Note: this was shared at our (wild, whacky and wonderful) church on Mother’s Day.
I wasn’t invited to speak at any graduation ceremonies again this year and I was a little bummed about that, then I remembered that my graduating daughter and some of her friends would be here today, and I already have a stage and a microphone, so I was like … work with what you’ve got, Melis!
So I offer to you today the commencement speech I have yet to be invited to deliver.
First, I want to say this: You have probably, like me, been to a bunch of graduations by now. I’ve had a couple myself, my kids, siblings, friends, kids of friends. I’ve probably been to more than a dozen of them.
I can’t tell you who spoke at those graduations, much less what they said. I have absolutely no memory of who the speakers were or what they talked about.
I have a theory about this.
I think it’s because the truth is that grown-ups have no idea what’s going on, either.
Young folks … no doubt you’re feeling confused about a lot of things right now, your life is a big question mark, but the reality is that we’re all in the same boat. No one knows that the hell is going on, almost all the time.
From one end of life to the other; from birth to death, life is really just one big mystery.
No one ever really understands love. Gravity— a few people probably get it, but really, what the heck is gravity? How does it work? Personally I’m confused about, and I was in New York City last week, so I was thinking about this … why doesn’t the ground cave in on the subway system?
Two socks go in the dryer, one comes out. WHERE ARE ALL THE SOCKS?
So when the speaker steps up to the podium on graduation day, wearing their fancy academic costume, and they start talking about All The Very Important Things You Must Know For Your Future I think we all just kind of zone out, because we know the truth, somewhere deep inside … that no one really knows anything. No one really knows what the heck is going on. Pretty much ever.
A pivotal moment in my adult life came when I decided to stop pretending I had any answers and start living from a place of full-on curiosity. Like a toddler wandering through the world … what is that? How does that work? Tell me again how to do this!
Life is so much more fun this way. A lot less stressful, too because it’s really hard, as a grown-up, to do all that pretending.
So I don’t have any answers, but I do have the perspective, like all of you, of my unique life experience. And from that place I can tell you a few things that I’ve noticed, some of my observations.
One of the vantage points of my life has been that I’ve spent a lot of time with people who are dying.
And now you’re like, there she goes again … bringing out the D word. I know you’re squirming in your seat now, I know how much people hate it when I talk about death. You’re thinking things like … did I finish my taxes? … or maybe I should get going on next year’s taxes …
But I will tell you, and if you don’t know this by now you will eventually, that death is the greatest teacher you will ever have when it comes to trying to figure out how to live.
The best.
There’s a kind of universal thing that happens when a person has some time when they’re dying, when it’s kind of stretched out, and that’s that they always want more time with the people they love.
No one is refreshing their Instagram feed, no one cares how the stock market is doing. No one needs to get back to Buffalo or Miami again. They just want more time with the people they care about.
That’s important information. That tells us that we need to keep our eyes on the prize and that the prize is your tribe. It might be your family, maybe your friends, probably some of both, whoever they are, spend more time with them, show up for them.
I’ve created what I call the Venn Diagram of Life.
It’s simple, partly because I don’t know a lot and partly because I think that life isn’t actually as complicated as we make it.
We touched on the people part already, your relationships.
Then there’s the material world. We live in a material world, that’s just the way it is, that’s our reality. Madonna sang a terrific song about it.
Young folks, you probably have some ideas about what you want your life to look like, maybe the house or houses, boat, cars, Gucci loafers, a cottage in the woods, whatever it is, it’s no doubt based partly on the life you have now and partly the dreams you have for yourself. This is good, it’s really important that you have a vision about this for yourself because all that stuff is nice and you should have what you want.
You’re supposed to have fun in this life, that’s what those things are for. You are absolutely supposed to enjoy your life.
I want to be clear about something: there’s a river of money that runs through this world and everyone is allowed to have access to it. Some were born close to it, some very far away, so their journey to it is longer, but everyone is allowed at the river. Doesn’t matter what your parents had or didn’t have, doesn’t matter what the world has taught you about money, everyone is allowed to have access to the river of money.
Get really clear with yourself about what you want your material life to look like, visualize it, see yourself in it, then start doing the work to get there. Because it takes work, that’s your job, the work.
It’s really important that you don’t buy into what the world tells you about how to get to your future. There are 8 billion people on the planet, which means that there are 8 billion pathways into the future. Your journey is unique to you. Learn how to trust your instincts on this one, trust your gut.
Some things work well for most people, but there is no one thing that works well for everyone. Like college. College is a great idea for some people, for other people it’s a terrible idea. It’s one option.
Doug Tompkins, the guy who started The North Face dropped out of high school. In the late 60’s he and his buds were a bunch of rock climbing dirtbags out there having fun, doing what they loved to do. Then they needed some clothes and equipment so they started making stuff and so The North Face and Patagonia were born. That was their unique road into the future and it worked really well for them. And it’s had a positive impact, probably, on all of our lives.
So get really clear with yourself about what you want that part of your life to look like and then get busy doing the work. Start now because you don’t have to wait for some sort of magical doorway or time in the future to decide how you want to live.
I just want to say, be careful, though, because if your life becomes too skewed toward the material aspects, money and stuff, you’ll wake up one day feeling unsatisfied, a kind of malaise. Like when you eat at McDonald’s — you know there’s something in there, you ate it, but you still feel empty.
You don’t want to skew your life too much in any one direction.
The third part of life is service. You have to do something to improve the conditions of this world. You have to. I can’t stress this enough. You’re here to make the world better.
Everyone has something, a skill, a talent, time, some people have money. Whatever you have, give some of it away.
You have got to give some of what you have away on a very regular basis.
This doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t have to save an endangered species or clean the whole ocean. If you want to that’s terrific and thank you, but you can keep it very simple, very small: call your grandmother more often, visit the local animal shelter and walk the dogs, pick up trash on the roadside. Give the person working the window at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru a nice tip. Their job kind of sucks and you get to sit in your car while someone hands you breakfast, make their day with a generous tip.
That kindness, that generosity, that matters. That’s love, and when you spread it around the world becomes a better place. Simple stuff.
So that’s the Venn Diagram of Life: service, your people and the material world. You want there to be harmony with these things. Harmony and flow.
And I’m not gonna talk about God or religion, faith, spirituality, as a separate thing and here’s why:
When all those three aspects of life are humming and you’re in the flow—your days are satisfying and you sleep well at night. You’re enjoying yourself doing work you love, you can pay your bills, buy the things you want. You’re doing something to make the world a little better and spending time with your people. When you’re there in that space you radiate, you are ALIVE and that will affect everyone you meet.
You are a radiant, loving, present being, engaged with the world, curious and joyful.
When you’re there you are in the sweet spot of life … and that IS God.
That’s the closest approximation I will ever get to a description of God.
I want to close with this: there’s another vantage point I’ve had in my life and it’s even weirder than the first one. I’m a spiritual medium. That means that I am a conduit so people who have died can communicate through me with people who are still here. Don’t ask me how this happened, I don’t understand it, it’s a total mystery to me. I respect it, that’s all.
Almost every time someone who has died talks to someone here they want to say I’m sorry. Pretty much every time.
I’m sorry I treated you the way I did; I’m sorry I didn’t show up more, sorry I didn’t say I love you more. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how proud I am of you. I’m sorry.
This is further testimony to the knuckleheads we are here on planet Earth, and more good information about how to live.
So, to re-cap: spend more time with the people you love, that’s the prize, keep your eyes on the prize so that you’re not panicking at the end of your life, desperate for more. Tend to those three basic aspects of life and keep them in harmony, keep things flowing. And say the things you need to say to the people you care about now, while you’re here, in the same room, so that you after you die you won’t need a medium to tell someone you’re sorry. Because good mediums are expensive and really hard to find.
Congratulations Helen Cooper Hood Eyre and the Class of 2023! We’re so proud of you! We hand to you a world in complete disarray, but we know you’ve got this! 👊
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Yay Coco👩🏼🎓🫶🏼! What’s next?