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Fellow teachers, administrators, parents, and most especially, the Kennedy Catholic Class of 2010: it is my sincere honor to speak to you this evening. Graduating seniors, as I've told many of you, your class is especially dear to me because we all started at the same time. This is, in effect, my senior year as a teacher. We've known each other for awhile, dear class of 2010 – when we all started, Mazzuca was quiet, Stew had a mullet, and I was taller than Konner. Together, we have navigated high school, and I feel so fortunate to have shared musical rehearsals, illicit Steak 'n Shake, Homecoming dances, Kairos tears and victorious applause with you.
I talked to a lot of people in preparing this speech, and unanimously, they couldn't remember who spoke or what was said at their high school graduations. That's OK. Because I am a teacher, I have learned a few tricks about making people remember what you want them to. For example, I bet any one of you could still ask me to go to the bathroom in Spanish. But no, graduates, I will not make your next bathroom trip contingent upon remembering this address.
In writing this speech, I found that I felt a little bit like my mom, who, the night before I left for college, came into my room and said, "I just feel like there's something I'm forgetting to tell you," as if she had to impart all of her wisdom before I left for college or it would be too late. There's so much I'd like to share with you, graduates, but, as everyone told me, none of you will remember what is said tonight anyway. So, here are the words which you will tune out and probably forget completely. Once this day has been distilled down to a diploma and pictures of you in your cap and gown with everyone you know, here are the words I would like you to take with you: Do not settle.
Now. Before you dismiss these words as clich̩ and shallow, let me tell you how I got there. Since graduating high school, I have learned that we as a civilization, and especially we young people, are fed a lie much of our lives. School itself can even serve to reinforce this lie. The lie is this: This is as good as it can be. I'll repeat that because I want it to stick (this is a teacher trick): We are fed the lie that this Рwhatever "this" may be referring to Рis as good as it can possibly be. Because of this lie, at the personal level, we stay at schools where we feel we don't belong, we remain in jobs we hate, and we cling to relationships that are unhealthy. This lie leads to apathy and helplessness, and when we accept "as good as it can be", at the community level, we accept 80% of the world living on less than $10 a day, we accept catastrophic oil spills, we accept brutal drug wars, we accept whole-scale destruction of ethnic groups and rainforests. We must reject this lie at every opportunity.
How? You must start by listening to your gut. Some of you already have practice with this – it's what led you to choose a certain university, or to opt out of a party or a car, or to end a relationship. One of my favorite authors, Paulo Coelho, writes:
Whenever we need to make a very important decision it is best to trust our instincts, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream... Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges.
Listening to your gut is rarely easy. Sometimes it cannot be heard over other people's advice, society's norms, or your own rationality. Sometimes it doesn't speak so much as it grumbles. Sometimes it doesn't grumble so much as it just doesn't let you be comfortable. You have to be quiet and still, calm your chaotic mind, breathe deeply, and listen. You may call this prayer, or meditation, or quiet time in the woods, but we all need it. It is so important to spend time like this, because until you know who you are, what you need, and what you love, you will settle for "as good as it can be". And what should you remember from this speech? That's right – do not settle. In the words of one of my favorite thinkers, Winnie the Pooh, "How can you get very far, if you don't know who you are? How can you do what you ought, if you don't know what you've got?"
Once you become familiar with the voice of your own gut – or your heart, or conscience; it doesn't matter what you call it – you'll notice that it will not allow you to accept "as good as it can be". It will not let you settle. It will push you to make terrifying changes and do semi-crazy things. In my case, it led me to live in a homeless shelter in the most dangerous city in the Americas. This was not a rational decision – but I couldn't NOT make it. My year in Mexico was one of the most terrifying and fulfilling of my life, and everything BUT my gut told me not to do it.
Any decision based on your gut will not lead you wrong, because that is the voice of the divine. You are all at a stage in which you've recently made some large choices, and they may seem overwhelming. But no matter the decision, please remember: you can change your mind! Your gut, in fact, will sometimes compel you to. No one ever quite figures out what they want to do forever, just what they want to do next. I will let you know as soon as I figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Vocation, or calling, is described by the theologian Frederick Buechner as the place in which "your deep joy and the world's deep need meet – something that not only makes you happy but that the world needs to have done". Finding your vocation in this way is the work of listening to your gut and refusing to settle for the world as it is.
Rejecting "as good as it can be" requires that you question EVERYTHING. Especially things that you take for granted. Question minimum wages and individual cars and a thousand cereal options. Question your motivations and your history. Do not EVER allow the state of your family, community, nation or world be "good enough". Do not settle.
You see, life is funny. If you demand more of it, if you say to it, "This isn't good enough; show me the next step; I want more," and if you have the courage to make the terrifying changes and do the semi-crazy things as your gut demands, it will reward you in ways you can't imagine. Dear graduates, I tell you this as someone who followed the demands of her gut to Kennedy Catholic High School, to teach, despite having no experience or previous desire to do so. I demanded the next step, and it came to me in the form of YOU, your class, the class of 2010.
We are not beings created for mediocrity, and it is not in our nature to ever be completely content. Do not fear your hunger – hold onto it. Talk to it. If you're not hungry, look for the places in your life where you are not completely full. Demand more of life and you will find that happiness lies not in acquiring things (even degrees!), but in stretching ourselves beyond what is comfortable and past what we think we can do.
There is a story told about a farmer who raised chickens. He had one that looked a little strange, but it behaved like a chicken, and the other chickens all accepted it as one of them. One day a biologist walked past the farmer's yard and said to him, "Sir, that's not a chicken. Why do you keep it in with them?" The farmer replied, "No sir, I'm afraid you're mistaken. That is a chicken. It may not look like the others, but it behaves like a chicken." The biologist asked him, "Well, sir, would you allow me to take it from you for a little while? I'd like to perform some experiments." "If you insist," said the farmer, and the biologist gathered the huge bird in his arms and drove it to the top of a cliff. At sunrise, he turned the beautiful bird toward the sun and said to her, "You are not a chicken – you are an eagle! Fly, eagle, fly!" and he threw her off the cliff. She panicked for a moment before shaking herself and stretching out powerful wings she never knew she had. The eagle, now aware of who she really was, soared and soared, and flew away, and she never returned to the chicken coop.
My dear graduates, you are not chickens! You may, however, at times find yourselves surrounded by chickens. Listen to your gut. Do not pretend to be a chicken to make the others feel better. It may take someone to throw you off of a cliff before you embrace your eagle-ness. I challenge you not to happiness, but to non-complacency. Be courageous, question everything, and above all, DO NOT SETTLE.
Dear graduates, it has been such a blessing to share this part of your journey. As we say good-bye to you as students of Kennedy Catholic High School, I'd like to leave you with a poem which I feel encapsulates your time at Kennedy. It's called "This Bridge", by Shel Silverstein:
This bridge will only take you halfway there
To those mysterious lands you long to see:
Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fairs
And moonlit woods where unicorns run free.
So come and walk awhile with me and share
The twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known.
But this bridge will only take you halfway there –
The last few steps you'll have to take alone.
Congratulations, graduates, but most of all, thank you. It's been a wonderful four years.
Coelho,Paulo. Life. M. Botelho. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
Hoff, Benjamin. The Tao of Pooh. New York, NY: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1982.
Buechner, Frederick. "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Profile: Frederick Buechner." May 5, 2006. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week936/profile.html (accessed May 18, 2010).
Silverstein, Shel. "The Bridge". A Light in the Attic. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1981
