Good evening, everyone! I hope you're having a great time. If we havenāt already met, Iām Adrian, your Warden. Since this is billed as a welcome speech, allow me first to extend you a very big, warm welcome to the Hall, and let me introduce some other members of the team here with us tonight. Alice is our Hall Manager. She looks after our Hall and everything in it, as well as most of the services like catering, cleaning and security. My Senior Members are Benjy, Marta, Matthew, Rajan, and Rory.
We are all so happy that you have joined us at Connaught. Itās been an absolute pleasure to meet so many of you in the last few days and weeks. I hope we've made your time here so far comfortable, friendly, and relaxed. I hope youāve been able to connect with lots of people at our social events and in our lovely Hall bar. And I hope that this year will give you many opportunities to forge some great friendships and happy memories that you will treasure for a lifetime.
Our life journeys so far have been incredibly diverse and different from one another, yet right now weāve all been brought together here, to this Hall, to this community. I want our home here at Connaught to be a hotspot in central London for inclusivity, celebration, friendship, and respect. Thatās where I want the next year of our shared life journey to take us. Everyone here is welcome on that journey. But I hope that you wonāt just come along for the ride; I want you to be an active participant in making it happen. But how? I hear you askā¦
Well, you could get yourself elected to the Hall Association. The Association has its own budget to run the Hall bar and organise many of the social events in Hall. Itās fantastic experience for developing your teamworking, organisational, and communication skills ā and it looks great on your CV! That election is happening next week. Talk to me about it tonight.
The Association will also be running a facilities forum and a cultural forum this year. The facilities forum is a way for you to help us improve the physical environment of the Hall as well as services like catering and cleaning; and the cultural forum will help us to celebrate lots of international events together throughout the year. You can contribute to these without having to be elected. Look out for details next month ā and again, talk to me about them tonight if youāre interested in these.
Of course, there will be countless other ways to make contributions to the community life of our Hall this year. One of the most important is just to show up and bring your own self to the events and activities that will be going on ā and thatās something we can all do!
Now, itās natural that the year ahead will throw up some challenges for us. Maybe it already has.
Change is stressful for everyone. And youāve just changed your address, your social group, your place of study, and your whole support network of family and friends. Thatās not easy ā for anyone. So the fact youāre here right now deserves some real recognition.
But if any of those stresses and challenges get out of control, or if they feel too big or overwhelming, please know that itās absolutely ok to reach out and ask for help. If thereās a problem, let us know about it. If youāre worried, upset, afraid, or unhappy, talk to us. If you have a question, ask us. Thatās what weāre here for. You donāt have to face anything alone.
Iād like to share an idea that might help when youāre facing stresses challenges, and change, especially where there is a risk of conflict or misunderstanding. It might seem a strange idea to as youāre beginning this whole new chapter of learning and knowledge. But bear with me. And this is it:
āSometimes, not knowing is better than knowing.ā
Iām not the first person to have this idea! The Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote:
āIt is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.ā
And from Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki:
āIn the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind, there are few.ā
Ā Let me tell you a story. Picture the scene at Heathrow and Hannah was waiting for her plane. It was delayed. Ā So she thought, āOk, Iāll get a packet of cookies and a book, and just sit quietly until weāre allowed to board. What else can I do?ā
She went to the shop, then to the boarding gate, and put her opened bag of expensive, luxury cookies on the little table between her seat and the one next to it, and she settled into the first chapter of her book. A man came and sat next to her. And before long, she noticed that he took a cookie from the bag. Ā She watched in stunned disbelief as he munched noisily first through one cookie, then another, and another.
Hannah was ā err, not best pleased ā but she didnāt know how to challenge him, so she sat getting more and more angry, and eating cookies as fast as she could so she might at least get to enjoy half of them. And, well, it really took the biscuit when the rude little man ateā¦ wait for itā¦ the last cookie!
Hannah was by now furious with him, and almost as angry at herself for not standing up to him. I mean, they were expensive cookies! Ā What an awful man! āI bet he steals his own childrenās pocket money!ā she thought. āHe mustnāt have any friends!ā āCan you imagine what a horrible work colleague he must be?ā She pretty much created a whole life story about the thief, based solely on her observation that heād eaten her cookies.
But finally, the flight started boarding. She reached into her bag to pull out her boarding pass and what fell out of her bag butā¦ her expensive, luxury cookies. The ones she had been eating whilst reading her book and hating on the man next to her ā belonged to the man the whole time!
So what went wrong here?
Hannah was very attached to her cookies and to her view that the man was stealing from her. Because she felt so certain of this mistaken belief, she wasnāt open to understanding the truth. In her mind, the only possibility was that the man was eating her cookies. And that delusion filled her with anger and resentment, and meant that she felt horrible for the whole time she was waiting for her plane.
Has it ever happened to you, that you had a great long argument with someone, where you were fiercely stating one set of facts, and the other person just as fiercely stating a different, contradictory set of facts? One of you ā or maybe even both of you ā were wrong. But of course, during the conflict, you both thought you were right. Otherwise you wouldnāt bother having the argument.
In fact, any time we find ourselves disagreeing with someone, or experiencing conflict with someone, by definition there must be at least two different ways of looking at that situation. Of course, we like to believe that our own way of seeing things and our own way of living is the right way. So we invest a lot of emotional energy, and even a sense of our own identity, in promoting and defending our way, all the time missing out on opportunities to understand ā to really understand ā the opinions and experiences of others. In this way, we are constantly limiting our own horizons.
Just like Hannah, we can all become very attached to our own beliefs and opinions. Ā And just like Hannah, sometimes we are the one has made up a complete story about another personā¦ that is totally wrong!
How many people here in Hall have you already labelled as ālibrary guyā, or āmean girlā, or āthat guy whoās always getting wastedā? And imagined a whole personality for them based on that one bit of information ā that could be wrong anyway?
But thereās another side to this, as well.
It becomes exhausting when we feel like we always have to know what to do, what to say, how to behave, or how to approach every obstacle. We can feel under so much pressure to somehow get it right all the time. Yet the truth is, many times, we donāt know whatās best or whatās right ā and yet we spend so much energy trying to convince ā¦ ourselves and others that weāve got it all together ā that weāre very grown up and weāve got it all worked out ā and that we know what weāre doing! Wouldnāt it be so much easier if sometimes we could just say, āI donāt knowāā¦ opening the way, perhaps, for someone else to teach us?
So can we all, today, commit maybe: To softening the edges what we think we know ā just a little bit? To saying āI donāt knowā ā just a little more often? Especially when we sense feelings like anger, hurt, fear, or disconnection? To being just a little more open to the possibility that our view might sometimes be wrong? That the stories weāve told ourselves are really just stories? And to allow ourselves just a little more warm and genuine curiosity - about the world around us, and the people we share it with ā in the hope that we might one day see things and people as they really are?
Ā Iām going to finish with one final quote and then a toast. The attribution of this quote is uncertain, though itās most commonly ascribed to Mark Twain:
āIt aināt what you donāt know that gets you into trouble. Itās what you know for sure that just aināt so.ā
Connaught this year is going to be a welcoming, supportive, and friendly home for us all here. And perhaps ā just perhaps ā living in this community, our hearts and minds will be opened to new people, new experiences, and new ways of seeing.
So letās raise our glassesā¦ To community, to curiosity, and to Connaught!
