Commencement 2007 Closing Remarks
May 20, 2007
It is, finally, both my honor and obligation to end our proceedings with a few words of congratulations to the Class of 2007. I will not tarry. The day is long, your patience tried, the need to move on, urgent and real. But I have known you. And more than known. And I cannot bear a parting without a word of farewell.
I will not preach. For that would, somehow, cheapen what you've done here; what you have meant to be here; and what, I think, you have become. So, a moment—less of advice than of admiration, less of prescription than of affection, less of wisdom, more of hope.
You have learned much from us, but more, I would guess, from one other. You have discovered much of the world, but even more, perhaps, of yourselves. You have developed what I pray are unbreakable habits of curiosity. Amidst ambitions that burn hot, as they should. And talents that amaze. The poet writes that "the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind." But you have dazzled quickly, impatiently, powerfully. And still we see.
What can your charge and challenge be? From this ancient place. More than any other—rooted deep in the American story. In our understandings of what we believe of ourselves, what we would make of ourselves, what we would seek, what we would ordain?
You who have seen much of joy, of astonishment, of enthusiasm, of wonder. You who have seemed to bend a world to your will. Who have glimpsed a future beyond my power to embrace, or to comprehend, or even to behold. But who have also seen much that we could wish would never, through such a lens, be witnessed. In New Orleans, in New York, in Blacksburg, in the suicide bombings of Baghdad, in the cries of Darfur. The unspeakable suffering of innocents.
And, more broadly, scales of justice, left too frequently askew. Turning our gaze away from those locked at the bottom of American life. It is no small point that 700,000 Virginians living in poverty have paid to subsidize your remarkable education. You'll want to think about what you'll do to pay them back.
It is my wish, beyond any other, that you would live with this day's strong sense of hope. The world is in the deserving hands of us all. But some will have a larger influence on its unfolding. Vaclav Havel argued that hope is not a mere prediction of success or a description of the world we encounter. It is "above all a state of mind…a predisposition of the spirit… quite independent of the affairs around us... hope enlivens its object, infuses it with life, illuminates it." Emily Dickinson would write that it provides the "phosphorescence," the "light within." Keep it as your own.
Think, as well, of those greatest ones who have gone before you. Those who taught by the ennobling grace of their lives. Those who sought victories—not just for some—but for all. Who did not confuse wealth or fame, with character or purpose. Of King, of Chavez, of Gandhi, of Heschel, of Lewis, of Ebadi. Those who followed the paths of heart. Who saw service to their fellows as the literal purpose of existence. Who knew, as the scriptures claim, that the "permanent things are the [those] you cannot see."
Those permanent things fill the Hall this day. They lift us up. They mark our lives. They send you out. They fill your sails. They whisper in the gale. They whisper in the gale. They demand the tougher path. The larger contribution. They are the wages of your wonders. The markers of our best selves. They are the College. They bind a Tribe. They craft a future. They carve a soul.
Congratulations and godspeed. Go Tribe. And hark upon the gale.
