This was the graduation speech given to my high school graduation by Tom Boswell. Its simplistic advice I’ve taken to heart my entire life, and I thought I’d share it with you all as well.
—
I’d like to thank Rev. Ward and the faculty, as well as the parents and stucends of St. Stephen’s for inviting me here today.
I feel a little bit like Casey Stengel when he managed the New York Mets when they were the worst team in baseball. Casey went to this barber one day for a shave. “Please, don’t slit my throat,” he said. “I might want to do that myself later.”
Actually, I’m not nearly as nervous as I usually am when I give a speech. I feel like I’m among old friends. It’s an honor to speak to you. Some of my favorite people are here today — people I’ve known for 30 years, like Hank Biddle, Sleepy Thompson and Dick Babyak.
This isn’t just an honor. It’s also an opportunity to explain myself a little to the people who used to know me. When I left St. Stepehen’s 24 years ago, I wanted to be a mathematician. After a couple of years at Amherst College, I thought I might be a doctor. By the time I left college, I wanted to be a lawyer. Now, 20 years after leaving school, I’m a sportswriter.
What happened?
After all, the intellectual level of my daily life isn’t exactly on par with Mr. Biddle’s calculus class. It’s more like the story they tell about Yogi Berra when he was introduced to Ernest Hemingway. Told that Hemingway was a writer, Yogi said, “Yea? What paper you work for Ernie?”
I have five points I’d like to make today. I won’t call this “good advice” or even claim it’s insight. They’re just things I’ve learned that have worked for me.
Over the next ten years, all of you in this class will make many choices. Because of the education you’ve gotten and the intelligence you possess, as well as the social advantages many of you have, you’ve got a lot of options. Some of you WILL be doctors, lawyers, teachers and business men — that’s certain.
However, for my first point, I’d like to encourage you to AIM LOWER.
By that, I mean: Do what you enjoy. Please yourself. Be honest with yourself. To work hard enough to be successful in your job — not for a few years but for your whole life — you better love what you’re doing. I’ve worked more hours and traveled more miles than I ever thought I could in any job. But it’s been largely a pleasure. That only happens if you figure out what is close to your heart, then do it.
I wrote recently that, “Baseball was meant, and still is meant, to be irresponsible, anti-adult, silly, lyric, inexplicable, slightly rebeillious and generally disreputable. The ballpark is the place you go to play hooky.”
It’s also the place I go to find energy, inspiration, the desire to work. Everybody finds his own source. Find yours.
A philosopher 400 years ago said, “The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced. Lord, what a favor wisdom does for those whose desires she adjusts to their power.”
The poet Marrianne Moore, a favorite of mine because she claimed she was in love with Christy Mathewson, said, “Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.” I think that applies to more than writing.
For my next point, I’d like to encourage you to: WORK LESS.
And think more.
To work your best, and not just burn energy, you have to figure why you’re working and where it’s taking you. Step back and try to see a bigger picture. When I first came to The Washington Post, I used to sit looking out of the window for long periods of time before I wrote anything. This troubled my editors who’d say, “What’s wrong with Boz?” I’d say, “I’m thinking.” That seemed to worry them even more.
The whole issue of trying to think out our lives, to some degree, before living them, is the subject of a poem my W.B. Yeats called “The Choice.”
“The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavely mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left it’s mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity,
the night’s remorse.”
That’s a problem we all face. If we pursue perfection of the life — as husband, parent, friend — we will also probably have to face “that old perplexity an empty purse.” And if we try to perfect our work, there’s every possibility that we’ll be left facing “the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.”
You ought to know, as you’re thinking about your future, that this “Choice” is never going to go away, anymore than it has for any other generation. Nobody “Has It All.”
You can’t “graduate” to the next place until you have imagined yourself as that person. Is that me? If you know who you are, or even who you would like to become, you will know how to work. Everything is not of use to you.
Dr. Watson was amazed to learn Sherlock Holmes did not know that the earth went around the sun. Yet Holmes knew all sorts of obscure data on blood stains and varieties of cigar ash that might help him solve a murder. “My dear Holmes,” said Watson, “you can’t possibly be ignorant of the Copernician Theory.”
“Now that I have learned it,” said Holmes, “I will proceed to forget it.”
For my third point, I’d encourage you: DON’T BE AMBITIOUS.
Instead, have personal standards.
The “ambitious” student looks for a path to a grade. The serious student wants to have a personal relationship with the material. Don’t be afraid to fall in love with ideas, to love poets, philosophers, political scientists or saints who move you. In this regard, if your experience is like mine, St. Stephen’s may have served you better than your college will. Amherst, thinking of itself as intellectually elite, liked to pretend that all values were equal. Well, they aren’t — at least not in your life. Everything is not relative. Sooner or later, you will have to decide where you stand — on many things.
Read all the books, but don’t be afraid to have 10 or 100 of them that you love, that you return to time and again until you’ve worn out their pages, because they speak not just to your education but to your life.
The teacher who taught me as much as anybody about establishing personal standards was Coach Thompson. Like he said then, “No pain, no gain.” Like they say now, “Just do it.”
That applies to the classroom, too. Academic rigor is not relevant, but it is important. Almost nothing I learned in school has been of any specific use to me in my job. However, in a general sense, it has been essential. you don’t lift weights on a football field; but you better lift some weights before you go out there. In the same way, a well-conditioned mind works better on all problems — including personal ones. So, don’t learn in order to get grades; study so taht you can learn how to think.
After 20 years, there’s nothing in sports of which I am more certain than this: the best athletes are driven far more by their own personal standards than by any ambition. I call it the difference between pursuing success and seeking excellence.
Success is tricky, perishable and often outside our control; the pursuit of success makes a poor cornerstone, especially for a whole personality. Excellence is dependable, lasting and largely an issue within our own control. Pursuit of excellence, in and for itself, is the best of foundations.
Whenever bad news hits the sports page, look for a success story gone wrong. Look for people who wanted, more than anything else, to be known as “winners.” On the other hand, whenever we see a team that seems to guide us like a lodestar from decade to decade — whether it be Dean Smith’s Tar Heels, Don Shula’s Dolphins, Joe Paterno’s Nittany Lions, Earl Weaver’s Orioles or Red Auerbach’s Celtics — we always find a guiding passion for quality and a deep respect for the game.
Of all the athletes I’ve met, I don’t consider it coincidence that the one who cared most profoundly about playing the game properly, up to his own standard — rather than “winning” — was also the greatest athlete I have covered.
Jack Nicklaus.
That’s also why he can take such joy in the moment of competition. That’s why he can produce, not choke. Because he is primarily concerned with expressing the skill he’s mastered, he can truly accept any outcome.
What we are talking about here, in different disguises, is having a personal conscience. Ultimately, you will answer to yourself, not your resume.
Now, for my fourth point, I would like to quote another great philosopher — Bobby McFerrin — who said: DON’T WORRY. BE HAPPY.
Back when I was graduating, I thought everything was very serious. I thought that if you made one mistake it went, as they said then, “on your permanent record.” That may be true in some parts of the world, or for people in our own society that are not as fortunate as most of us. However, I’d say that, in many ways, life is more forgiving and more flexible than I ever dreamed. If you can forgive yourself for your imperfections and your screw ups, and if you really work to change, you can remake yourself in the middle of your life. At least once. Probably more often. (I think, in the Episcopal liturgy this is called “repentence and redemption.”) It’s never too late to take control of your life or to try to change it.
In school, we tend to assume that the most important virtue is intelligence. Outside of school, I haven’t found that to be true. Scrates said that courage is the most imporatant virtue because it makes all the other virtues possible.
If life really can be forgiving and flexible, if we dont’ have to get it all right the first time, if we are allowed to try again — just as sports teams can say, “Wait ’til next year” — then why shouldn’t we take some of McFerrin’s advice? Don’t worry. Be happy. Or, as the French philosopher Montaigne put it, “I put under the heading of expenses what my nonchalance costs me for its food and upkeep.”
I’d like to make one last point. It’s short, but I’m pretty sure of it: LIVE FOR TODAY.
Process is important. It’s how you live, not where you’re going that counts. Inhabit your life, don’t just move through it. Once again, the example that comes to mind is Nicklaus. He’s probably the greatest golfer who ever lived. He runs a business empire worth nearly half-a-billion dollars. Yet, when you’re around him, he’s always Right There. He looks you so dead in the eye, with such hungry intensity, that it’s unnerving. By contrast, you realize how unfocused and bored most people seem. He listens, really listens, to what is said.
Enjoy the process because, in a sense, that’s all there is. Nietzsche wrote about what he called, “the melancholy of all things completed.” In sports, that’s called post-championship depression. It’s one of the reasons so few teams repeat as champions. No goal, not even winning a world title, is that satisfying for that long. So enjoy getting there. Or even enjoy failing to get there.
I’ve enjoyed being with you today. Congratulations on your accomplishments and on your graduation to new things. I’d like to leave you with some words a lot better than my own.
Hundreds of years ago, Montaigne wrote: “It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully…
“We are great fools. ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say, ‘I have done nothing today.’ What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations… To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.”
Thomas Boswell
St. Stephen’s Commencement
June 10, 1989
