The Commencement season
Doing not dreaming. Get the small stuff right.
Annapolis, Maryland – Right this moment, the Blue Angels (pictured above) are thundering over my home as the pilots practice for the U.S. Naval Academy graduation later this week. Virtually anyone who sees these six wonders of American genius and technology silhouetted against a clear sky feels an intuitive sense of patriotism and, yes, freedom. Those individuals who don’t? Well, they’re allowed to do so precisely because these jets exist.
It's Commissioning Week in Annapolis and the graduation moment for youths all over the nation, an ideal time to reflect on deserved achievement and equally important, on finding the road ahead. One milestone shared by all is the commencement address and its insights.
Over the days and years I’ve been to a fair share of graduations, 12 for my three sons, four of my own and 11 for friends and their kids (but hey, whose counting?!). I‘ve even write a few addresses for the politicians for whom I’ve worked.
From all these experiences, I’ve observed there are essentially two kinds of addresses offered: From those who have actually achieved something concrete and impressive in their lives, and those who haven’t.
Alas, my own graduation years ago from – let’s call the institution Faber College - fits in the latter category. It featured an obscure United Nations’ official as the Commencement speaker (some mercy is due the poor man – he was a stand in; Leonard Bernstein was scheduled but fell ill) who was “excited” to tell us all about his simply fascinating bureaucratic career and his “heroic” fight at Foggy Bottom and Turtle Bay against the long march of American imperialism and capitalism.
"That fellow seemed rather high on himself,” my mild-mannered father observed afterwards. Yep, Dad - a successful self-made man who at age 15 worked in a vanadium mine in Nevada and at 18 took part in the invasion of Okinawa and later spent four months patrolling the streets of Tokyo as part of the occupation force, even as the UN was being formed in San Francisco and Dr. Bureaucrat was patrolling library shelves at Big Bad State. Hey, who knew?! My laid-back old man - both a capitalist and an imperialist!
This unfortunate tone of self-righteousness had not dissipated when years later, it was time for my eldest son to graduate from Faber. His commencement speaker was an immigrant Nigerian poet and a few moments into her remarks she casually informed the crowd: “If you were born a straight white male or female, well, congratulations, you hit the jackpot.”
You poor woman, I thought to myself, are you aware this is a commencement address, not a faculty lounge?
But our “brave” speaker – because that was what she told us she was, donchaknow – plowed on in the same fashion “…you need to stand for social justice and the voiceless…remake America…”
Yikes, sister! Did you feel this way before you fled the slums of Nsukka for jackpot America?! And is it really wise, at such a celebratory event, to immediately insult three-quarters of your audience? You know, those sad sack parents and alums who have collectively contributed to the institution’s national preeminence and financial security so that full tuition and board are gifted to the, ahem, non-privileged?
By midpoint of her speech, exactly as it had happened during my graduation decades ago, the bleachers were half empty; the lotto winners had gathered elsewhere, no doubt to trade gambling stories.
As I said, the limited, even incomprehensible speeches come from the mediocrities; the really good ones come from those who have firmly engaged the world, performed at the tough jobs, have hit the obstacles, and have succeeded.
Here are three…
An absolute knock-out speech was given by Shonda Rhimes at Dartmouth College in 2014. Rhimes is a famous American television screenwriter, best known as a showrunner - creator, head writer, and executive producer of numerous popular shows.
She was blunt – she told grads to stop dreaming and start doing. “The world has plenty of dreamers. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing. So ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Whether or not you know what your ‘passion’ might be. The truth is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new."
Bang! Ditch the introspection – get moving!.
A second favorite was Admiral William McRaven's University of Texas commencement address, again in 2014. He spoke about his first days of Navy SEAL training:
“Every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection, a mundane task. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”
Doing, not dreaming. Getting the small stuff right. Two of the most important pieces of advice for that road ahead, whether you’re nine-years old or 19.
As I noted, this is Commissioning Week here in Annapolis and it recalls the my third favorite commencement speech, given by President Trump at my middle son’s 2018 graduation from the Naval Academy. Whatever your thoughts about the man, he met the moment and exceeded it.
The audience of parents and relatives and friends knew what the graduating Midshipmen had endured for four grueling years: No-excuse military discipline, barracks life, four straight summers of training deployments and mandatory softball courses like Electrical Engineering, Calculus and Thermodynamics. Twenty percent of the entering class never made it to graduation because unlike the “safe spaces” of Faber, failure at USNA has consequences. Seventy-five percent of the class (including my son) were STEM majors. And funny, unlike Faber, there were no majors in Latinx Gender Studies. Those Mids, like my sons, would soon be in charge of ordnance that could reduce a thousand voiceless bad guys to ashes in a social justice instant.
Simple and profound, the President brought it in hard and fast to the Midshipmen. “You have taken the path of hard work and sweat and sacrifice….the word impossible does not exist for you because the Navy never quits. You are now leaders in the most powerful and righteous force on the face of the planet!”
Thankfully, no fatuous shots at imperialism and capitalism from a third-level career bureaucrat drone; no remaking of America from a fatuous Third World immigrant.
Just pure sound and fury: “You’re among the finest people anywhere in the world, the smartest, the strongest! You know you will make us proud. You are warriors. You are fighters! You are champions!”
And then here they were, like in the photo above, blasting the same thunder I’m now hearing five years later as I heard it then. Practically touching the rim of Navy-Marine Corps Stadium is the unbelievable winged force of the Blue Angels streaking over the crowd at 200 mph with yes, the sound of freedom.
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