Brentwood Preparatory School Incipe 2017-18

Mr Whiskerd’s Words of Wisdom Take a look at your fingertips. Can you see the tiny lines & ridges that make your fingerprints different from everyone else’s? Not one other person in the world, and there are roughly 7.5 billion people on the planet, has the same fingerprint as you. Not even identical twins. Your fingerprints are unique. And of course so are you. We leave fingerprints everytime we touch something, whether we think our hands are clean or not. They can leave an almost invisible trail of what we’ve touched since we got up this morning. I want to talk about the fingerprints we leave. Not on door handles or mirrors but on the lives of other people. You see there’s another way of thinking about fingerprints. They’re the little marks that you leave on another person’s life every time you interact with them. “You might think that you don’t matter in this world, but because of you someone has a favourite mug to drink their tea out of that you bought them. Someone hears a song on the radio and it reminds them of you. Someone has read a book that you recommended to them and got lost in its pages. Someone’s remembered a joke you told them and smiled to themselves on the bus. Never think you don’t have an impact. Your fingerprints can’t be wiped away from the little marks of kindness that you’ve left behind.” It’s all too easy for us to think we don’t matter in this world. Maybe because we’re young, or don’t feel we have the power to influence big decisions, or because we compare ourselves to others unfavourably, or because we’re not awarded a prize at the end of year Speech Day. However, you do matter in this world. Why? Because we all have an impact on those around us. Every time we say something to someone, helpful or unhelpful, it has an impact. Every time we make a decision to help someone or not help someone, it has an impact. We all have an impact on those around us, whether we like it or not. Remember what Dr Seuss said: “A person is a person, no matter how small…”. The people that impress me most here at school are the ones who quietly live out the values of the school, something that can never be measured by prizes. They are the ones who leave lasting positive fingerprints on the lives of others because of the way they treat them. It’s about doing good and making a difference. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa all left irrevocable fingerprints on humanity. But you don’t have to spend your days thinking that this is the only way in order to make a difference in the world. Of those seven point five billion people on the planet I mentioned earlier, 700 or so of us are sat here today. What if more of us gave back, even in small ways? The effect of those thousands of fingerprints would be huge. The idea of leaving a legacy is the desire to be remembered for what you have contributed to the world. In some cases, that contribution can be so special that the universe is unalterably changed. However, most of us will leave a more modest legacy, that doesn’t necessarily change the world but does leave lasting fingerprints that will be remembered by those whose lives you touched. We all hope our life matters in some way. It’s about doing good and making a difference. So in summary, remember that You are unique. You do matter. You leave fingerprints on other people’s lives every time you interact with them. It’s about doing good and making a difference.