Graduation Speech

Welcome to your final day as a college student, and congratulations on your achievements. I am honored to be a part of it, and I greatly appreciate your patience as you stand on the verge of numerous celebrations involving libations, gifts, and accolades from friends and family.

There are only a few specific moments in life that in themselves designate such a radical life change as college graduation; I would consider your conception, age 21, and official retirement to be among those few unique moments in life. When I was asked to speak on this momentous occasion, my first instinct was to assemble a concoction of pithy quotes from people who are more notable than me, and to then send you forth into the world fortified with this information. Then it occurred to me that you probably already ready all the pith you can handle and the last thing you want is more mind-boggling, complex, and intelligent ideas in your already packed minds. So rather than annoy your overstimulated brains, I decided to share with you the only “Big-Thinking” that I could imagine might entertain, delight, and boggle you in new and unexpected ways:

I have chosen take this incredible moment to look ahead at the world as you will alter it.

Now that you have completed higher education, attended all those courses, read all those books, selected a major, researched a career, and pondered all those deep thoughts, it would be natural to assume that you know what you want to be when you grow up.  I remember thinking during my graduation that I had already grown up, and that I was a part of the wonderful world of grownups and all the complex, serious activities that are part of that mysterious world.  In the decade that followed my graduation, however, it became clear that I had barely begun my grownup phase. In all seriousness, graduation begins that inquiry: what does it really mean to be a grown up, and is it all its cracked up to be?

Let us consider, then, what we have always known of the grownup world: grownups do important things that matter to the world and to the people around them. They make careful decisions about life, the planet, and their offspring. They protect, create, instill, and passion. They are the backbone of this our sometimes fragile economy and society, the cornerstones on which future generations build. They vote, they drink, and their lives unfold in all the drama of a Greek play. If these are qualities we consider essential to being grown up, then surely being a grown up means that we must be somehow extraordinary, and that whatever we end up doing after graduation should in some way point towards us entering the ranks of the grownups. Coming from the other side, let me give you a short glimpse into your exciting future.

None of you will do exactly what you think you are going to do: you will carry your fresh knowledge into the world and you will try to deposit it into a respectable career that matches your major, but be assured, sticking to any plan will be mostly impossible (if not mediocre). Most of you, however,  will be blessedly, frighteningly surprised by the very first encounter you have with grownup world.

You will launch into unexpected careers that may have little or nothing to do with what you just graduated from studying; you may become something you never imagined, and looking back (years later), you will marvel at the many curves, ups, and downs of the road stretching into the past.

You will all end up doing things that at this moment may horrify you; allow that even this is part of that inevitable change that comes from stepping into the world of grownups. You will end up doing things that your mother wouldn’t want to see you doing. A few of you (hopefully none of you) will throw it all away, living ordinary, unremarkable, monotonous, and repetitive lives with no thoughts of the Extraordinary or of the great big Future, and for these few, life will dwindle and wither until all that remains is bare existence, taking up space and breathing, consuming resources, milling around on this crowded planet with no particular destination, eating, cleaning, messing up, working, marrying, birthing, buying things, using them up, throwing them away, going places and then coming back, all input with no output, all equations totalling zero. Some of you will take up an extraordinary amount of space, such that your old classmates might never recognize you. I admonish you now, always check that this sad future is not becoming yours. Don’t just take up space, whatever you do. One day,years from now, I can only hope that if this is what you become, you’ll be sitting in traffic, or at the mall, or in front of your TV, or eating a sandwich, and somehow you’ll remember these words, you’ll remember that everyone in your graduating class actually planned on becoming Extraordinary in some way, and you’ll somehow change and resolve to begin making a difference in the world, even if it is only small. That butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world still had to begin metamorphosis from a crusty old crysalis.

A few of you, by contrast, will live charmed, rather super lives; you know who you are: you are those lucky few who always seem to be in the right place at the right time, for whom everything seems to come together, the blessed proteges of Karma herself. You will achieve storybook greatness: you will improve life on a broad scale for masses of people; you will set an example to follow for the history books; you will serve your country; you will save rainforests, endangered species, and lives; you will fix widespread problems like hunger and disease; you will be loved, revered, even famous.

Most of you, however, will achieve greatness on a much less obvious scale: you will experience and share great joy; you will discover in yourself unexpected talents and reserves; you will create and inspire in ways that are expressly human; you will believe in yourself, in others, or even in a higher power to a degree you never thought possible. Some of you will be lucky enough to move far across the globe, experiencing more of life and the grownup world than the rest of us, and I hope you’ll send us all postcards.

No matter who you are right now, eventually, you will experience the mundane, the bizarre and surreal, and the knife edge of fear. Your personality, appearance, and daily routine will change dramatically from year to year. Sometimes you will forget who you were, or worse, who you are, or better, you will simply lose yourself completely in what you are doing and that in itself will transform you.  You will try strange foods and substances. You will attempt things that are mentally or physically incredibly difficult, and perhaps some of the time, you will accomplish, overcome, and share your experiences with the world. You will take on too much responsiblity, or not enough. You will become obsessed, or totally unfocused. You will overcome, and you will falter. You will battle illness, sorrow, your spouse, your children. You will love passionately, profoundly, spiritually. You will sustain crippling self-doubt, self-pity, self-loathing. You will have regrets, you will lose hope. There may be days when you can’t look yourself in the mirror. Hopefully, the trials of life will only mold and enrich your character; after all, isn’t it all just AFGE (Another Fucking Growth Experience)?

When it really comes down to it, isn’t that really what this moment here and now is? Only this time, this AFGE is especially wonderful and strange and entirely too exciting to even capture in a graduation speech. Here we all are, in these caps and gowns, experiencing this moment together, and years from now, I can only hope that you remember this moment and all the optimism and idealism and naivetee that made you think that every single one of us is going to become Extraordinary. And maybe, if you all remember it well enough, maybe you will.

No get out of here and go do something extraordinary!