Commencement Closing Remarks, 1999
Timothy J. Sullivan
May 16, 1999
Commencement custom gives the president the privilege of some last words. This is my seventh such opportunity, I treasure it, but I harbor no illusions. At the end of a long afternoon, at the conclusion of a joyous weekend, in the last moments of your William and Mary days, I will be lucky if ten of you remember by noon tomorrow what I say this afternoon. But I tell you this. The difficulty of the assignment does not diminish its importance or what it means to me.
I know you. We have been companions in learning. We have been friends. These things matter and they always will. Mostly with admiration, occasionally with exasperation, I have watched the crooked, sometimes uncertain, course of your journey here; I have watched you learning the craft of life, studying the story of humanity, testing your ambitions against the sobering reality of exacting competition.
I have learned to believe in you. I have utter confidence, utter confidence, in your capacity, and in your commitment, to change the world, to make it better, more decent, and more just.
But the blessing of your ability is also your burden. Your lives will not be measured by ordinary standards simply because you are not ordinary men and women. Rejoice in that, but mark its implications.
T. S. Eliot wrote somewhere -
For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded
In those few lines, Eliot got something very important very wrong. We all know that life is not a children's story, even at its most benign, it is tragedy and comedy all mixed together. Virtue is not always rewarded, the good guys don't always win, the path of honor does not always end in an agreeable place.
So why would I quarrel with Eliot? For this reason. Because good and evil are not the same, and 99% of the time the difference is not hard to know. So I don't believe, I don't, and neither should you, that in the end good and evil become confounded.
Is any of this important? Absolutely. Because leading a good life matters, and a good life requires, equally, a clear-eyed understanding of the meaning of virtue and of the power of evil. And what makes this seemingly simple statement immensely complicated is the reality that in each of us are several selves. Lincoln spoke famously of "the better angels of our nature." We know what those are. But we are home also, to darker angels who struggle for place with their better brethren. We know about those too - don't we?
To blink at the difference between good and evil, to believe that all of life is drawn in shades of gray, to deny the consistent possibility of distinguishing good from evil, is to let slip our darker angels, and so to risk the possibility of a good life.
The corruption of ourselves by ourselves is perhaps tragedy writ large, and to escape it requires wisdom, will, and moral courage, all applied to assure that our best self consistently stands down our darker spirits.
I speak with such feeling about a good life because a good life is the only way to happiness. And happiness I define, as did the ancient Greeks: "the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." Each of you can be happy in the Greek sense. Not everyone can. There it is again, the iron link between extraordinary ability and extraordinary responsibility. To fully exploit your ability, to honorably meet your responsibility, and so to be good, and so to be happy, means never forgetting to remind yourself: This is what I believe. This is what I want my life to be about.
None of us can hope to be morally perfect, not even close. I know that, and I would be sorry if any here mistook mine to be an argument for sainthood. It is not that I am against sainthood. It is just that so few of us are likely to qualify. Success in life requires sharp elbows, tough tactics, and sometimes the capacity to command pain. Wealth, eminence, power, these are some but not the only legitimate objects of honorable ambition. To play hard but by the rules, to fight hard, but with scrupulous regard for matching means and ends, such are the marks of meaningful and moral leadership in an unforgiving world. You were made for leadership, everyone of you, and you will lead, but never, I hope, at the cost of fateful damage to the best part of you.
One last thing. You may think that you are leaving. That this is the final act in a wonderful play about to close. Not a few of you have or will shed secret or not so secret tears because you have loved this place so much. I have news. You aren't leaving. You can't go, not ever, not . . . ever.
You are now and will forever be a part of this special community, imagined first more than three centuries ago and stretching forward, in the words of our Charter, for "all time coming." Some immortal trace of each of you is here, and will remain, for all time coming.
When you are old, at some unimaginable future time, the memories of these years, of your dazzling achievements, of your spectacular stupidities, but most of all, most of all, of your tender friendships, these memories will give you joy at once so subtle and so strong that words will fail and tears will flow.
And one more thing, this College will always be home to you. When you return, and I know you will - full of nostalgia and that palpable sentimentality unique to alumni, you will feel again, as if for the first time, what it meant to live and to love those vivid years when all of you were young and beautiful and full of hope.
I have taken too long. It remains for me only to ask this of you, struggle always to be your best selves and never stop the striving to do good. To each of you I wish Godspeed and glorious good fortune.
