Our Oasis, Our Bright Spot

Over Spring Break, I did something I suspect many of you did too. I sat down and watched humans return to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. 

I watched the Artemis II crew—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—lift off from the Kennedy Space Center and travel 252,000 miles from Earth. I watched them become the first humans to see the entire far side of the Moon with their own eyes. And I couldn’t look away.

It was, in the truest sense of the word, awe-inspiring. Psychologist Dacher Keltner describes awe as the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. And that is exactly what I felt. As I watched, I kept thinking about you, Class of 2026, on the precipice of the next wonderful chapter of your lives, and about the lessons I gleaned from this mission that I feel also apply to you as you leave our ever graceful halls of learning. 

The first: Aim for your moon.

Christina Koch became the first woman to fly to the Moon. The first woman. In all of human history. And she didn’t arrive there by accident or luck. She arrived because for years, through training and setbacks, other record-breaking moments and relentless preparation, she refused to aim for anything smaller than the things she wanted. 

And when she got there, she did not shrink. She led. She discovered. She wept with joy and grief alongside her crewmates. She demonstrated fully embodied excellence. And, importantly, she did so without apology. 

Each of you is capable of that kind of excellence. The question is: what is your moon? What is the dream you haven’t quite said out loud yet because it feels too big, too audacious, too unlikely? I am here to tell you: Name it. Chase it. Be unabashedly proud of it. And when you get there—and you will—let the little girl watching you point and say: her. I want to be like her. You are standing on the shoulders of every person who came before you. Now set the example for those who come next.

The second: You will not get there alone.

After splashdown, every single member of the Artemis II crew said the same thing: this success is not ours alone. They credited the thousands of engineers, scientists, ground crew, and Mission Control who made their journey possible. The ones nobody photographed or interviewed. The ones whose names most of us will never know. Each one of those people was crucial to the overall triumph of the mission. Success does not happen in isolation.

A specific collaboration stood out to me in particular on this mission. And that was hearing Christina Koch communicate with Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons as “Capsule Communicator,” or CAP COM. To us at Marlborough, we run the risk of taking something like this for granted: the sound of two women speaking with brilliance in positions of leadership on the international stage. During the Artemis II mission, that sound broke records. One woman was aboard a spacecraft, farther from Earth than any woman had ever been. 

The other was on CAP COM, the voice of Mission Control. To much of the world watching, it was historic. Novel. Remarkable.

To you, it probably felt normal. And that is the gift of Marlborough. That the rest of the world sees such an interaction as novel is the problem you now get to solve out in the world.

When you find your success, and you will, look around. Who isn’t in the room yet? Whose voice isn’t being heard? And then do what Marlborough graduates do best: reach out and bring them in. You have been practicing this skill your whole time here. You have cheered each other on, held each other up, pushed each other, and loved each other fiercely. Every room you walk into for the rest of your life deserves to look a little more like the rooms here at Marlborough. Make it so.

The third: Be brilliant, but soft.

The astronauts on this mission are four of the most accomplished, rigorously trained human beings on (and off!) the planet. It would be all too easy for them to be hardened, closed off, condescending, even. And yet, throughout their nine days in space, they demonstrated vulnerability and openness. Their observations of Earth, the Moon, the cosmos were spoken in the language of poets. They felt awe, just as the rest of us did. 

They led with curiosity, with tenderness, and with each other. Four human beings hurtling through space paused to embrace each other and cry as they named a previously unseen crater after their spaceship Integrity, and a bright spot on the Moon after a beloved wife lost. They floated together and wrapped their arms around each other and wept. Jeremy Hansen described a location on the Moon’s surface, and proposed they name it Carroll, after Commander Wiseman’s late wife. “It’s a bright spot on the Moon,” Hansen said as he choked up, “and we would like to name that Carroll.”

Mission Control responded: “Integrity and Carroll Craters, loud and clear.”

In their greatest moment of achievement, what moved them was love. Their expertise did not make them hard. Their historic accomplishment did not make them closed off or guarded. And that is what I want for you. Let what you know make you more curious, not certain. Let what you earn make you generous, not armored. 

Astronaut Victor Glover, looking back at Earth from 250,000 miles away, said something that has stayed with me since I heard it: “In all of this emptiness, this whole bunch of nothing we call the universe, you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist in together.”

Astronomer Carl Sagan called it a pale blue dot. “A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Our only home. And every person you have ever, and will ever, love lives on it.

I have been your Head of School for four of the most formative years of your lives. I have watched you grow into people of remarkable depth, courage, and grace. And tonight, as I think about sending you out into that vast and beautiful universe, I hope you can carry the lessons of the Artemis II mission with you. 

I wish you audacity. The audacity to name your moon, to say out loud the thing that lights you up and to pursue it without apology. 

I wish you each other. The wisdom to know that the greatest things you will ever do, you will not do alone. I hope you build teams and communities and friendships that look like this community—full of brilliance, full of difference, and full of people who tell you the truth and show up when it counts.

And I wish you softness. A life full of moments that stop you in your tracks—moments of beauty and grief and wonder and love that remind you who you are and what actually matters. 

That is a life well-lived.

Class of 2026—you are our oasis. You are our bright spots. Go out there and be extraordinary.

We love you, all the way to the moon and back.

Congratulations.