This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna
Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university
where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.
"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. You will 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 accounts but also
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 cold comfort on
a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
received your 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 work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer
consider myself the centre 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 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 cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for
lunch. I would be rotten, 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 pay cheque, 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 at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a
red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with
concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet 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. Pick up the
phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are
generous. 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 beer 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, and our minutes.
It is so easy to take for granted 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 to live.
I learned to live many years ago. 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 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 back yard 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".
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