Let Your Life Speak

Since this is the season of graduations, I thought it would be fun to share a few insights I have stumbled upon over the last 18 years of working with college students. Because I was too busy working on a book report this spring to accept any of the many invitations to deliver a commencement address, I decided to write one anyway. Congratulations to the Class of 2011.
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I challenge you to show up to your life and be open to possibilities. Say yes to invitations, activities, and opportunities. Show up! If invited to participate in an activity, event, dinner, film, or something out of the ordinary that you may be hesitant to do---I say: "Go for it." Try something new, say yes, and show up.

"Eighty percent of success is showing up.” ~Woody Allen

I encourage you to ask questions of yourself without feeling the pressure of having to come up with immediate, concrete answers. Taking time to consider the questions themselves will give you space and freedom to reflect on what is possible and to imagine creative ways to address the many questions that will be posed to you throughout your life. As many have reminded me, there are not a lot of easy answers in life, but there are a lot of great questions.

"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." ~Rilke

Say Thank You. Sounds simple enough, but these 2 words may be the most under-utilized words in our society.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. ~Meister Eckhart

Take risks.

There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction. ~John F. Kennedy

Laugh. Young children laugh around 300+ times a day. As adults, that decreases to less than 10 times daily. See the humor in life and laugh with others. This is different than laughing at the expense of others of course. Laughter increases endorphins and is good for you!

"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself."~Ethel Barrymore

Find joy in the present moment. I have a simple time management philosophy: you make time for what is important to you. You can't buy time, save time, stock pile time—you must live in the present moment. Worrying about the past and fearing the future distracts us from the present. We miss out on the here and now because we are living in the past or hurrying to get to the future.

“What we do in love and kindness is all that we will ever leave behind.” ~Carrie Newcomer

Give back and don't underestimate your ability to contribute and make a difference. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something. We all make a difference. It just depends what kind of difference you want to make.

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences we often cannot foresee." ~Marian Wright Edelman

Define success not extrinsically but intrinsically. Pay attention to what makes you tick, what inspires you, and what brings you joy.

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof." ~Barbara Kingsolver

Be yourself. Parker Palmer recounts the Hasidic tale that powerfully illustrates the importance of being one’s self:

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

Leave people and places better than when you found them!

“What you leave behind isn't what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." ~Pericles

Go and do good…and let your life speak!

Elie Wiesel's Commencement Speech to Washington U Graduates on May 20, 2011

And furthermore, I believe that the human being — any human being of any community, any origin, any color — a human being is eternal. Any human being is a challenge. Any human being is worthy of my attention, of my love occasionally. And therefore I say it to you: When you are now going into a world which is hounded, obsessed with so much violence, often so much despair — when you enter this world and you say the world is not good today, good! Correct it! That’s what you have learned here for four years from your great teachers. Go there, and tell them what you remember. Tell them that the nobility of the human being cannot be denied.

I’m sure you have learned French literature. I’m sure you have learned about Albert Camus, the great philosopher and novelist. In his famous novel, The Plague, at the end Dr. Rieux, who was the main character of the novel, sees a devastated city, thousands and thousands of victims from the plague. And this doctor at the end says, it’s true, all that is true.

But nevertheless, I believe, he said, there is more in any human being to celebrate than to denigrate. I repeat: There is more in any human being to celebrate than to denigrate.

Let’s celebrate. Thank you.

--Elie Wiesel

Note: The above is an excerpt from Elie Wiesel's speech to Washington University's Class of 2011.

To read the entire speech, here is a link:
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/22353.aspx

Love is Simple

I want a simple love like that
Always giving never asking back
When I'm in my final hour looking back
I hope I had a simple love like that
--Sarah Siskind, songwriter

On May 15, 1945, Charles Davis and Marion Page were married. When I called my grandmother to wish her and my grandfather a happy 66th anniversary, I asked her what she remembered about her wedding day.

She said they got married at the preacher’s house.

I asked her what time of day, and she said it was in the afternoon.

I asked her who was there, and she said her brother Vodrey and his girlfriend, Kathleen. She said that Vodrey was in the service and had made her promise not to get married until he came home.

She said it was a simple service.

Love is simple, and sixty-six years ago today my grandparents who were 17 at the time, made a promise to one another.

Love is simple, but life can be complicated. And my grandparent’s lives have been both full of love and challenges. Love sustains them, and they have built their lives on a foundation of love and faith.

I deeply admire my grandparents. They kept their promise to one another through the good times and the challenging times.

They model love by living simply and humbly, by focusing on family and faith, and by caring for one another.

They are the parents of three children including Alice (my mom), Norma, and Chuck.

They lost a child: my aunt, Norma, who died in 1993 at age 46.

They have 6 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.

They have lived through both joy-filled times and really difficult times. And they kept their promise.

Their wedding ceremony on that Tuesday afternoon in May of 1945 was as my grandmother said: simple.

And their love and marriage have exemplified that love is indeed simple…and strong….and love is all there is.

Happy Anniversary, Granny and Bigdaddy:
When I'm in my final hour looking back I hope I had a simple love like that!

Poem for Mother's Day

Every spirit that walks this good earth
Was once some mother's perfect baby boy or girl.
Born with a roar of triumph
With relief and laughter
With the deepest longing and hope…
That this little one,
This precious child
Might know a better, kinder world.

I imagine the greatest honor
and finest gift we could give our mothers,
Is to try without ceasing
To create that better world.

--Carrie Newcomer

College Reunion

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
~Albert Einstein

This weekend, I was in Lexington, Kentucky for my 20th college reunion from Transylvania University. Reconnecting with this chapter in my life was good for my heart and soul. I am grateful for the friendships cultivated and renewed over the weekend. And I am thankful for the Transylvania University community: past, present, and future.