Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Read this
Below is a portion of President Chapman-Walsh's commencment speech to the class of 2004. It was amazing, she didn't give my class a speech like this. I highly suggest reading the excerpt and if you like you can find the whole test here (it even includes a Neruda poem it's so good!)
On this your graduation day, then, I want to suggest to you that because of the unusually tragic backdrop against which you have lived your college years, because of the emotional highs and lows through which you have worked and walked with such grace, your class, the Class of 2004, has been given an extraordinary opportunity to practice what the Dalia Lama calls the art of happiness.
I’ve been contemplating this question of happiness all through this roller coaster ride of a year. It was your classmate, Kristina Chan, who brought it to my attention -- at our first private meeting in early September, president-to-president, College Government and the College, both just back from a summer of readying for another new beginning. I asked what she hoped her impact would be, as CG president, expecting to hear a list of initiatives and goals. Without a moment’s hesitation she answered, “maximum happiness.” There was in the way she uttered those two words something that struck me then, quite viscerally, as moving, deep, profound.
And so I’d like to suggest to you, as you prepare to move on, that you take seriously the possibility that seeking happiness could be your goal – not in a shallow or self-indulgent way, but as a sophisticated intellectual project, worthy of your most disciplined thinking, as philosophers through the ages have known it to be. This business of maximum happiness is a high-stakes proposition, not only for individuals and the quality of their personal lives but also for the public sphere and the ideal of a good society.
As the world’s great philosophical systems and religions attest – and as we know from our own experience – reaching out to others in kindness and empathy enhances inner peace. In fact, Aristotle defined happiness as “an activity of the soul that expresses virtue.” Far from being a transitory feeling or emotional state, happiness was, he believed, the culmination of a life well lived, one guided by our reason, the one quality that makes us human, that defines our shared human history and can shape our shared human project. What could be more important, especially now?
Like everything else worth attaining, being happy involves serious work – learning what you value, making difficult choices (none without costs), exercising self-discipline, recognizing dissatisfaction as the springboard for motivation and yet not becoming paralyzed by perfectionism and jealousy, understanding that there can be no happiness without effort, at times even pain, and that the most reliable sources of satisfaction are pursuits that have meaning and purpose through their intrinsic value.
If we take up life entitled, expecting all things to come our way, we court disappointment and we miss out on gratitude. So I want to suggest to you today, perhaps paradoxically, that the taste you have had here of loss, and grief, and disillusionment -- much as I wish we could have shielded you from it -- actually offers you a special opportunity to walk through your lives with humility, amazed at your good fortune, grateful for your blessings, appreciative of every moment you are able to enjoy. “If you miss the joy of it,” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “you miss it all.”
Below is a portion of President Chapman-Walsh's commencment speech to the class of 2004. It was amazing, she didn't give my class a speech like this. I highly suggest reading the excerpt and if you like you can find the whole test here (it even includes a Neruda poem it's so good!)
On this your graduation day, then, I want to suggest to you that because of the unusually tragic backdrop against which you have lived your college years, because of the emotional highs and lows through which you have worked and walked with such grace, your class, the Class of 2004, has been given an extraordinary opportunity to practice what the Dalia Lama calls the art of happiness.
I’ve been contemplating this question of happiness all through this roller coaster ride of a year. It was your classmate, Kristina Chan, who brought it to my attention -- at our first private meeting in early September, president-to-president, College Government and the College, both just back from a summer of readying for another new beginning. I asked what she hoped her impact would be, as CG president, expecting to hear a list of initiatives and goals. Without a moment’s hesitation she answered, “maximum happiness.” There was in the way she uttered those two words something that struck me then, quite viscerally, as moving, deep, profound.
And so I’d like to suggest to you, as you prepare to move on, that you take seriously the possibility that seeking happiness could be your goal – not in a shallow or self-indulgent way, but as a sophisticated intellectual project, worthy of your most disciplined thinking, as philosophers through the ages have known it to be. This business of maximum happiness is a high-stakes proposition, not only for individuals and the quality of their personal lives but also for the public sphere and the ideal of a good society.
As the world’s great philosophical systems and religions attest – and as we know from our own experience – reaching out to others in kindness and empathy enhances inner peace. In fact, Aristotle defined happiness as “an activity of the soul that expresses virtue.” Far from being a transitory feeling or emotional state, happiness was, he believed, the culmination of a life well lived, one guided by our reason, the one quality that makes us human, that defines our shared human history and can shape our shared human project. What could be more important, especially now?
Like everything else worth attaining, being happy involves serious work – learning what you value, making difficult choices (none without costs), exercising self-discipline, recognizing dissatisfaction as the springboard for motivation and yet not becoming paralyzed by perfectionism and jealousy, understanding that there can be no happiness without effort, at times even pain, and that the most reliable sources of satisfaction are pursuits that have meaning and purpose through their intrinsic value.
If we take up life entitled, expecting all things to come our way, we court disappointment and we miss out on gratitude. So I want to suggest to you today, perhaps paradoxically, that the taste you have had here of loss, and grief, and disillusionment -- much as I wish we could have shielded you from it -- actually offers you a special opportunity to walk through your lives with humility, amazed at your good fortune, grateful for your blessings, appreciative of every moment you are able to enjoy. “If you miss the joy of it,” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “you miss it all.”
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