For many reasons, all of them excellent, I have never been asked
to deliver a commencement address. I have been asked to keep quiet
at a commencement address — often by the womenfolk — but never to
speak. This was probably a wise decision. Columnists are too
opinionated for such bland ceremonies. What you want is some windy
titan of business who can spew a string of empty platitudes about
the graduates being “our future” (Our future what? Taxpayers?
Retirees? Prison population?) and how they should go forth and
“make a difference.” In other words, something immediately
forgettable and, preferably, brief.
Nevertheless, as we squirmed in a sweltering gymnasium Sunday
evening listening to the droning of the archbishop, I had to wonder
what I would say if, Heaven forbid, His Excellency keeled over from
the heat and I was mistakenly called on to finish the commencement
address.
I think I would gaze out over the largely white, middle-class
audience that constitutes my son’s small high school graduating
class and say that hopefully, by 18 years of age, their parents and
teachers have given them all the values they will need to lead
happy, successful lives. If not, then it is probably too late.
I would say that college-bound adults probably do not need a lot
of lecturing anyway. The ones who could use a good talking to are
those not in attendance, the underclass dropouts, the very ones to
whom we are reluctant to offer advice or moral instruction because
it is considered bad form to judge another’s lifestyle, no matter
how self-destructive that lifestyle. But since these underclass
kids are unavailable, you middle class grads will have to do.
I would urge those who will go away to university to return home
after college. Do not be bewitched by the bright lights of the big
cities. You may think Sprawlsville, USA is a utopian dreamland, but
you would be in error. Suburbia is, in fact, populated by middle
managers, accountants, and public relations men. Yes, small towns
are often ridiculed as dull, dying, backward places peopled by
retired farmers and Tim McGraw fans. But what do you expect when
all the smart folks decamp for the cities? Recall the lessons
learned by Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz: “If I ever go
looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than
my own back yard.” Return to your roots and get involved in your
communities and your churches. Join local civic groups, run for
your school board, your park board, your library board. But let it
end there. If some busybody insults you by asking you to run for
state or federal office, tell him to get lost.
Do not hate the past. Remember that newer is not always better
and that less is sometimes more. In today’s world old ways and
things are to be discarded to make way for the latest model. This
applies to people as well as things. But with the speed of
innovation coupled with our unbridled consumerism this is a recipe
for permanent dissatisfaction. Instead, learn to cherish the
old.
TUNE OUT ALL the noise and nonsense that keeps us from living in
the moment. You needn’t join a Trappist monastery to live a
contemplative life. Look to the example of Thérèse of Lisieux who
“accomplished the apparently impossible feat of being, every
moment, in a state of sharply focused, intensely controlled
alertness, and at the same time completely spontaneous in all that
she did.” And remember of the words of Thomas Merton, who knew that
“Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth,
deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action
of love and grace in our hearts.”
Don’t give up on marriage. I know it sounds crazy in this day of
drive-through divorce. I know many of you are still traumatized by
your parents’ separations. The fact remains that marriage is the
foundation of civilized life. No advanced civilization has ever
existed without the two-parent family. The family, to paraphrase
Russell Kirk, remains the institution most necessary to preserve.
American society simply will not survive long without healthy
marriages.
It is everyone’s duty to cultivate his garden, said Voltaire. In
that spirit do something good for the Earth. God has made us its
stewards. There comes a time when we need to stop fouling our
nest.
Merton, Kirk, Voltaire, Dorothy Gale — none of these can match
the wisdom of my fellow Belleville, Illinois native, Christian
Rudolph “Buddy” Ebsen, Jr., whose Jed Clampett summed up the key to
a successful and happy life in one succinct, pithy phrase: “If
you’re too busy to go fishin’, you’re too busy.”
