Lucy Hodder of Hopkinton is an Affiliate Professor and Director of Health Law at Franklin Pierce University School of Law.

The Olympic Torch was just passed hand to hand over many miles from Olympia, Greece to the Paris cauldron of fire to herald the start of the 2024 Olympic games. We will never know these torchbearers but we will applaud the lighting of the Olympic flame, symbolizing the start of the ultimate athletic challenge in competitive excellence, humility, teamwork, dedication and pursuit of the best.

Passing the torch is hard, humbling and important. As children and parents, we witness the pain of the ‘passing’ all around us. How do we learn to pass the torch in life, to transition the failing business built with our own hands? Leave the clients we have helped for over 30 years? Sell the family home after generations? Agree to be helped into a supported living arrangement? Let someone else cook Thanksgiving dinner? Who trains us for these tough and often humiliating transitions?

We have witnessed in our public life many who successfully passed the torch and many who did not. Some we witnessed passing the torch with regret, some who let the flame extinguish before the handoff, some who abruptly dropped the ball without a thoughtful Plan B, and some who never bothered to try at all. What can we learn from those who have succeeded? Was it courage? A sense of honor? A realization that there is power in legacy and continued mission that comes with a careful and steady hand-off?

Thank you, torchbearers, for carrying the flame, and passing it off with grace, strength and humility. Thank you to those who gratefully received the hand-off. May we all find a way to do the same in our own lives.