Moreau Capstone Fr. Sandberg Moreau April 29, 2022 Semester Capstone Assignment I am a student at the University of Notre Dame. Why? I would be lying if I said that it was not largely because it is what was expected of me. If you’re an American student living in the 21st century, you work as hard as you can to get into a top university; it’s just what you do (I just made a Geico commercial! One of the good ones from before they got boring). The American student is told to “succeed, succeed, succeed,” and this is what success looks like. This mentality is so ingrained that to many of my peers, that opening “why” would seem strange. Asking someone why they want to go to a good school is like asking someone why they want to win. This way of looking at the world is entirely appropriate to a modern American society that is obsessed with moving forwards and upwards but never stopping to ask why. It has been termed the “rat race,” but that is an insult to rats. Rats are simple creatures who always know why they are racing, whether it is away from a cat or towards a block of cheese. Americans don’t even know what they want; they are too busy running. This is precisely what Harry R. Lewis noticed during his time at Harvard: “Too many students, perhaps after a year or two spent using college as a treadmill to nowhere, wake up in a crisis, not knowing why they have worked so hard” (Deresiewicz 3). It is so tempting to view a Notre Dame education not as a means to an end, or even as an end in of itself, but only as the natural next-step in the life of a young student, a stepping stone on the journey towards the ever-receding rainbow that we call success. Fortunately, I think that I can say without undue confidence that I understand why I am here, and I shall try to put my reason for being here into words. I greatly admire Fr. Hesburgh. I admire him in that he was a man of remarkable intelligence, passion, charisma, kindness, and endurance, all of them to a degree to which I know they will never be found in my own self. But what is even more impressive than the gifts he had is how he used them. He was a leader in the civil rights movement; he was beloved by students; he turned Notre Dame into what it is today. He was a man who viewed the things he had been given not as things to be privately enjoyed, but means by which he might serve a greater good. In his case, those “things” were the great virtues and strengths that he possessed as an individual. In my case, those “things” can be thought of in terms of my Notre Dame education. I am not here by chance, or merely because that is what was expected of me. I am here to be formed into a reflective leader who can go out into the world and change it for the better. Now, it is all well and good to want to share one’s gifts with the world; but it becomes a bit more complicated when one actually tries to do it. One must deal with the practical question of how can I share my gifts with others, how do I work for social change, how do I work for a good greater than myself? Fr. Michael Himes gives us three questions to help us decide: “1) Do you get a kick out of it? 2) Are you any good at it? 3) Does anyone want you to do it?” (Himes 1). The first one can be understood as asking whether or not you enjoy something, or perhaps in the deeper sense of whether or not you feel called to it. The second is easy enough to understand: do you or do you not have the gifts (whatever form they may be in) to serve in a given way? And lastly, is there a need for it? This last one, I think, exists as the surest way of making sure that you are serving others rather than just yourself. Using these questions, and combining them with what I have learned about myself during this first year at Notre Dame, I have come to the conclusion that I might be called to a teaching position, or even a preaching position. I love the idea of being a professor, and I have felt a call to priesthood. I certainly think that I have what it takes to be either; and I know that there is a need for both in our world, especially for priests. I feel a little twinge of excitement whenever I think about either one, and I really believe that it is because in both cases, I can clearly see myself working to improve the lives of others. As I continue to discern the way in which I am called to share my gifts with the world—be that through the priesthood, through a job as a professor, or something else entirely—I know that introspection will be an important part of making the right choice. Tasha Eurich writes about introspection in her essay “The Right Way to be Introspective.” I disagree with some of what she suggests, mostly because of how it is articulated. I think that it is in accordance with the spirit of her essay to say that the key to introspection is to focus on concrete things that are within our power to change, rather than conditions which we have no power over. And this really is essential: if I am to lead and serve others, I must understand myself. I must take the time to ask myself what my goals are, and how they might be achieved. I do not want to live on autopilot: I want to move in a single direction, the right direction. And there are two steps to making that happen: I must know what the right direction is, and I must move. I will start by examining the first of those two steps: how is it that a person can find out what the “right direction” is? How can a person learn about oneself, about one’s goals, about one’s strengths and weaknesses, about one’s calling? William Deresiewicz has something to say about this: “Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people's ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.” (Deresiewicz 6). Deresiewicz’s thought can be applied to any number of situations; but for our purposes, I think that the word “thinking” can be substituted with “reflecting.” We live in such a noisy world. I touched on this earlier on in my essay: we are always running around, constantly busy. We are so busy, I think, that we have forgotten how to relax. I have experienced this firsthand: even in my downtime, I feel that I have to be doing something: that might be reading the news, or scrolling through instagram, or doing some writing. None of those things are bad, of course. My point is that the modern man feels he must be constantly consuming or producing something: it is so hard to just sit and reflect. But Deresiewicz says that this is exactly what we need to be doing. In order to lead, you must know yourself; in order to know yourself, you must take time to reflect. That, I think, is what we mean when we talk about “reflective leadership.” Let us move now to the second issue: once we understand what the right direction is, how do we act? The answer is simple: through philosophy! To paraphrase a definition from Meghan Sullivan which I live very much, philosophy is reflection applied to the world. It is when you act in such a way as to make what you know about yourself and your goals coherent with all that you do. To do this takes great courage: I imagine that that is why week twelve of our class was titled “Acting with Courage.” It also requires discipline, and discipline is not always easy. A dead thing can float down the stream; but we do not want to float down the stream, we want to move in the right direction. That means that we will sometimes have to go against the flow; we will have to do things that we don’t want to do, we will have to do things that are socially unacceptable. But do them we must. It could be said that a true leader is a person who does philosophy no matter the cost. And so, we have arrived at a conclusion about what it is to be a reflective leader. I would like to spend my last paragraph discussing what that looks like in terms of the people being led. I believe that, to a great extent, every leader must be a mentor. In week four, we talked about the benefits of a mentoring environment. I have been fortunate enough to have had a few good mentors in my lifetime, and I would like someday to fill that role for somebody else. I think that mentoring can be very helpful for someone who is trying to be introspective; oftentimes, we can get in our own heads and deceive ourselves, so it is good to have someone who can look at you from the outside and see something that might be hidden in plain sight. A leader must also be empathetic; we talked about that during week nine. It is very important to understand oneself in order to be a leader, but it is also important to understand other people who may be coming from a different place. I read the article about “Growing up Gay and Catholic,” and it was so hard to see a man who took his faith so seriously reduced, at times, to self-loathing. Finally, I learned something from week ten that I was not expecting: a leader must sometimes be led. A teacher can be taught by his or her students. A volunteer can be cared for by orphans. As a leader, it is necessary to be humble enough to allow the leader-led relationship to be switched when it is necessary. If I can put all of these into practice, I know that I can become a reflective leader with the ability to enact social change.