If the answer is: Queen Elizabeth II and the School Athletic Sports, what is the question…?

It’s been (and continues to be) an enormous week. On one level, the Queen’s passing has shaken the world historically and internationally, intruding itself upon our attention every day where we, most likely, had not really felt or been conscious of this royal lady’s presence in our daily lives before.

At the same time, within our school community, examination preparation and the School Athletic Sports have been contrasting and conflicting demands of focus.

So what on earth can be the connection between these two situations which are such poles apart?

It never ceases to amaze me how a week can be laid out before us, pressingly urgent in all its demands, apparent necessities and challenges, practically screaming for our attention and energy, compelling our action and engagement – when suddenly, some completely unexpected and yet clearly more momentous event than we could contemplate occurs and totally overrides those previous imperatives. The demands of our personal world are intruded upon by our public or community world – and as we shift focus, ultimately, nothing from that first scenario, really falls over.

So what can this be a lesson in … priorities?

It was a good day at the Athletic Sports. One that started off a little fraught with tensions between weather unpredictability, and the proximity to Senior External Practice and Cambridge Mock Examinations, there were for many, as numerous the reasons to stay away as to attend – the seeming demands of our physical selves versus the alternate demands of our academic selves? There was a sense of juggling on the spot as we jockeyed between these conflicting demands that circumstances beyond our control (ie: Covid) had created. This unusual contrast, that would, all things being equal, be avoided, was navigated for exceptional reasons. Ultimately, the decision to take the only opportunity that presented itself for this chance to engage our community-school-selves in this school-wide event, in order to enable a sense of connection, enjoyment, competitiveness, house spirit, physical blow-out and ‘airing’, before, very quickly and with considerable focus, students take on the personal academic challenge of examinations, was a good one.

In fact, in the circumstances, it was the only one.

Everyone, internally, quietly marveled at the way the weather held: granted the air was ‘fresh’, but the sun mostly shone and none of us got wet. Boys ran, jumped, threw and connected as competitors, friends, class-mates and house buddies, to add some balance to their classroom selves and to exhibit various talents and otherwise unappreciated or unwitnessed capabilities, demonstrating a broader range of themselves to the school network. While for others for whom Sports Days are not their natural inclination, they nonetheless complied in moving themselves in ways they might not instinctively choose, in order to sample the broader benefits of the day.

And we yelled, screamed, laughed, joked, chatted, sniffed up barbecue aroma, felt the air on our faces and the sun on our backs in order to indulge ourselves as community in a way we have not been able to do for some time with our hemmed-in Covid selves…and it was good.

We didn’t choose this timing. We would not choose it again if we had a choice. Yet, it will be interesting to observe the learnings, the possible benefits, and potentially consider in a more tangible, less assumed way, even the disadvantages (if we hadn’t already considered them) of taking on a Sports’ Day right before practice examinations. Weirdly, might this just be one of those possibilities, where the most unlikely advantages, perspectives and learnings occur, precisely when we are NOT in charge or do NOT have a choice?

I have been fascinated, saddened, nostalgized (eeeer, eeek…Wiktionary just slaughtered that root word) and inspired by the enormous, human, public response to the Queen’s passing…and so even it seems, has the Royal Family itself (if the Princess Royal’s comments are anything to go by). It is in this unexpected loss that over this last week, so many have suddenly been made privy to just what the Queen’s job entailed: how relentlessly she put ‘self’ to one side and consistently responded selflessly, to her public duty.

And look how appreciative we are, when we hadn’t been enabled to properly appreciate this ‘wallpaper’ to our lives, before! How interesting it has been to recognise how much the ordinary person values someone who stays true to their word, their promise, their vow of others before self…to the extent of ringing out every last drop of life that has been made available to them. It shows how much we do not readily see this in our world…of fake news, fake connections and political manipulations. And how much we unconsciously thirst for evidence of the capacity to act beyond ourselves.

So many people who open a statement of their grief with a comment on how they didn’t think they ‘were really into royalty’ … who on a typical day would scoff at how hard it must be to have a life full of servants, never have to handle the daily menial stuff of life we all loathe, to be wined and dined, jetted and accommodated ‘royally’; to have everyone bow and scrap at one’s mere presence…Now find on contemplation they might not like to have over 400 public engagements a year …wait …doesn’t that mean more than one a day…every day, Saturday, Sunday and Christmas included…Every year?? What…even when you’re 70? 80? you’re joking…90?? And hold up…doesn’t that average mean you would have to do four or five things a day, reasonably often, to ever be able to cluster some days off together where someone ISN’T actually asking something of you??

…and so, like being slapped in the face with a wet fish, some insight dawns…

And we throng …and we listen…and we thank …and we admire …that person who seems to have resigned themselves to our relentless tussle with the paradox, that as much as we hate, we also absolutely desire and value …as we simultaneously realise that it is only ‘sometimes’ we have to behave with a fraction of this ….duty…

and think, maybe she and her family can have their palace…s…

So what was the question again??

Why should we have to do what we don’t (necessarily) want to?