Vital Mental Medicine

When Ernest Shackleton gave the order to abandon the Endurance in 1915, the ship was already crushed by Antarctic ice. The men salvaged what they could before setting out across the frozen wasteland. Shackleton, leading by example, threw away his gold watch and cigarette case, symbols of luxury and comfort that had no place in survival.

But he made one exception.

He allowed Leonard Hussey, the expedition’s meteorologist, to keep his banjo. Shackleton called it “vital mental medicine.”

To an outside observer, it might have seemed absurd. A banjo, in place of rations or supplies. But Shackleton understood something deeper: survival isn’t only physical. The spirit must endure too.

Each night, as temperatures fell and hope flickered, Hussey played. Laughter followed. Songs spread. And through that sound, light, rhythm, life, the men held on.

It was optimism, not circumstance, that kept them moving. Shackleton demanded it. He knew that in the bleakest moments, leadership meant projecting belief when reason offered none. “Optimism,” he said, “is true moral courage.”

Every organisation faces its own moments of endurance, times when systems are tested, when plans fail, and when certainty gives way to survival. In those moments, leadership is revealed not by what we hold on to, but by what we let go of.

The Endurance was their ship, their structure, their plan. When it sank, Shackleton didn’t cling to it. He redirected his men toward what mattered most: each other.

In schools, the same principle applies. Culture is not built from policies, strategies, or displays. It’s built from belief, in purpose, in one another, and in the shared conviction that the work we do matters.

When conditions are tough, when resources tighten, change accelerates, or uncertainty spreads, the instinct is to cling to the structures that once kept us afloat. But real leadership means knowing which things must be carried forward, and which can be left behind.

Every school needs its banjo, something that sustains spirit when the ship is gone. It might be a shared tradition, a daily ritual, or simply the act of showing kindness under pressure. It’s the reminder that hope isn’t a byproduct of progress, it’s the fuel that makes progress possible.

Systems evolve. Structures change. But optimism, trust, and human connection, those are the things that endure.

Because when everything else has to be left behind, culture is the banjo you keep.