Last week I resigned from Spartanburg Day School (more on that here). This week, I start my Robotics Camp there with 18 5th-9th graders. I’ve been looking forward to this camp for a long while as it’s a week of pure geekery and learning (for me too) as we play with and explore robots. What’s not to love?

However, it’s a little bittersweet to have camp this week. I’ve had many emails from people asking me why I’d leave a school that I love and students that drove me to wake up at 4:30 in the morning year after year.

My best guess at being able to describe all those reasons lie somewhere between the Think Different video in that link above and Le Guin’s famous piece which has haunted my own path since I first encountered it in the Presidential Seminar my senior year at Wofford College…

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

There’s a beauty to not knowing, to taking leaps off of bounded planks and to ponder what molecules and compounds might be there to either catch us or soften The Fall. There’s something mystical about leaps of faith and the challenge of being authentic to one’s self and one’s principle. It’s not for everyone (I can’t imagine a world where we’re all chasing the horizon as much as I’d like to try).

However, I seem to know where I’m going. Lord, hear my prayer.