First of all, thank you so much for asking me to be here
today. I consider the opportunity to speak to a class of graduating seniors who
have managed to survive the entire length of high school, along with the parents
and teachers and staff who have survived along with them, right up there with speaking to
Oprah or God.
Thinking back on my own graduation, I honestly can’t
remember if there was a speaker or not. I can’t remember what it felt like to
walk across a stage or receive my diploma. I do remember the same feeling of
relief that comes after finishing a very, very, very long book. I remember that
I finally knew more than my mother and that I had at last achieved immortality.
I remember believing with conviction that some combination of a new hair color
(purple, red or Mountain Dew) and getting as far away from home as possible would
turn me into the person I’d always wanted to become.
I was halfway right. Dying your hair the color of Mountain
Dew does change everything.
Of course, what I wanted to change was the world but I did
not yet know how to really change myself. Even then, however, I knew what I
loved—words and stories—and like the oil that kept the temple fire burning much
longer than it should have, that little fire stayed alive inside of me too, despite
all the things I did that could have put it out. And we’re not talking a little
drip here, but full-on fire extinguishers. I know you guys are all perfect angels,
but I was rebellious and experimental. What would I have wanted someone to tell
me at my own high school graduation? What could I have heard?
I could have heard that it was going to get better and that
the people who had told me that the high school years were the best of my life
were lying. You are about to graduate. And I mean it when I say congratulations.
This is no small accomplishment. It appears that Brook Road Academy is an excellent school with the
finest teachers around, but please, don’t believe anyone who tells you that at
17 and 18 you have already reached the pinnacle of your life and that it’s all a
slow miserable decline from here. You have not lived out your glory years which
will end this week with your coursework. While I hope that this has been a
challenging fulfilling time in your life, your best years, I believe, are yet
to come.
When I was in elementary school I played a game with my
girlfriends called “Fresh Out of College.” In our elaborate game of make-believe, we had
perfect jobs, perfect boyfriends and perfect hair because, guess what? Once we
had that degree we would live happily ever after, amen.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way, like so many other people
I know that receiving a piece of paper, no matter which one it is you have set
your sights on-- a high school diploma or a college or graduate or masters
degree or a driver’s license and registration or the deed to a home or a
marriage license or a birth certificate—none of these are a guarantee for
happiness. Buddha, Jesus, God, Krishna and the
Tooth Fairy won’t come down and sign a lifetime-of-bliss warrantee on the
dotted line. Your high school diplomas are wonderful landmarks on the maps of
your life, but they are not the final destination. In fact, I have found there
is no destination on any map or any other piece of paper that can tell me
whether or not I have really, finally, actually arrived, although recently having
my face made into a shrinky dink and hung in an art show that took place in a
local bathroom did come close.
When I was 23, I came home to Richmond
after travelling through New York, Italy, Colorado,
Arkansas and Alaska. I was nearly broke and felt broken.
So far I had successfully used my expensive liberal arts degree to wait tables,
scrub toilets and vacuum hairballs out of hallways. I was a failure.
It was a beautiful spring day but I sobbed into my pillow
with my mom and my cat Felecia at my side. “Mom,” I wailed. “I have no money! I
can’t get a job! I am the biggest loser in the whole entire history of the
world!”
“Honey,” my mom said back. “Look at Felecia.” My cat purred
next to me like an Egyptian Queen, licking luxuriantly between each of her
outstretched toes. “Does she have a job? How much money is in her bank account?
“None,” I had to admit. Felecia yawned up at us and then
settled in for a cat-nap. I had to admit, being so divine day after day must
have been absolutely exhausting.
“That’s right,” said my mother. “She makes no money and
spends her day doing next to nothing. And she’s perfect just the way she is.
You are a human being, honey, not a human doing.” And then my mother went on to
tell me, as she had before, that my worth was not determined by how much money
I made or the line items on my resume. And for some reason on this day I was
finally able to hear her.
Learning to believe that I’m OK just as I am, that I’m not
the sum of a list of numbers or grades---that I can trust and love myself no
matter what kind of job or money or friends or clothes or car or husband I have---has
been, I think, some of the biggest ongoing work of my lifetime. It’s inner
work, work that is hard to see or measure or evaluate or grade. But it’s this
inner work that has allowed the outer work to happen.
What I do has begun to come into alignment with who I am,
but this did not happen because the road was straight and smoothly paved and I
drove a cherry-red two door Dodge Challenger. Driving five hundred dollar Hondas
with no windshield wipers, misreading directions, stumbling out of the car and scraping
my knees on the pavement, flat tires, construction zones, speeding tickets, high
tolls, traffic jams and even traffic court and driving school have all been
elements my path has been made of. I’ve been rejected from schools and literary
magazines, laid off and passed over for jobs I thought I had to have.
But as Samuel Beckett famously wrote: "Ever tried. Ever
failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
Accepting my failures, leaning into my weaknesses, learning
from my mistakes, and taking the circuitous, bumpy route, it turns out, has been
the charted course towards a life beyond my wildest dreams, one which is truly
beginning to happen, thorns and warts and fender benders and all.
I am now lucky enough to have a job where I spend my days
listening to other people tell their stories while also having the opportunity
to write my own. I have come to believe that the power of sharing who you are,
whether that manifests as a poem or a song or a letter or a garden or a meal or
an invention or an equation or a computer program is a better gift to the world
than a stack of credentials behind your name or the total dollar amount in your
401K.
I would like to share with you now a poem that says so
beautifully things I want to know that I’m still inclined to forget.
Wild Geese, by Mary
Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
So, right now, whether you are going to on to a big college
or a little college or no college at all, whether you are interested in words,
stories, social justice, animals, science, the environment, documentaries, car
engines, mechanics, computer engineering, video games, internet privacy, censorship,
Africa or Kling-on, whether you intend to wear a blue collar or a white one, to
work with your head or your hands, I hope you learn to make the big decisions
with your heart. And I hope you know, as hard as it is to believe, that each of
you right now are just as perfect as my cat Felecia.
The best years of your life are not over. Your story doesn’t
end when you walk out of these doors. This chapter simply must close to make
way for the next. May your best years be yet to come, may the force be with
you, and good luck.
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