Commencement

It marks the beginning and the end at the same time. It’s your coming out party into the adult world. It’s the end of your life in the cocoon of childhood, your teenage years, and those college years where you had the last chance to be carefree, and yes, stupid. You could put that college debt out of your mind until you graduated and got a job. I understand that these years aren’t carefree for everyone who has to work their way through school, and whose families have to struggle to get them through to the big day. Graduation Day. Proud families show up on campus for the ceremony. Caps and gowns. Processions. Pomp and Circumstance, and, of course, the Commencement speaker. The person who is suppose to inspire you as you take that big step out of the cocoon.

There are all kinds of graduation speakers including presidents, politicians, actors, musicians, comedians, poets, writers, and journalists to name a few. If you get someone famous, chances are you will remember that the president or Amy Poehler spoke at your graduation, but you will probably not remember a word they said. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke at my graduation. I couldn’t remember for sure who had spoken, and I had to Google it to be sure. So, obviously, I don’t remember a word he said. Bon Jovi spoke at one of my son’s graduation. He gave a positive speech. But, I’m sure the only thing my son remembers is getting to shake Bon Jovi’s hand as he handed my son his diploma.

All Commencement speakers try to inspire the graduates about going forward in life, taking risks, not being afraid to fail, being yourself. They may even make you laugh if they want to keep your attention. Columnist Art Buchwald summed up the dilemma of all Commencement speakers when he told the graduating class of Southern Cal in 1993, “…I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes-which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.”

I would say you should expect the unexpected. How you navigate your ride on the river of life is the challenge. Those speakers will give all kinds of advice, all well intentioned. You will have to find your place in the world, both in your personal and professional life. You will have successes and failures. What you learn from each will define your life. Decades after you sat through that Commencement address, which you won’t remember, you should judge your life on the impact you had on the lives of others. Did you inform, or teach, or entertain, or heal, or make people’s lives better for having known you?

Every generation has challenges. Today’s graduates are stepping into a country that’s terribly divided. Reason and accommodation are seen as weaknesses. Ideology is more important than accomplishment. But you don’t have to surrender your beliefs to work for the greater good. Documentary film maker Ken Burns talked about compromise when speaking to graduates at Georgetown University in 2006. He quoted the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote on compromise, “We like to think of ourselves as uncompromising people, but our genius is for compromise and when that broke down, we started killing each other.” Burns went on to say, “The lesson for us, today, is tolerance and the mitigating wisdom that sees beyond the dialectical preoccupation that has set each individual, each group, each region of the country, against the whole.”

So listen to your Commencement speaker, even if you weren’t lucky enough to get the president or Bon Jovi. They put a lot of time and effort into a speech to send you off on the rest of your life. It’s now up to you to commence your life. You can always Google who your speaker was just in case you need to remember who they were, and what they said.