Commencement Closing Remarks, 2002
May 12, 2002
A few weeks ago, Anne and I had the pleasure of entertaining at the President's House, a long-established and generous-spirited William and Mary family. Somehow-don't ask me how-one among that band of Tribe loyalists had managed to be educated elsewhere. Having been involuntarily immersed in the William and Mary culture for a good part of his life, he asked-I thought with just the slightest trace of exasperation-"What is it about you William and Mary people? Why do you care about this place so much?"
My first thought-my very first thought-was "What easy questions!" I came here as a freshman 40 years ago; I have been a faculty member for 30; I have been President for 10. He had thrown me a hanging curve ball. I knew I could hit out of the park. I was wrong. I paused to answer-no words came. After what seemed an eternal interval, I said: "Yes, we do care-we care deeply about this place-but I am not sure I can tell you why in words."
I am, in truth, a little embarrassed to admit here what I just confessed. I know that I am sometimes a bit slow-but I am not terminally stupid. I did think of some things I could have said to him-but I didn't.
I could have said William and Mary is special because it has a brilliant faculty and because its students are really smart. I could have said William and Mary is special because the beauty of this place, in every season, leaves memories so tender and so vivid that no one ever really leaves. I could have said William and Mary is special because the bonds of friendship formed here are so strong that friends made remain friends until they see that last flash of sunlight that lights us up just before we die. I could have said all of those things-and more besides. But I didn't-not because they aren't true-but because they aren't true enough. They don't reach the heart of what makes this College a place of such glory and such honor.
In the weeks since, my mind has returned often to that evening when I was so embarrassingly tongue-tied. I haven't been able to give up trying to puzzle out an answer to the question I was asked. Even now my conclusions seem-indeed are-tentative, but they offer at least the beginning of an answer, and I want to share that beginning with you. We are all different: different in our hopes, our hurts, our ambitions, our dreams. William and Mary is profoundly complex-its complexity refracted and transformed by the unique glass each of us uses to see it-to see it in terms of our own experience, to see it in terms of a history that is our common heritage-but which lodges uniquely in the life of each of us.
Allowing for that complexity-acknowledging the uniqueness of every human being who has ever studied here-what makes William and Mary special is the consistency of the most fundamental lesson which-through more than three centuries-our College has striven to teach. And that lesson may be summed up in a single sentence: Love what you live for-but be sure that what you love is worth your life.
William and Mary has always been about human transformation. At the beginning it was about the power of divine providence to transform; in our own more secular age, it is about the power of human wisdom to elevate and ennoble humankind.
I know more than a few of you are thinking-fair enough. But how does what you have just said make William and Mary unique? My answer: What I have just said doesn't-but what I have yet to say-will.
Through its whole history, William and Mary has demanded intellectual excellence-but never outside the defining context of moral learning. We have never been afraid to say that great brains are wonderful, but not alone enough. Our vocation here is opening doors to a great life-and great lives combine intellectual distinction and moral feeling. And moral feeling, ladies and gentlemen, never comes to those whose core convictions do not embrace a respect for truth, a reverence for honor and an unfailing instinct for compassion.
No one can live a great life who does not love what he does, and even in the best of lives, what one loves must be worth a life. My ambition for each of you is that you live great lives. And that ambition is no pipe dream. I know you-your friendship is among my most cherished gifts-and your future is bound up with my fondest hopes.
What happened to you here has given you the intellectual imagination and the moral strength to make us proud of what you do with your opportunities and with your talents. Use them both to find a foundation of passion in what matters most in your lives. Find a passion so strong and a cause so just that you lose yourself entirely in the will to make that passion palpable.
Please do not mistake me. I do not propose for anyone here a life of sainthood. I know the dark places in my own soul. You know them in yours. I do not suggest that you ignore life's glittering prizes-wealth, power, fame. These are all worthy objectives of your most honorable ambition. But you bear now the indelible mark of a William and Mary education. It will therefore never be enough-never enough-simply to collect the glittering prize-even if every day you sweep the table of every prize on offer. You will not live-fully-if you fail to find avenues of service and commitment that touch the world outside the limits of your personal ambition. You need not strive to alter eternity-only one in a billion can do that-but you must know that you can, and will, leave distinctive traces of yourself in the back corridors of history.
Be a teacher, a poet, an actor, an entrepreneur, a journalist, a physician or any one of the thousand other occupations. But never believe that you can be wholly defined by the work you do. Bring to that work transforming passion that changes you and alters for the better-because of your passion-the profession you have chosen to join. Bring to what you do an irresistible life force that inspires in others an admiration for the intensity of your integrity that makes them want to be you. The challenge is to use that passion-that life force-to make a powerful difference not just in your work for the day but in the work of all your days.
Philip Larkin wrote somewhere "we have an 'almost instinct' that what will remain of us is love." He was profoundly right-I wish I had thought of that three weeks ago when I bungled my encounter with that one who was not one of us. It is love-in its many definitions and in its infinite applications. That is the most precious gift this College gives to all of us. And that gift of love is at once a consolation and a challenge. It is a gift that permits us to see straight through to what is truly noble in this life-but which commands us-always-to use that gift-the gift of love-to give comfort and courage to a suffering humanity-in its ceaseless-bitter-sometimes seemingly doomed struggle-to civilize itself.
May God bless you always. William and Mary will love you always.
