It has been said, by people likely smarter than myself, that inside every adult lurks a commencement speaker dying to get out. While this insight is prescient for all, it is particularly relevant for those looking for a cheap topic for a newspaper column during graduation season.
You see, every grown-up is, indeed, eager to impart the collected wisdom of the ages and the aged upon a generation that would rather be taking selfies or reading Buzzfeed lists on their iPads. Although this might not be as interesting as “The 22 Most Downright Insane Things That Have Ever Happened” (then again, it might be), one of the pleasures of being a columnist is that every week offers an opportunity to deliver a commencement address of sorts. To share life’s lessons. To remind a younger generation to thank their mother and to dream big and to go out and change the world.
Those are the kinds of things that commencement speakers like to say, sharing deep thoughts that are quickly ignored by those convinced that their newly received diploma or degree symbolizes the fact that they already know everything. Which, as luck would have it, brings us to our first bit of advice: Listen to your parents and to other old people.
This especially is true for those graduating from high school this month. While you undoubtedly are convinced that you now contain the entirety of human wisdom, you soon will arrive in college or enter the workforce only to discover that you never will achieve such all-knowingness.
At least that was my experience. I left high school convinced that I was among the smartest people ever to walk the earth and far more wise than my parents; and then I learned in college that I never will be. Learning can be a lifelong experience. Embrace that fact; challenge your own views; listen to those who disagree with you, lest you turn into somebody who gets all their information from Fox News.
That, perhaps, is the single most important thing to take along as you move on to the next stage of life. And yet there are other nuggets worth digging up.
Among the most valuable is that delivered by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust at a baccalaureate service in 2013. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings months before, Faust spoke about the bravery of those who ran toward the victims in order to help, then she urged graduates to spend their lives “running toward” something. “Running toward,” she said, “means abandoning the safe and the certain for the unknown. It means facing your fears and moving beyond those who tell you ‘no.’ “
Sage advice. Although I might add something about the dangers of hanging out with those who only tell you “yes,” lest you wind up with a face tattoo.
‘Wear sunscreen’
And then there is the wisdom of Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist who wrote a brilliant commencement column in 1997 that included this advice: “Wear sunscreen.” Somewhere along the line, an urban legend developed that Schmich’s words came from author Kurt Vonnegut, and somebody put them to music and made a hit song for themselves. Which also might be good advice: “Don’t be afraid to steal the wisdom of others, but be sure to give them credit.”
“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth,” Schmich wrote. “Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”
Nor is the world as bad or as good or as simple as you imagine. It is complex, with a lot of nooks and crannies that contain wondrous surprises waiting to be explored.
Does that qualify as profound insight? I don’t know. But there is one bit of wisdom of which I am certain: Life is more interesting than a Buzzfeed list.
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