(aka- Weekend Wisdom a little early)
It's a long read but a message we would be wise to take to heart as we raise another generation of children who will eventually go out into the world and a message that those children need to hear.
You can find the link to the source here
Dr. Wong, Dr. Keough, Mrs. Novogroski, Ms. Curran, members of the
board of education, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and
gentlemen of the Wellesley High School class of 2012, for the privilege
of speaking to you this afternoon, I am honored and grateful. Thank
you.
So here we are… commencement… life’s great
forward-looking ceremony. (And don’t say, “What about weddings?”
Weddings are one-sided and insufficiently effective. Weddings are
bride-centric pageantry. Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable
demands, the groom just stands there. No stately,
hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No being given away. No
identity-changing pronouncement. And can you imagine a television show
dedicated to watching guys try on tuxedos? Their fathers sitting there
misty-eyed with joy and disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner
muttering with envy. Left to men, weddings would be, after
limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost inadvertent… during
halftime… on the way to the refrigerator. And then there’s the
frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of you will get divorced.
A winning percentage like that’ll get you last place in the American
League East. The Baltimore Orioles do better than weddings.)
But this ceremony… commencement… a commencement works
every time. From this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health,
through financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably
attractive sales reps at trade shows in Cincinnati, through diminishing
tolerance for annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and
otherwise, you will stay forever graduated from high school, you and
your diploma as one, ‘til death do you part.
No, commencement is life’s great ceremonial
beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism.
Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we
find ourselves this afternoon, the venue. Normally, I avoid clichés
like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we
are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says
something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform,
one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or
slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each
of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your diploma…
but for your name, exactly the same.
All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.
You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your
glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain
corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt
Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in
to save you… you’re nothing special.
Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon,
helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do
have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom,
trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you,
counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again.
You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted
and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly,
we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science
fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and
hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even
had your picture in the Townsman!
And now you’ve conquered high school… and, indisputably, here we all
have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the
first to emerge from that magnificent new building…
But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an
English teacher can’t ignore. Newton, Natick, Nee… I am allowed to say
Needham, yes? …that has to be two thousand high school graduates right
there, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood Ns. Across the
country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from
more than 37,000 high schools. That’s 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000
class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks…
2,185,967 pairs of Uggs. But why limit ourselves to high school? After
all, you’re leaving it. So think about this: even if you’re one in a
million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000
people just like you. Imagine standing somewhere over there on
Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred
yous go running by. And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your
planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your
solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the
center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe
has no center; therefore, you cannot be it. Neither can Donald Trump…
which someone should tell him… although that hair is quite a phenomenon.
“But, Dave,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my
own version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of
Zeus!” And I don’t disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of
perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is
special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become
meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition
with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own
insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we
Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine
achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to
compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the
quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece,
something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage
ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it
how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or
learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it’s “So what does this
get me?”
As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a
Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin
than the well-being of Guatemalans. It’s an epidemic — and in its way,
not even dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the
37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no longer good
enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called
Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said “one
of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about
ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague
and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they
might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition.
But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best.
You’re it or you’re not.
If you’ve learned anything in your years here I hope
it’s that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the
exhilaration of learning. You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles
assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is
ice cream… just an fyi) I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize
how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today
is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.
As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the
winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you
love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work you don’t
believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about,
lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles
comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious
glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be
worthy of your advantages. And read… read all the time… read as a
matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing
staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate
the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for
yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your
might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of
the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are
commencements there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to
enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how
delightful the afternoon.
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the
relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your
lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.
You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–quite an active
verb, “pursuit”–which leaves, I should think, little time for lying
around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube. The first President
Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous life. Mr.
Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck out
all the marrow. The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the
swirl and roil. Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time
encourages young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem. The point
is the same: get busy, have at it. Don’t wait for inspiration or
passion to find you. Get up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and
grab hold with both hands. (Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO
tattoo, let me point out the illogic of that trendy little
expression–because you can and should live not merely once, but every
day of your life. Rather than You Only Live Once, it should be You Live
Only Once… but because YLOO doesn’t have the same ring, we shrug and
decide it doesn’t matter.)
None of this day-seizing, though, this YLOOing,
should be interpreted as license for self-indulgence. Like accolades
ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying
byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important
things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the
challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see
the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris,
not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being
worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for
the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do
others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And
then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human
experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for
yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the
recognition that you’re not special.
Because everyone is.
Congratulations. Good luck. Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives.
- David McCullough
