Running Your Race

Address given at Athletics Assembly, Port Vila International School, 17 September 2024

Thank you for having me here today.

Let me introduce myself. I’m Dr Phil Cummins. I get called Dr Phil quite often – it’s the only nickname I’ve ever been given that’s stuck. I was born and educated on Gadigal land in Sydney; I now live on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung country in the greatest suburb in the world – Fitzroy, Melbourne. I’m a loyal and critical Australian by birth, and I’m an educator by trade and conviction.

I began teaching History and Latin over thirty years ago. Since then, I’ve worked in and with schools, once as a headmaster, and now travelling the world as a researcher and speaker, and a professor of education and enterprise. I co-host a podcast that’s coming up on a million episode downloads in more than 75 countries across 16 series. I’ve done quite a few other things as well. I’m a father to three grown up children and I have a grandson now, named after my father. I’ve worked for my local church and its community. I’ve served my country as a soldier. I’ve written a lot of books and articles on history and leadership and education, many of them about how to live a life of purpose, a life that’s both well lived and worthwhile.

Achievement is important. It makes us feel really good to do something important, something we probably thought we might not be able to do, something other people think is significant.

I’ve been working with your school since early 2021. I’ve been helping your community, your board and your principals to think about the story of your school and the strategy, or direction that your school might take as it takes a big step forward and up into its future.

Having done most of this work online, it’s wonderful to be able to join you in person now and to celebrate your achievements today.

Achievement is important.

It makes us feel really good to do something important, something we probably thought we might not be able to do, something other people think is significant.

Sometimes you will hear people tell you that what other people think doesn’t matter. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

Usually when people tell you not to worry about what other people think, they’re saying that because they’re trying to soften a disappointment you’re feeling. Or help you to heal a hurt that’s been caused.

They’ll tell you instead to think about your own sense of who you are and how what you have done. How you need to learn not to listen to the unkindness of others. How life is not a competition. How you have to run your own race.

I think running your own race is important. We all have something inside us which we feel is unique to ourselves. It’s an idea of who we might be and become that allows us to make our own mark in the world. To say “I am me and who I am matters. I know myself and what I have done shows this.”

Yet we also need to be able to say “I am one of us and I have standing. What I have done means I have earned my place.”

You will fail on some days, on many days, in many ways. Failure is when you don’t achieve what you want, or might, or should. It’s the gap between expectation and reality.

We were created to live in relationship with each other. We were created to be in competition with each other. We were created to be in communion with others. We were created to do this in families, in villages, in tribes, in communities, in nations. So what other people say and think of us does matter.

Who you are, your being and becoming, matters not just to yourself but to other people. People who like you, people who love you, people who depend on you.

So what you do for other people, what you do in service of them, really matters. Every time you run your own race, therefore, you run our race at the same time. We need you to run your best race, every day.

We need you, every day, to be and become the best version of yourself. We need you to do this so we can be and become the best version of ourselves.

You can’t always do this. You will fail on some days, on many days, in many ways.

Failure is when you don’t achieve what you want, or might, or should. It’s the gap between expectation and reality.

Failure is also how we learn. How we learn what we want, might, or should do. How we learn to play the game of life that is being and becoming the best version of ourselves.

These are important things to learn. Failure also teaches us that we might have to wait a while longer to get what we want. And that we can’t have everything we want. And that we will need to work with and rely on others to do things that we can’t achieve by ourselves.

In this way, your achievement, and your failure, is not just your own. It’s ours as well. We share in your fate. It’s how we go from “me” to “you” to “us”. It’s how we build community in how we learn live, lead and work to create an understanding of “us”.

Failure also teaches us that we might have to wait a while longer to get what we want. And that we can’t have everything we want. And that we will need to work with and rely on others to do things that we can’t achieve by ourselves.

For in this little two letter word of “us” lies the way we wrestle with making a mark as “me” and measuring up to the expectations of “you”. It’s how we build our character individually and as a community: our sense of belonging, the fulfilment of our potential, and the way we do good and right for each other.

It’s also how we find out what is the pathway to excellence that each of us will take, how we will discover what is our calling, for our own sake and for the sake of us all – for people and place and planet.

For we are all bound together on a journey of exploration, discovery and encounter that gives us a chance at leading a life of purpose, with the character, competency and wellness to thrive individually and together. And in doing so, we can all learn, live, lead and work with each other.

To those who have won today, our champions in your races, well done! To those who have not, you have the chance to celebrate the achievement of those who have. In doing so, you become stewards of our community, our champions of our race we run together.

Your race continues. Our race, our human race, continues.

Let’s go!

Phil