Governors Academy - Milestone Yearbook (Byfield, MA)

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Milestone 193 1 -X milestone is always an exciting thing. and it looks two ways. Your particular milestone is especially interesting hecause the figures on one side of it are much larger than on the other. The mnnher of miles behind you, at this hend in the road. are not many. hut the stone is a comfortahle place to sit. in warm spring sunshine. and look hack for a moment. In those amusing miles hehiml you will have had a chance to learn one very important reality. the first really unselfish love that comes into a man's life: the love of an institution. Particularlv if it is an old foundation with a long history. a man loves the school where he studied. He loves it not just for his own memory of times good or difficult: he loves it with a larger piety. He loves it for what it may he ahle to give other boys in the future. This is his first experience of that generous devotion that men have to institutions. that love and loyalty to schools. colleges. hospitals. factories. newspaper offices. all the places where the work of men is heing honorahly done. It is often characteristic of men that they love institutions hetter than they love themselves. This is the central instinct of civilized men. If you have had an opportunity to love intimately an institution that has life. tradition. and a feeling of permanence. you have had a rich privilege. The look in the other direction. toward the future. is less easy perhaps. It needs more stomach. The future holds more fun and more surprise a11d more hard work than you ever imagined possihle. hut it also holds that thing that frightens human heings more than anything else euncertainty. I've heen greatly interested lately in reading ahout the extraordinary effort heing made hy one nation. which has suffered many calamities. to plan and foreordain its future. I mean what the Russian Repuhlic calls its Five-Year Plan: hy which. in five years of organized effort. they propose to transform the economic life of a whole nation. YYhether their plan can succeed. or whether the theories on which it is hased are agreeahle to our notions, is irrelevant. It is a gigantic human effort. and it has suggested to me that in this spring of 1931 many of us might make the experiment of laying out a Five-Year Plan for ourselves as individuals. How can we map out our hopes and energies so that in the next five years we can he more useful and serviceahle eto ourselves and to others? Our Plan will fail. of course. in many details: hut it would he something even to have thought ahout it. For it is certainly true that the things we most genu- inely want and plan for can he made actual. I hope this doesn't sound like preaching. for indeed I don't feel that way. But since you were friendly enough to ask for suggestions. my notion is that you and I might lquite secretly! draw up a Five-Year Plan for ourselves. Each of us will keep it dark. hut at the end of five years we can check up on it and see what has happened. You can drop me a line in 1936 and tell me what those five milestones looked like. Good luck! Your friend Cfesitallf Rosfyrz Heiylzfx, X. Y. .llurclz IU, 19.31 26