In Homer’s Odyssey, one detail is easy to miss amid the adventure: Odysseus never truly travels alone. Whether surrounded by sailors, strangers, gods disguised as shepherds, or saved by sea goddesses, Athena and the Phaeacians, his long return home depends on others. The hero’s journey, it seems, is never solitary.
For many school leaders, the story feels familiar. The voyage of leadership is marked by courage and calling, but also by headwinds—conflict, fatigue, and the quiet weight of responsibility. There are days when the map feels incomplete, when even the compass seems uncertain. You keep rowing because you must, because others are depending on you. But sometimes you look around and realize how long it’s been since you’ve let someone row beside you.
It’s easy to forget that leadership, at its best, was never meant to be an act of endurance; it was meant to be an act of communion. The ancient world understood this well. Friendship, in that tradition, was not sentimental; it was moral and formative. It was how souls were strengthened, how wisdom took root, and how courage endured.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who are called by Christ to bear one another’s burdens.” Leadership, rightly understood, is precisely that calling—an act of shared strength in the face of shared need.
In his work, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, Andy Crouch reminds us, “To be a person is to be known, named, and recognized. We become fully human only in community.” Leadership that forgets this becomes mechanical, but leadership that remembers it becomes humane. It is through genuine friendship and recognition that endurance turns into communion.
If you’ve led long enough, you know the weight of endurance—the quiet ache of being responsible for others, the solitude that can settle in over time. But communion, not endurance, is what restores the heart of a leader.
The signs of isolation aren’t always dramatic. More often, they creep in quietly—a growing distance, a dull fatigue, a loss of delight in the work that once stirred your heart. And sometimes, the only thing that restores that joy is the presence of another who understands—someone who has weathered the same storms and still believes in the same horizon.
That’s why spaces of genuine connection matter. They remind us that the health of our schools is deeply tied to the health of our relationships. The community we cultivate among our peers will ripple outward into the culture of our hallways and classrooms. The conversations that begin in rest often become the relationships that sustain us when the next storm comes.
In a culture that celebrates self-sufficiency, it takes courage to confess we can’t do this alone. But the truth is, none of us were ever meant to. Leadership, like every worthy journey, depends on companions—people who remind us who we are, where we’re going, and why the voyage is worth it.
So wherever this season finds you—tired or thriving, steady or searching—pause. Look around. And invite someone to row beside you.
Next week, many of us will gather in Dallas for the SCL Fall Retreat—a few days carved out for rest, reflection, and renewal. If you’re still on the fence about coming, consider this your invitation. Come as you are. You may find the very friendship or encouragement you need to carry you into the year ahead.
And if this isn’t your year to attend, take time wherever you are to reach out to another leader. Share a meal, pray together, or simply remind each other that this good work is never meant to be carried alone.
Because in the end, no hero and no school leader makes it home alone. Every true voyage is shared: the oars moving in rhythm, the horizon still distant, the sea sometimes rough, but the sound of others rowing beside you steady and sure.
