Advice to Graduates

There is a long tradition of grown ups giving "good advice" to the young and trying to impart their accumulated wisdom. This is a fool's errand. Wisdom only comes over time, and like democracy in the Middle East, can't be imposed from outside. From God suggesting not to eat the fruit in the Garden Eden, to Polonius, in Hamlet, filling his son Laertes' head with platitudes, the record of advice giving is not hopeful. Adam and Eve are banished and Polonius and Laertes are both run through with swords. The modern classic good advice talk implores the youth to slather on sunscreen.

So, imagining myself in front of a bunch of high school or college seniors, with some trepidation, but few illusions, I enter the arena to share with you the very most important thing I know--and it is really quite simple.

If we are lucky and diligent, we will make friends, some of whom will turn out to be good friends. These special people in our lives are a product of luck, chemistry and some effort. They ride with us through life--sharing our good times and bad, our triumphs and tragedies. Some of these people we see often. We are in constant touch and really keep up with each other. Because of the everyday nature of these friendships, we do not notice them growing old or changing. They just are--like the earth and sky, like family.

Other friends may be more distant in time and space. We may not see them regularly but when we do, it is as if no time had passed. We pick up right where we left off a year or a decade before. Since we do not see them age or change, when we do get together it is sometimes a shock. Where is the rail thin girl? What happened to the athletic young man, and where did his hair go? But after that first moment, our eyes adjust and we see them back with the old pictures in our heads of them in their youth, with the eyes of our youth.

Sometimes I joke that I have only one core message and every talk or article is a repetition of this: "Despite how large and complex the world is and how small and powerless we sometimes feel, what we choose and what we do make a difference." I believe this profoundly. But it is not my one message. I have another: "Time is the only gift we have that is worth giving." Where and with whom we spend the precious time that is our lives indicates what we value and whom we value. Time, once spent, can never be spent again, but neither can it be rendered into nothingness as long as we live.

The wise would not avoid the pain of loss by not having had friendships. There is no wisdom in saving our hearts from breaking by not giving them. My lesson for you today is quite simple, but hard to do when young: Take pictures with your hearts of those who love you and whom you love. Keep them as a treasury to draw on. Neither our vulnerability nor mortality itself is the enemy of life. They are but reminders of how precious each day, each kiss and each embrace is.

Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of the bible, offers this very good advice: "Eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart," and "Live joyfully with thy mate whom thou lovest all the days of thy life."

And yes, do remember to slather on the sunscreen.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com