The speech by Wellesley High teacher
David McCullough has sparked a bit of controversy.
Dr. Wong, Dr.
Keough, Mrs. Novogroski, Ms. Curran, members of the board of
education, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and
gentlemen of the Wellesley High School class of 2012, for
the privilege of speaking to you this afternoon, I am
honored and grateful. Thank you.
So here we are… commencement… life's great forward-looking
ceremony. (And don't say, "What about weddings?" Weddings
are one-sided and insufficiently effective. Weddings are
bride-centric pageantry. Other than conceding to a list of
unreasonable demands, the groom just stands there. No
stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No being
given away. No identity-changing pronouncement. And can
you imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys try
on tuxedos? Their fathers sitting there misty-eyed with joy
and disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner
muttering with envy. Left to men, weddings would be, after
limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost
inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the
refrigerator. And then there's the frequency of failure:
statistics tell us half of you will get divorced. A winning
percentage like that'll get you last place in the American
League East. The Baltimore Orioles do better than
weddings.)
But this ceremony… commencement… a commencement works every
time. From this day forward… truly… in sickness and in
health, through financial fiascos, through midlife crises
and passably attractive sales reps at trade shows in
Cincinnati, through diminishing tolerance for annoyingness,
through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise, you
will stay forever graduated from high school, you and your
diploma as one, 'til death do you part.
No, commencement is life's great ceremonial beginning, with
its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism.
Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage,
is where we find ourselves this afternoon, the venue.
Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn't touch
them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal
level playing field. That matters. That says something.
And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform,
one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short,
scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic
X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you'll notice,
exactly the same. And your diploma… but for your name,
exactly the same.
All of this is as it should be, because none of you is
special.
You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your
glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance
of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister
Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your
maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you're
nothing special.
Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted,
bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do
have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped
your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached
you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you,
consoled you and encouraged you again. You've been nudged,
cajoled, wheedled and implored. You've been feted and
fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And,
certainly, we've been to your games, your plays, your
recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite
when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at
your every tweet. Why, maybe you've even had your picture
in the Townsman! [Editor's upgrade: Or The Swellesley
Report!] And now you've conquered high school… and,
indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride
and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from
that magnificent new building…
But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because
you're not.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an
English teacher can't ignore. Newton, Natick, Nee… I am
allowed to say Needham, yes? …that has to be two thousand
high school graduates right there, give or take, and that's
just the neighborhood Ns. Across the country no fewer than
3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than
37,000 high schools. That's 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000
class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000
swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs. But why limit
ourselves to high school? After all, you're leaving it. So
think about this: even if you're one in a million, on a
planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000
people just like you. Imagine standing somewhere over there
on Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching
sixty-eight hundred yous go running by. And consider for a
moment the bigger picture: your planet, I'll remind you, is
not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not
the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of
the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the
universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it.
Neither can Donald Trump… which someone should tell him…
although that hair is quite a phenomenon.
"But, Dave," you cry, "Walt Whitman tells me I'm my own
version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark
of Zeus!" And I don't disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion
examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You
see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone
gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken
but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one
another-which springs, I think, from our fear of our own
insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality - we have
of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love
accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to
see them as the point - and we're happy to compromise
standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the
quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the
mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something
with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the
social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game,
no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or
grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it's "So what does
this get me?" As a consequence, we cheapen worthy
endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes
more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of
Guatemalans. It's an epidemic - and in its way, not even
dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the
37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no
longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel
curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope
you caught me when I said "one of the best." I said "one of
the best" so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can
bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and
unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever
they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived
competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition
there can be only one best. You're it or you're not.
If you've learned anything in your years here I hope it's
that education should be for, rather than material
advantage, the exhilaration of learning. You've learned,
too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the
chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream… just an
fyi) I also hope you've learned enough to recognize how
little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for
today is just the beginning. It's where you go from here
that matters.
As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds,
I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than
you love it and believe in its importance. Don't bother
with work you don't believe in any more than you would a
spouse you're not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on
the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison. Resist
the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of
materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction.
Be worthy of your advantages. And read… read all the time…
read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect.
Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a
moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply
it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love
everything you love, everyone you love, with all your
might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for
every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and
as surely as there are commencements there are cessations,
and you'll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony
attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the
afternoon.
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant
life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into
your lap because you're a nice person or mommy ordered it
from the caterer. You'll note the founding fathers took
pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness-quite an active verb,
"pursuit"-which leaves, I should think, little time for
lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube. The
first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated
the strenuous life. Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a
corner, to live deep and suck out all the marrow. The poet
Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl and roil.
Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time encourages
young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem. The point
is the same: get busy, have at it. Don't wait for
inspiration or passion to find you. Get up, get out,
explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands.
(Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo, let me
point out the illogic of that trendy little
expression-because you can and should live not merely once,
but every day of your life. Rather than You Only Live Once,
it should be You Live Only Once… but because YLOO doesn't
have the same ring, we shrug and decide it doesn't matter.)
None of this day-seizing, though, this YLOOing, should be
interpreted as license for self-indulgence. Like accolades
ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a
gratifying byproduct. It's what happens when you're
thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain
not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy
the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the
world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in
Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate
yourself for being worldly. Exercise free will and
creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they
will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the
rest of the 6.8 billion-and those who will follow them. And
then you too will discover the great and curious truth of
the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing
you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then,
come only with the recognition that you're not special.
Because everyone is.
Congratulations. Good luck. Make for yourselves, please,
for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives.