Graduation Address

By Crispin Sartwell

Faculty, administrators, moms, dads, friends, trustees, graduates,

I am honored and extremely puzzled to be here speaking to you on the occasion of your matriculation into chaos.

When you graduated from high school, someone said something like this: "You are the sparkly-eyed hope of all our future tomorrows. You can be or do anything you can dream of being or doing. So dream big. Be great. Cure the world." You're probably expecting to hear something like that again today, and maybe you would find that inspiring, though you'd more likely be bored.

And as you probably already knew four years ago, that speech was dishonest. You can dream of winning the Nobel prize, curing cancer, bringing about world peace, dating a supermodel, becoming wise and strong and beautiful. Good luck. Very likely you will be disappointed quickly and come to regard your life as a failure. Let's say, on the other hand, that you live your whole life in the service of your big achievement and, unlikely and out of your control though it is, accomplish it. Then you've been absent from your life leading up to the goal, because your life in service to the goal was a mere means, and you'll be absent from everything afterwards, which will be devoted to nostalgia for your golden moment.

The sad truth is that basically, like the rest of us, you're confused and mediocre: an unsortable mass of good and evil, smart and stupid, ugly and attractive, big-hearted and petty. As a generation, you're more or less just as good and bad as your parents and their parents, and the world you pass on to your children, if any, will be a sad mess, just like the one we're passing along to you, because people do not make progress.

There is nowhere we're headed: no goal, no moment where our dreams are realized. There's just a world in process, and us, in process with it. The idea is not to realize a moment of greatness, but to participate in this process in an intrinsically satisfying way.

If indeed you learned anything during your college career, it's a good bet that it will soon be discredited and superseded as we pursue the mirage called human knowledge. Learning is one of the few really innocent pleasures, but it's always radically incomplete. "Graduation" is a delusion, because it tries to convert a process into a moment of accomplishment, and thus teaches the wrong lesson.

So here's my advice to you eager and innocent - or bored and corrupt - young people. Deal with the world as it is and yourself as you are. It is even possible to love the world in all its gigantic, irritating imperfection. Existence really does have its beautiful aspects. Even its flaws and even its horrors have a compelling quality, because they're real and not just something someone made up.

Immerse yourself in the process of living, in its struggles, its tiny victories, even in its recalcitrances and stupidities. You don't have to win a Nobel to live a decent life; you don't even have to try to win a Nobel to live a decent life; in fact, you basically have to not try. Let go of your goals and devote yourself to what's happening right now. Try to care about people and try to be good at something. If you get time, cultivate a craft and so learn devotion to process.

Try not to participate in anything that is obviously evil.

Become and remain aware of the fact that you yourself and everyone that you love will someday die.

Try not to lie more than you really have to, especially to yourself. If you hear yourself whining and bitching, shut up. Instead, play. Remember that you're a mammal, and if you get the chance or the choice, reproduce. The act itself is enjoyable and children tend to have a good effect on adults, giving them a tiny embodiment of hope, happiness, play, pain, fear, truth.

In conclusion, fellow chumps, instead of pretending that if you dream of jumping over the moon you really will, try to learn to love the earth and the people around you a little more than you do now, even though they, like you, are fundamentally and irremediably flawed.

And give generously to your alumni association.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.