Commencement Closing Remarks, 2001
May 13, 2001
Commencement custom accords the president the privilege of a few final words, a few final words. After all the emotion of this weekend, after the eloquence of this afternoon, you must, I know, be more than a little bit weary. Besides, you do not yet have in hand the very thing this whole weekend is about - your diploma. That powerful and physical symbol of success at the College of William and Mary. Be patient, would you, a few minutes more. That magic moment will come and soon.
Nine times I have stood here to say good bye. First to the Classes of 1993, and now to you. Each time I have felt a catch in my throat and tears in my eyes. Today is no different. My heart so full of feelings to which I cannot give voice; my mind whirls with a million thoughts none of which seems quite right. So where do I go? What is the last refuge of a perplexed president with an important duty to discharge? The answer is not so hard: attack a commencement cliché, of which, believe me, there is an inexhaustible supply.
Let's try this one: "Today you end your long apprenticeship, you surrender your golden youth and prepare for a tomorrow when you enter the real world in which you must scratch and claw your way to success." How many of you, how many times, have heard a variation of that thought uttered by some well meaning, worthy sentenced to deliver a commencement address? I would hasten to add here, that today's speakers treated us very well. The idea that the world outside the university's walls is somehow more real than the university has become permanently lodged in the dictionary of commencement clichés. Nowhere is it written, however, that clichés must be right. This one, I must tell you, is particularly misguided.
Some time ago, Sybille Bedford wrote:
"You see, when you are young you don't quite feel part of it yet, the human condition that is; you do things believing that they are not for real; that everything is a rehearsal, to be repeated adlib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. Then one day you discover that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.""
Dame Sybille got it right. Let's think together about the last few years and about you. What happened to you here, what you learned here, what you have become here, none of that was a rehearsal. It was all real, it was all profoundly important, and not just for now but for the rest of your lives.
And while I am about the business of attacking clichés, why not go after another one. How about this: "The world has become oh, so infinitely more complicated, complex and confusing. The young people of today face choices so confounding that no prior generation could possibly cope." Is any of that true? Almost none of it I think. I do concede that the world in which we live, and in which I fear you will spend most of your lives, is enormously more cluttered with the superficial than in any prior era. Yes, we are drowning in a cascade of electronic gadgets; yes, we seem permanently caught up in a frenzy of largely pointless consumption and, yes, we are confronted daily with choices, the banality of which is stupefying.
But in this world of too many things and too few values; of too much information and too little wisdom, you are also blessed. Now I would like to say that you are uniquely blessed but I am, perhaps, too prejudiced. You have a William and Mary education. What you learned here, what you have become here is powerful protection against the beguiling, but the empty, glitter of contemporary life. Here you have found the talent to know truth and the moral strength to live by the lessons truth teaches.
Do I exaggerate? I don't think so. Reflect for a moment on who you were when you first came here, then consider how much has happened to you and how much stronger you are now than you were then.
A few examples:
- you are undaunted even by the most intractable intellectual complexity.
- you have learned that in any great life, ambiguity is inescapable but that simplicity is essential.
- you have discovered by hard and disciplined repetition that genuine excellence can never be had at a discount.
- you have learned that the courage to dare never ever leads to failure, only to new heights of achievement or to opportunities to try yet again.
- you have discovered that morality without intellect guarantees a stunted life, but that intellect without morality is a one way ticket to the tragedy of wasted talent.
- you realize your very special talents impose upon you an inescapable obligation to help others not so blessed to find their own way to a better life.
You have been liberated, perhaps not from all, but from many, of the prejudices that marred your maturity and blocked the hope that you would become the person that God meant you to be.
These are great gifts, indeed, given here so that every one of you might live a good life defined wisely by the ancient Greeks "as the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope."
So there it is: the possibility of a good life is William and Mary's supreme commencement gift to you. And your time here in preparing for that possibility was no rehearsal, it was the first scene of the first act of the rest of your life. And having watched you with deep interest and deeper affection, I can tell you proudly that the play is well begun.
Finally, let me amend a statement I made at the beginning of these remarks. I said I was saying good bye. I was wrong. You will never really leave William and Mary, and just as surely, William and Mary will never leave you. As long as you live, some part of this place will abide with you, touch you in unexpected moments and in unanticipated ways. And, so, too, each of you leaves behind a part of yourself that will forever make this College different.
What you leave cannot be seen, cannot be felt but it is no less real for that. The dreams you dreamed, the hopes you had, the loves you loved, these will endure "for all time coming" just as surely as the mellow brick of the Wren, the glorious green gold of the spring in this beautiful place and the lingering laughter of frisbee games in the Sunken Garden.
And when you return, as surely you will, sentimental and successful alumni, you will discover, as have the generations which preceded you, that the William and Mary to which you return is profoundly different yet so very much the same. Like thousands before you, you will be amazed at how young the students look and shocked by how much you look like the faculty. And the magic of your special places will still be magic and the sweet smell of youth will still be sweet but it won't any longer belong to you.
When you do come back in the happy company of the friends you made here and whom you love still, you will discover, as have so many, William and Mary's most closely guarded and magical secret . . . for the briefest moment it will again again be 2001 and all of you then will be as you are now young and beautiful and full of hope.
