Every once in a while, I come across quotes, stories, word of advice, etc. that strongly resonate with me and remind me of what's important. Because it's easy to get caught up in our own lives and the small things that either affect us positively or negatively. We get frustrated by bad hair days, traffic, work, relationships, what we have, what we don't have, etc. And more often than not, it's not until something sudden and life-altering happens that we realize how little those things matter.
A friend of mine sent me the following speech by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Anna Quindlen. It was her commencement address to Villanova years ago, but its message is timeless. After reading it, I knew it was something I had to pass on. Hopefully it will have an effect on you too.
"Get a Life" by Anna Quindlen
It's a great honor for me to be the third
member of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university.
It's an honor to follow my great-uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my
Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you
something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce. I have
no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts
me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human
nature. Real life is all I know.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your
work. The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once
wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection
because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed
I wish I had spent more time in the office."
Don't ever forget the words my father sent me
on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a
rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway
of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other
plans."
You walk out of here this afternoon with only
one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with
your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do
for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your
life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or
your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your
mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much
anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a
resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or
lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume. I am a good mother to three
children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a
good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up.
I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried
to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my friends, and they to
me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be
a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I
show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my
job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at
your work if your work is all you are.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get
a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger
paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those
things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of
salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you
stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a
baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her
thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find
people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure; it is
work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student,
still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the
phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad.
Get a life in which you are generous. Look
around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a
full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night. And realize that
life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for
granted.
Care so deeply about its goodness that you
want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it
to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want
to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be
enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives: our days,
our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the
azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids'
eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises
again. It is so easy to exist instead of live.
I learned to live many years ago. Something
really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that,
if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I
learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all.
I learned to love the journey, not the
destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the
only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world
and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and
utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.
By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field.Look at the fuzz on a
baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy.
And think of life as a terminal illness
because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be
lived.
Well, you can learn all those things, out
there, if you get a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but
another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human
beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the
classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end.
No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had
spent more time at the office.
I found one of my best teachers on the
boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a
story about how the homeless survive in the winter months. He and I sat on the
edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me
about his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone,
sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the
police amidst the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal
rides.
But he told me that most of the time he stayed
on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now, even when
it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.
And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one
of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox?
And he just stared out at the ocean and said,
"Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view." And every day, in
some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view.
And that's the last thing I have to tell you
today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go,
nowhere to be.
Look at the view. You'll never be
disappointed.
xo Belle
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