Seniors, families, friends, and faculty/staff came together ahead of commencement to hear from class representatives, hand out yearbooks, and celebrate the Class of 2023. Below you can check out the senior slideshow produced by Rebecca Goodman ’23 and read a speech delivered by faculty speaker Mr. Liebowitz.
In addition to being the faculty speaker chosen by seniors, Mr. Liebowitz is also receiving the 2023 yearbook dedication. Read his speech below:
Well, here we are. To all of the family members present, an enormous congratulations on this momentous occasion. And, to all the faculty and staff of Beaver, what an honor it has been to work with you. Lastly, and most importantly, to the Class of 2023, a sincere and heartfelt congratulations. What a gift to be here, tonight, together, in this space.
I have typed and deleted these words innumerable times. I hoped to launch, test, and refine but often found myself just launching and crashing, deleting paragraphs with false starts and dead ends. And, I think in many ways, it is because it would be impossible to capture and articulate my gratitude and appreciation for you all. Even though I am an English teacher, words often fail to capture the complexity of human thought, feeling, and experience. Chat GPT might try (and fail) but I will certainly try my best.
I spent a disproportionate amount of time in high school running to nearby Walden Pond during lunch and free periods, where I would promptly plunge into the sometimes frigid glacial pond water and return to class sopping wet. On these trips, Henry David Thoreau, he of Walden Pond, became something of a patron saint of my adolescence. When you visit the hut where he spent a year writing Walden, there is a sign with the famously iconic opening of his book which details the year he spent on the pond’s shore. It reads, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
But there is a line afterward that has been ruminating in my head, and that in many ways, reflects what you have taught me, Class of 2023. This was a portion of the passage that doesn’t make posters hung in dorm rooms or chintzy Newbury Comics t-shirts that would likely make Thoreau roll over in his grave. Frankly, it’s a portion of his writing that I did not pay as much attention to until recently. Thoreau follows his opening lines by saying, “I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.”
I met a lot of you at a time when it often felt like we were living something that did not feel like life, something that often left me, and I imagine many of you, feeling resigned: zoom screens, echoey microphones, and six feet of distance. Yet in this, and throughout the time that I have known you, you have reminded me of the importance of holding life dear, of not practicing resignation. In short, you have reminded me of what it means to love and to take care: to love and take care of one’s self, to love and take care of each other, to love and take care of community, and to love and take care of ideas.
Whether when chatting on the C level about the Celtics, meeting on Friday for an SDP, performing on the Bradley Hall stage, creating beats for an honors project, or reagling others with the horror stories of your Bertucci’s employment, you have celebrated and lived your lives in inspiring and intentional ways.
This spirit – a spirit of love – is something that has defined your class and that you have all given as a gift to each other, to yourselves, and to all members of this community.
And I guess, fundamentally, this is both my sincere thanks to you and hope for you: do not practice resignation, please hold life dear. I know this is probably easier said than done, but it is also something you have taught me how to do over and over again. Continue to show up – on time, maybe without a Starbucks iced coffee – for yourself, your passions, and each other. Take joy in pond plunges on summer days, and enjoy and love the adventure. Hold it dear. Class of 2023, best of luck and, again, congratulations.