This
is the commencement speech at a high school in Massachusetts by David McCullough, Jr. - son of the famous author – who is an English teacher at the school:
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 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.
