List Detail - Chapel Talk Archive

John T. Conner P'11, '14, '16, '19, Dean of Faculty

Today, I am going to talk about two topics: HUMILITY and GOATS.  That’s right, GOATS …. as in:

She’s the GOAT. He’s the GOAT. G – O – A – T. The Greatest of all Time. As someone involved in the tennis world, I can say the past years have been filled with feverish debate about who are the sport’s GOATS. On the women’s side, Serena Williams seems to have settled that question, On the men’s side: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer. A case could be made for each.

There are people in this chapel, some of whom are sitting in the fan section, (though come to think of it, the whole chapel looks like a fan section to me), who could make a case that the past six years represent the greatest era of Groton boys tennis of all time. An interscholastic dual match record of 76 wins and 2 losses. Two league championships. Three years being ranked the #1 “A” division team heading into the New Englands. Finalists each year. Are they the GOATS? Hold that question. I’ll come back to it at the end.  And why limit the discussion just to the team I coach? The girls tennis team has also worked its own magic, with recent league championships and a case for their own goat-like status. And I daresay there may be other teams in other sports worthy of consideration.

The Greatest of all time.  Who wouldn’t want to aspire to that? Well, I, for one, am not so sure.

Consider the words: Greatest of ALL time. So dramatic. Are we talking about the hundreds of thousands of years of human experience on Earth? Do we include other planets? And “of all time” should include the future as well. How is that possible? And who’s the judge? In sports, how do we factor in new equipment, new opponents, new rules that make it problematic to compare accomplishments between eras?

And how about outside of athletics?

The best movie of all time. The best book of all time. The best dormitory feed of all time. The greatest chapel talk of all time. Etcetera. Rolling Stone Magazine periodically publishes its “200 Greatest Singers of All Time” issue. And they have a panel, of course, of experts who, undoubtedly, use data and research. Their most recent article sparked protests in Australia as not a single Australian made the top 200 list. That’s a whole continent. Where’s Olivia Newton John? Hundreds of countries did not have a single representative. What’s going on?  Something I don’t like.  I am comfortable with a statement like this … My favorite singers? Oh, I love Shakira, Maluma, Montserrat Caballé, Troy Savant. I am giving my opinion. But count me out of any discussion entitled “200 GREATEST SINGERS OF ALL TIME,” which confuses opinion with fact.
The human experience is competitive enough as it is. And adding “the greatest of all time,” I think, puts an unhealthy, even false flavor, on any such claim. 

I once went to a musical here in the Campbell Performing Arts Center: Anything Goes. It was so inspiring. As I walked out of the theater, I was thinking that I had never seen anything quite like it…. And then, I overheard someone in front of me say something I’ll never forget: “Well, I thought it was good, but it certainly wasn’t BROADWAY.”  Wow. What on earth did that man mean?  I hope he wasn’t talking about the Broadway performance of Anything Goes. While it did win six Tony Awards, Hamilton won 11. Cabaret, 12.  Once you start down a road where you compare things in your mind to THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME, beware.

In nomenclature, there are cousins of THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME. Have you heard commercials that use these lines …. There’s never been a time like now to visit the beaches of Florida or Now more than ever, friends matter.  When I hear things like this, I scratch my head. For me, Florida’s beaches have always been amazing to visit, and friends have mattered my whole life. Are they more important now?  Really? So, when someone says to me, “There’s never been a time like now,” I usually look for a way to sneak out the back door.

Something related to this GOAT theme happened my very first year at Groton in 1981. Earlier that year, the headmaster, Bill Polk, announced that Spanish would now be an option for all new students. Up until then, all entering students took French and Latin. I arrived at the beginning of a new wave. I remember asking a member of my department why it had taken 97 years for Spanish to become part of the official mix. His answer? Well, John, everyone knows that the world’s greatest literature was written in French. I guess I’d call that  … GLOATING – talking about the Greatest Literature of All TIME. Now I had just come from graduate school, and I had recently read Don Quijote by Cervantes, Cien años de soledad by García Márquez, Ficciones by Borges, poetry of Gabriela Mistral …. so, I was confused. I loved those authors, and I had come to believe that great literature could be written in any language, including Swedish, the language of my maternal grandparents.

One more GOAT moment happened to me that first year at Groton. Fall Long Weekend was approaching. I asked a group of boys in the dormitory where they were going. Their answer? The City. I was so excited. I was going to The City, too. I asked them if they were going to walk along Lake Michigan, head to the top of the Sears Tower, or see a Bears Game. They looked at me strangely. No, Señor, we’re going to The City. I looked back at them and said, “Yeah. Me, too. Chicago, right?”  They chuckled. And said, “No, THE CITY. New York” (Translation, in their minds: The Greatest City of All Time). Well, where I’m from, The City means only one thing: The Windy City.
What mostly concerns me, I guess, about GOAT talk is the risk of hyper-competitiveness … or pretending that opinion should be treated as fact … and, as a result, often not acknowledging with admiration and love what others, or what you yourself, have accomplished. The goat universe is tough: not only do you have to win, or perform, or give it your all, but you must be the best, which, by definition, means better than everyone else. And, not just for now, but rather for all eternity.  

Now I am a competitive person. I think those of you who know me well have heard me talk on the topic of chess. My school, Evanston Township High School, was the national high school chess champion. Before this talk, I never thought once about how my team compared with teams of other eras. I didn’t care. But, for this talk, I did some research. There was only one school which, in fact, won more national championships in the last fifty years than we did. They won five. We won three -- in a row. When I was a senior, I was our top player. I was both naïve and fearless. I never felt intimidated. Bring it on, teams from New York and California, I thought, in a friendly Midwestern sort of way. 

But the best chess team ever? No way. Chess players keep getting better. They learn from the past. Technology is also a tool that has helped this generation of champions. 

Speaking of not being intimidated, 4th Former Chase Bellamy played me in a chess game in the dining hall last July during Grace. Now, I was at my peak as a chess player when I was 16 or 17 years old. You can do the calculations in your mind of how many years you think had passed when I played him. Our game was exciting. I thought I had a much better position at the start. But, alas, the tables turned. He got the upper hand. I hoped I would win on time. But, no. I lost. I looked Chase in the eye. “Nice game” I said as I shook his hand. And, unfortunately, there were witnesses. Lots of them. 

Let me transition now to my favorite trait in a human: Humility.  And then I will attempt to tie these two themes together. Humility is part of our prayer here in chapel every morning. Most of the people whom I’ve admired most in my life are humble. That includes the late Groton classics teacher Rogers Scudder, who would always claim he knew very little and was a total fraud in the classroom. He, in fact, was brilliant. And part of his genius was his humility. Life is complicated. Difficult. We search for answers and meaning. Great friends, great teachers, great coaches, great leaders bring people to the table to help figure things out, to share together what we each know. If someone acts as though they knew everything already, I think, well, I’m not needed here. ¡Hasta luego!

Do you know one of the reasons why I think studying a world language is so important in your education? Well, you learn to listen to new voices in the world, to share what you think using different sounds. You develop empathy for those who move to a new part of the world without the ability to express their thoughts fluently. Sharing your ideas and emotions and soul with someone is easiest when you speak a common tongue. I believe … it is a true act of humility to learn to speak in someone else’s language. And the more you study and the more you learn, the more you can connect with people across boundaries. When you arrive at a level where you can read literature, watch films, have deep discussions with people, your life will be so much richer.  My life changed completely when I built on my AP Spanish from high school with college courses in literature and later a chance to live in Spain.

Two of my favorite short stories are written in Spanish, both by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges. Both touch on the theme of humility. One is called “La muerte y la brújula” (Death and the compass). The main character, Erik Lonnrot, is a detective. He considers himself to be brilliant. Well, a criminal, knowing Lonnrot’s lack of humility, plants ingenious clues about where future crimes will take place. One day Lonnrot announces to the chief of police that he, in fact, knows the time and place where the next murder will occur. He decides to show up a day early to witness it. Yet … it was all a trap. The villain had lured Lonnrot to an isolated location. He becomes a witness of his own death, with the criminal settling an old score. The theme? The vanity of the intellect. Lonnrot did not know everything. 

Another story by Borges, La biblioteca de Babel, (The Library of Babel), presents a theory of the universe composed of an infinite library housing books that contain all possible combinations of letters to form every conceivable word. That’s great news, because in some part of the galaxy lies the answer to any question you might have. But Borges cautions that a word for one person might express terror while for another the same word suggests tenderness and for another it is the word for the almighty. Words mean different things to different people. At the end of the story, Borges speaks directly to the reader: Tú, que me lees. ¿Estás seguro de entender mi lenguaje? (You who are reading this …. Are you so sure that you understand my words?)  Wow --- a clarion call for humility.  And, believe me, Borges would never suggest that any one word in the library was the greatest of all time. 

It seems, then, that my favorite trait in a human, humility, might be at odds with the concept THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME. What is the solution?  I have a proposal. It’s simple. GOAT will no longer mean the Greatest of All Time. It will mean the Greatest of A Time.  What time? It doesn’t matter. It could be right now. I’ve probably given twenty-five chapel talks since coming to Groton. The GOAT? This one. Why? You are here. It’s the greatest of a time – now.

I always encourage my athletes and students to do their best just in the moment. Make good contact with the ball. That’s it. Not WIN the NEXT SET or even the NEXT POINT. That is far in the future. Or in the classroom, start by conjugating a verb well. Then, afterwards, build a beautiful sentence. 

You students and athletes in this room have made it hard for me to contemplate retirement. Why? Are you all the GOATS?  Absolutely … the greatest I have seen of a TIME.

My Spanish 3 students this year are definite goats. They are engaged. Fun. Determined. And on days of chapter tests, they arrive and I say: “Bienvenidos a la fiesta. Welcome to the party.” They know that what awaits them is not really a test, but rather, a celebration of knowledge -- And, wow, do they celebrate.

Let me conclude now by returning to that tennis question. I often refer to graduates from my tennis teams as dinosaurs. Last year’s Sixth Formers Larry Li, Jack Lionette, Will Vrattos are the latest dinosaurs. I loved when they walked the Groton School Earth. They, along with Matt Kandel, Jared Gura, Ben Jones, Powers Trigg, Will Molson, Noah Bay, and Griffin Gura, were also part of a group that would have tried out for the team in the spring of 2020.  That group had to handle the disappointment of the COVID-cancelled season. On paper, many thought this squad would be unstoppable. And they were. Those ten athletes showed strength and resolve, demonstrating during that spring, away from the Circle, how to carry themselves as champions. No tears. No feeling sorry for themselves. And those who played the following season knew that there was unfinished business. They felt the love and support of those who had graduated. The team with the 0-0 season did all they could to contribute to the legacy of Groton boys tennis – and will forever be GOATS in my mind.  

But what matters to me now are those of you who are here. In this chapel. You are the GOATS.  Greatest of A TIME. I have no interest in comparing you to anyone else. For my tennis players, I have no idea what the won/loss record will be this spring. I just want you to do your best. Bring honor to yourself. Be a model sport. Bring glory to your school. In those goals, lies your greatness.

So, in my last number of years on the Groton School Circle, I will plan to walk humbly. I will gladly join forces with any one of you on “Greatest of a Time” collaborations…  a class … advisee group … dormitory … tennis team …… world language department …. but not in comparison to anyone else, including people from other eras. 

For me, being able to fulfill new dreams, while striving to stay humble and grounded, is one of the many reasons why I have loved and continue to love this school.  

And one last thing. If anyone sees Chase Bellamy around, could you let him know …. I’d like a rematch.
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