Commencement Speech for 2012 Graduating Class
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! [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!]
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.
ing 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.
By David McCullough, English
teacher at Wellesley High School.
