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I’m a
novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is
all I know. Don’t ever confuse the two, your life
and your work. You will walk out of here this
afternoon with only one thing that no one else has.
There will be hundreds of people out there with your
same degree; there will be thousands of people doing
what you want to do for a living.
But you
will be the only person alive who has sole custody
of your life.
Your
particular life. Your entire life.
Not just
your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a
car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your
mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your
bank account but your soul. People don’t talk about
the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to
write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume
is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re
sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back
the test results and they’re not so good.
Here is my
resume:
I am a good
mother to three children. I have tried never to let
my profession stand in the way of being a good
parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of
the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to
laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have
tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I am a good
friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them,
there would be nothing to say to you today, because
I would be a cardboard cut-out. But I call them on
the phone, and I meet them for lunch.
I would be
rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those
other things were not true.
You cannot
be really first rate at your work if your work is
all you are.
So here’s
what I wanted to tell you today:
Get a
life. A real life,
not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the
bigger pay check, the larger house.
Do you think
you’d care so very much about those things if you
blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in
your breast?
Get a life
in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing
itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights. A life in
which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk
circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with
concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with
her thumb and first finger.
Get a life
in which you are not alone.
Find people
you love, and who love you. And remember that love
is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone.
Send an email. Write a letter.
Get a life
in which you are generous. And realise that life is
the best thing ever and that you have no business
taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its
goodness that you want to spread it around. Take
money you would have spent on beers and give it to
charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother
or sister.
All of you
want to do well. But if you do not do good too,
then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy
to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our
minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the
colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a
symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises
again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love
the journey, not the destination.
I learned
that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is
the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at
all the good in the world and try to give some back
because I believed in it, completely and utterly.
And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others
what I had learned by telling them this:
Consider the
lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby’s
ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your
face. Learn to be happy. And think of your life as
if there is no tomorrow, because if you do, you will
live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be
lived.
Speech made
by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen, at
the 1999 Graduation Ceremony at Villanova
University, Pennsylvania, where she was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate.
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