Commencement speeches have always fascinated me. They are not uniquely American, but the ways in which they are being used here pay tribute to so many great American traditions: virtuous self-promotion, survivor bias, faux humility from people richer and more accomplished than you will ever be, the never-ending book tour celebrating the book one just published and those in one’s future, the earnestly shared delusion that words coming from someone so far removed from your circumstances might somehow lift you up or teach you something new after four years of school.
This morning I watched Hillary Clinton’s commencement speech at Wellesley, which made me think of what I wish someone had said at my own commencement many years ago. I wish our speakers had told us to go out there, pay attention and listen. Pay attention to the structures you’re settling into, listen to people trying to tell you that you’re not smart, you’re just young. And it’s not that you’re not smart, it’s that it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Keeping at it matters. Compassion for people older, poorer, sadder, less cool than you matters. The system matters, so try to change it. You’re young now, but life will find you and run you over and leave you in a ditch somewhere and you’ll have to find your own way out because this is a harsh place unless you have the kind of family and resources only few do. I wish people had told us that the clock was already ticking and the expiration date was much closer than we thought. I love this country but it worships the new and we were already old by the time we walked out of that gate. That’s what I wish I’d have been told, and I am one of the lucky ones.
