🎓 The Commencement Speech; or, Now a Bachelor

The Overwhelming Thesis of a Commencement Speech (Delivered 12/16/17)

No commencement speech is unique,

  No speech can ever truly be unique –

It comes down to what a speech must do

  And what the writer needs to tell you.

The goal is usually to make you cry,

   To make you look back, wonder why

You’ve spent your time working so hard

   To slip by Kant’s enlightened Guard.

The goal is to make you feel justified

   To make you feel on the winning side,

To give you hope for what the future brings

   And make you stop worrying on useless things.

But I regret to inform you, Misters and Misses,

   That life is a collection of hits and, well, misses.

You’re never going to feel fulfilled.

   You’ll always feel a bit under-skilled

And no matter what you do

   You will never feel . . . completely you.

And other speech-writers would have you feel

    That this feeling, this thought is not real

And that one day everything will be just right

    And you can only get there if you fight

Tooth and nail, and claw your way to victory.

    I’m here to tell you: that’s baloney.

You will always feel, deep down, somewhere

    That you’re missing something. Something’s not there.

And that’s okay! It’s perfect, really,

    And at first this commemoration might sound silly

But think about it; no really, think it through:

    What does completeness mean to you?

If you are fulfilled, and everything’s done,

     What’s left to do? Where is the fun?

If you feel like there’s more, more to learn, more to do,

     Then you’ll never be done with yourself – you’ll be you,

But not completely you, you’ll be an ever-changing mass

     Of particles that search for the truth as its task.

Once one truth’s discovered, you are not done;

     Keeping it going is half of the fun.

Don’t ever give up if you’re feeling empty.

     The thought can be harrowing, sure, it can be,

But know that if you’re feeling like you’ve got more to do

     That means you’ll have more time to keep being you.

But even though you’ll feel like something is missing,

    There will always be somebody who’s willing to listen.

My good friend Geisel, or more commonly, Seuss,

     Always knew just quite what to say to the youth.

“Today you are you! That is truer than true!

     There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”

He had that about right, and I think it is clear

     That we must march forward, press on, despite fear.

We have a duty on Earth to share what we know

     What we learn improves us as we develop and grow

So we share what we’ve learned with our friends in the Cave

     And we hope we can help them escape someday.

But we never know it all, we never have every answer:

     We dance around questions until we get half a chance, or

We hide behind uncertainties like a child behind her mother

     Or sometimes when confronted we just lie to each other.

But we, graduating here now, have a duty.

     To contemplate. To learn. To share our fruit. We

Must do our best to keep going, push on:

     Even after the comfort of youth is gone.

Once we step out of here today we no longer have security

     And that’s about as scary as it gets – at least for me.

(I don’t know how you all feel about confronting the unknown,

     But I think by definition it falls outside of the comfort zone.)

But, again, that’s fine, we must do what we can

     To learn, to contemplate, and share with our fellow man.

We have it in our power to change the nation,

     To shape it and mold it, a special creation

A world full of knowledge and people who try

     To do right by each other ‘til the day that they die.

Knowledge is change and change is future’s currency,

      We must learn to spend it wisely and use its influence, we

Cannot dally any longer, we can’t wait another day,

     We must prep for the journey and be on our way.

We cannot be certain that one day we’ll feel right,

     Or whole, or perfect, or complete

But we know that we can try to shine the light:

     And we can’t start that until we get out of these seats.

So good luck to you all, and remember with care

     That we have the power to learn and to share.

And: “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

     Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”