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You're Not Special
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,
(parents get that) 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’re not
special. You’re not exceptional.
Contrary to
what your U9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing 7th 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 N’s. 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… that’s 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 6,800 ‘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.[applause] Neither
can Donald Trump… which someone should tell him… although the hair is quite a
phenomenon.
“But, Dave,”
you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfect! 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 mid-level 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
– 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 a – 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 roller skate 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 – 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, ah 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, ah 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.
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