Speak the Speech

The weather was perfect for the 2017 UW-Madison graduation ceremony at Camp Randall Stadium last week. Thousands of family members flooded into the stands to see their loved ones receive recognition for completing another part of their education. I was there because Margaret (daughter #3) was receiving her masters as a school social worker. I’m not a big fan of large crowds and formal ceremonies, but I do appreciate the speeches that are given on such occasions. When I was still teaching public speaking to high school kids, I had a special fondness for the ceremonial speeches we studied. I told my students that throughout history we have always used words to “sanctify” certain experiences and that each of them would almost certainly be asked to do the same at some time in their lives. Steve Levitan, writer of Modern Family and other TV shows, gave a funny and moving speech about his journey from UW to Hollywood.   He said he would try to avoid the clichés, but still managed to hit most of the usual themes. Take chances when you are young. Don’t quit if you fail. Reach your potential by doing something you love. Those are all good pieces of advice. Still, there are a few things I would have added to my speech for Mags. I would have said:

I am very proud of you. Your thirst for knowledge and understanding is inspiring. Not just in the classroom, but also in the books, the poems, and the songs you share so often. You also have come to understand empathy in a way many others would not. You seem to understand that the only way we can make our society truly work is for all of us to try to see the world through “different” eyes. From the time you were small, you - like your mother and sisters - would be moved to tears by the suffering of others. Please never lose that trait. The world needs your heart.

We live in troubling times, but don’t despair. America has had bad times before.  There are heroic and dedicated public servants all around you who know that America can be better. Don’t let the voices of hate and division drown out your voice of hope and unity. I know I have shared this Robert Kennedy quote with you before, but it is still true. I heard it first in 1968 when I was 17 years old. “First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's greatest movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
………..Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation..... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

The world needs your voice for hope and love.

Finally, I have one more bit of advice in my old age, especially for you. There are some things we can’t see by looking at them directly. We have to see them out of the corner of the eye or in reflection. We can only see the wind when it ruffles the grass or the sun when it reflects off the lake. Many of the most important experiences in my life happened or not by serendipity. The person who became my dear friend stopped to talk in the hall. The cherished antique dish that fell to the floor and did not break. The lovely summer drive when nobody died. I have learned that when I planned too much - if I stared at the goal I wanted - I couldn’t see the things out of the corner of my eye. Those things that make a life rich and full. Try not to worry about things you can’t control. There is much to see beyond the obvious.

            Let me end with a poem.

The Writer
by Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish What I wished you before, but harder.