Commencement Address

The following is the transcript of a speech delivered to the graduates of Charles Wright Academy's Class of 2007. There's a tradition at CWA of having each year's senior class elect a faculty member to deliver their commencement address. This year's seniors invited me, an honor for which I am deeply grateful.


Charles Wright Academy Commencement Address
June 9, 2007
Creighton King

Some of you may have noticed that for many high schools, colleges, and universities across America, graduation rituals such as this one are called “commencement exercises.” A few years ago, I became curious: why “exercises”? And whenever you encounter a familiar word—like “exercises”—used in an unexpected way—here, coupled with “commencement" to form an expression that’s close to a compound noun—you can often discover something interesting. It turns out the word “exercises” is derived from the Old French verb exercere, which means, “to drive farm animals out to pasture.”

Fortunately, other than my referring to it here, you’ll find scarce mention of the word “exercises” at this commencement. Here, the word “ceremony” is used, a word derived from the Latin caerimonia, meaning “religious worship.” The word “ceremony” also contains the root cera, which is Latin for “wax,” a substance upon which impressions are easily made, like the seals historically used to authenticate documents—such as diplomas—or like the seal Hamlet melts so he can replace the letter his treacherous uncle has written with a letter of his own design.

As you know, Hamlet is soon carried off by pirates out roaming the North Sea’s dark waters, there to experience his fabled sea change. So it is that this ceremony celebrates a sea change in the course of your lives, albeit without the aid of pirates. You enter this ceremony with the waxen impressions of your childhood and adolescence still upon you; you leave as a fledgling grown-up, free to discover for yourself both the difficulty and fulfillment that come from creating not merely a letter, but a life, of your own design.

Looking back, you can sense how your journey from a zygote to the person you are now has shaped you—quite unlike, let us hope, the impression Hamlet’s father’s ring makes on the wax seal commending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their fate. In physics you learned the theory of gravity. Isn’t it astounding that gravity remains a theory? Was there anything theoretical about the bloody impressions your knees and elbows got the first time you fell off your bike?

In mathematics you learned that to find the area of a circle you had to square the radius and multiply by pi. Yet pi is an irrational number, and if you give a computer the task of solving for pi, it will . . . run around in circles indefinitely. In biology you may have learned that the largest living thing on Earth is an aspen grove somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. [By the way, people from New Mexico think that this aspen grove can be found in New Mexico, and people from Colorado think it’s in Colorado, and people from Utah think . . . well, I won’t go there . . . except to say I’m from Utah, and I’ve noticed that some people from Utah develop a sense of irony . . . and tend to move somewhere else.]

Anyway, back to the aspen grove. What you see when you look at an aspen grove is made possible only by what you don’t see: a vast root system hidden beneath the ground. And similarly, from neuro-science you have learned that your conscious mind arises from countless neural pathways that remain invisible to consciousness itself—which may be reason enough not to believe everything you think.

And perhaps, while on your Outdoor Ed trips, on a clear night you gazed at the stars and took on the impressions of photons that had been streaming through space for millions and billions of light-years—only to end their journey abruptly upon impact with your retinas.

From noticing changes of weather, you’ve learned that trillions of individually insignificant interactions can blow down trees and cut the flow of electrons to your microwaves and television sets—and close down school for the day. From economics you’re given to understand that if the supply lines replenishing the seeming cornucopia at your local grocery stores were suddenly cut off, you’d run out of food in a few days. And from gaining the privilege of driving a car, you’ve learned that the price of gas generally keeps going up—up in smoke, so to speak—as do carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

From history you’ve learned that many great civilizations now lie in ruins and that the earth is as much a killing field as it is a place where human cultures can flourish. You’ve learned that you share this earth with upwards of six and a half billion fellow human beings, most of whom are a lot worse off than you are for no other reason than they happened to be born in places like Darfur, Addis Ababa, East Timor, Baghdad, Kabul, Peshawar, the West Bank, New Orleans, or the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Take a good, long look at this place that has given shape to the brave and honest human beings you are now. Notice your family, friends, classmates, and teachers. Feel the air, soft and redolent with the vapors of your various exertions in the Dome, or of the sumptuous repasts at the Headmaster’s Picnics. And just outside the Dome, at this moment, you can imagine the soft rain in the trees, the birds singing, the cars going by, the occasional sound of gunfire over at the shooting range. There’s not a particle of it that isn’t leaving some impression on you, no matter how faint or imperceptible that impression may be. And you are leaving your impressions on the world around you as well. Everything is connected to everything else. With each breath, you become both more and less than you were the moment before.

Even though you have done much of the work yourselves, you are surrounded by parents, teachers, extended family, and friends who have given some varying measure of their lives to prepare you for receiving your diplomas today. But can anyone really prepare you for creating your own destiny?

If you feel like it, try taking a deep breath. Has anyone prepared you for how good even one breath can feel?

Each one of you is a miracle. You have been given one, precious life, which you cannot possibly have created all alone. It is not enough simply to accept this gift. You have to make something of it for yourself. The wonder of it is that you get to share this gift with others. And you get to delight in others’ delight when they share theirs with you.

Looking ahead now, take another deep breath, if you wish. Remember that the Latin word for “breath” or “wind” is spiritus. From taking to heart the many impressions that have shaped your life up to this moment, you may now emerge from your waxen chrysalis, the cera of this ceremony, and feel the wind urging your wings toward flight, the caerimonia of this ceremony.

As extraordinarily difficult as it is to be just one human being, as difficult as it is to look unflinchingly upon a world beleaguered by political corruption, social upheaval, natural catastrophes, and the threat of terrorism, you can also look within yourself. If it feels right to you at this moment, try reaching down beneath your attention deficit, down beneath your thoughts of tonight’s graduation party or how much longer this speech may run, down into the deep silence of your own being.

And there, in the tender goodness of your own heart, you may find a truly radical possibility taking root. Maybe you feel it? Could it be that what you’re feeling is the living spirit of hope, which ceaselessly renews itself, without beginning or end, in the core of each one of your hearts? Are you prepared to give your hope to the world, even though the world may sometimes give you good reason to feel bereft of hope?

[Turns to graduates seated behind.]

O my goodness! I look at you now and realize I have rarely beheld anything so beautiful in all my life. Who you are right now has never happened before and can never happen again. I feel each of your spirits unfurling, like a slow, beautiful poem, an exquisite flower, a magnificent eagle, a golden sunrise. To see your bright young faces, to sense the worlds of possibility opening within you, to imagine the possibilities the world is offering to you, fills me with hope. It inspires me to do my very best with all the life remaining to me.

You and I have much work to do together, not merely the kind of work teachers do for students, or healers do for the wounded, or the privileged do for the unprivileged, but as equals caring for equals. The gowns we are wearing today are symbols of this equality. Moreover, the words “human,” “humus,” and “humility” share a common root, a root anchored down deep in the earth itself. That root is our shared humanity; it is our sense of equality, empathy, and justice that includes all things great and small and excludes no one.

Until we befriend that within ourselves which makes us prone to aggression, complacency, sentimentality, or cynicism, we have work to do. Until every human being feels hope brimming from the core of her or his humanity, we have work to do. We can accomplish nothing of enduring worth by force, nor can we hold back and wait to follow someone else’s lead. Radical hope is gentle and persistent; it brooks no illusions and understands that change happens neither in the past nor the future, but only now. It is fed as much by disappointment, heartbreak, uncertainty, and failure as it is by patience, humor, courage, and truth.

With all my heart I hope that your lives be abundant, great, and unforgettable. Work hard, yes, but take time to laugh, take time to smell the roses. Carry your own weight, have faith that others can carry theirs, but go light so you may remain free to offer a helping hand—as a friend and equal to all. Look to the stars, but learn the flowers. Care for children and old people. Trust yourself.

To each of you in the Class of 2007, I extend my best wishes. And my deepest thanks. Thank you for making this day among the happiest days of my life.

And now, Mr. Camner, Mr. White, esteemed colleagues, parents, family, and friends, isn’t it time for us to get some exercise? Time, perhaps, to make like shepherds and get the flock . . . I mean drive these beautiful souls out to the abundant pastures of this great and glorious Earth?