A Message for Graduates – Sunday, May 26, 1985
There is a time everyone in school anticipates. It is the end—graduation. It is also a time usually referred to as commencement—the beginning. As the young, and some who are not so young, graduate and leave the halls of formal education, they begin to realize that they are, in a sense, freshmen again—that the good life is a series of learning experiences.
If the schools have done their work well, the graduates will have developed habits of mind that will be useful in new situations throughout their lives—curiosity, open-mindedness, objectivity, respect for evidence, and the ability to think critically. The graduates should know by now that learning must be a lifelong endeavor if they wish the rewards of continual self-renewal.
We commend the graduates for their academic achievements and scholastic honors, but we also hope the school years provided an opportunity to develop the person and not just brain power. A broad education should instill flexibility, imagination, and awareness of one’s relationship with his surroundings.
Part of the benefit of the educational experience is to come in contact with different kinds of people. The development of human relationships helps us know ourselves. Strangely, we can know ourselves only through others, and we can know others only through knowing ourselves.
We hope the educational process has influenced the shape of minds as well as the size. Many times, those who use their intelligence with charm and humor and individuality are far more enjoyable to be around than those with simply larger mentalities and little else.
More descriptively put, a four-cylinder mind, properly tuned and expertly driven, can generally run rings around an eight-cylinder mind that is cumbersome and self-satisfied. It’s a matter of shape—a kind of grasp, a kind of attitude, a kind of approach to the world and oneself. So, we hope this year’s graduate has had opportunities not only to expand the mind in the academic sense, but improve its contour, to enhance its charm and grace.
And, if there is a single message to offer the graduating class, perhaps it is to remember that the truly educated person knows that happiness does not come from self-gratification, ease, comfort, or a state of having achieved one’s goals. Happiness involves the pursuit of meaningful goals—goals that relate the individual to a larger context of purposes…goals that call for the full use of one’s powers and talents.
Graduation is indeed a commencement. It is a beginning toward the best life has to offer—all of which is founded on learning.
May 26, 1985
Broadcast Number 2,910