means being on time, picking up trash, saying please and thank you to people who serve us, reaching out to all students new and old, recycling, participating in community service, cheering loudly, and being humble and not arrogant.
Well, that’s great, you say. It is the first week of January. We all get tired, and we all get frustrated. In fact, we probably get more frustrated when we are trying our very best and things do not turn out the way we had hoped. It hurts more to lose a ball game or do poorly on a test in which you invested your very best than one in which you did not try as hard. Does that mean we should not give it our best because it might hurt more? “I got an 80, but I barely studied” is something I have heard from students over the years. “Well, good for you,” I respond, but why didn’t you give it your best?
Conflicts can prohibit us from giving our very best. Sometimes, it is hard to give your very best to someone whom you feel does not deserve your best. But I ask you, who do you hurt when you do not give your very best? It is only you. From my own personal experience, I can tell you that I have never been sorry to have given my best, whether that was to a person or a school or a business or a team.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “No one who gave it their best ever regretted it.”
The wonderful synergistic effect that happens when we all give our best is that this place becomes the very best it can be. We serve Canterbury, and Canterbury serves us. It is an important paradox in the world that when a person helps another, they also help themselves. You get out what you put in.
So, all that we are asking from you this year is your very best. In some cases, your very best may not result in an A, or a win, or the all-important 90. It might not result in a starting position on a team, the lead in the play, or first chair in the band. But if we all can unite our best efforts, I would contend that we will achieve our goals more often than not, and what is more, YOU will know that you gave it your very best. And then giving it your very best will just be who you are and what you do. And then it will be who we are as a community and what we do here at Canterbury. And you will know what your strengths and weaknesses are. You will also know what you need to improve. I do not think that you can truly improve without giving it your best effort consistently. Improvement is the mainspring of human progress.
In the case of the 1980 U.S. Hockey team, giving its very best resulted in a tremendous moment in sports history. In a highly politically charged world, the twenty young men on the United States Hockey Team made a statement about how a group of young athletes from different backgrounds can come together and become an example of what can happen when we give our best to a common goal.
So, this year, let’s give our very best to one another and to Canterbury. Let’s give our very best to our families and to our communities, and to all we encounter. If we do, it might result in a miracle.
