Start time: 10:27 AM CDT
End time: 11:28 AM CDT
Word count: 986 (Composed entirely on my Blackberry.)
"Write a commencement address." -Ken Faikus
Good morning graduates, distinguished educators, long-suffering parents, proud families and honored guests.
I am proud to be given the privilege to address you today. There are several reasons this honor is typically bestowed on someone who did not graduate from the institution they are speaking at, and to the best of my knowledge, they are as follows:
One, there is a cardboard scale model of a building in the administration office that is soon to bear the speaker's name.
Two, the speaker has a unique life experience to impart to the leaders of tomorrow with a mind, and usually a face, buffeted by the cruel winds of fate, experience, and reality.
Three, the speaker is someone of sufficient celebrity to merit inclusion on the commencement montage during the Friday nightly newscast.
I stand before you as none of these things. Frankly, I stand before you mystified as to why I was chosen for such a prestigious honor. What wisdom could I import to you? What can I tell you about the most important things that I've learned, that will not cause you to shake your heads and mutter, "Wow, dude, I'm never giving a dime to that endowment campaign."?
My answer to you is this.
We are all, each and every one of us, on a Japanese bullet train towards Death. We don't know where the last stop is or how soon it's coming, but it's there. Sooner or later, every one of us gets off the train, but the train keeps moving, back and forth.
I hate to focus on mortality at such a festive occasion, but you're celebrating a major milestone today. So if life is a ride on a Japanese bullet train (and the exact word is "shinkansen", but I'm as illiterate in Japanese as I am in every language that isn't English) make sure that you stop to recognize the importance of the time between.
You're in America, so many of you have probably flown on airplanes. I live in Las Vegas. And one of the runways there runs parallel to Sunset Road and is lined with palm trees. When I took my first trip out there I was 21, and when the plane landed and I looked to my left, I saw those trees by the dozens and realized I was in a very different place than home. But when I saw the one tree with the top of it bound up, since it had just been planted, even as we're landing at 200 miles an hour I was turning my head and trying to figure it out. Obviously being from Chicago didn't give me a lot of insight into what palm trees looked like when they were planted.
Once I lost sight of it the rest of those toothpicks just flew by, and we were at the gate. One long stream of same with just that little bit of difference.
And that's what you need to look for. That one little variant, that one person who you notice, that one thing that sticks out. Find what's interesting on your surroundings and I can guarantee you will never be bored-and in an age dominated by so many avenues of leisure and so many ways to distract yourself, that's better than any other insight I can give you.
The other important thing to remember, part of the reason that new palm tree was so interesting to me was not only that I'd never seen one like that before, I'd just been up in the air for four hours above clouds and would have considered nearly anything to be interesting. I will tell you this as a young person and you'll laugh, but after a marriage, a job, a kid, you'll understand; value the quiet. It's when you can think for a little bit, escape in a book for a little bit, lose yourself for a little bit. As the world creeps in around you one of the first things to go is that freedom. Hang onto it if you can.
As your journey continues you'll figure more of it out, like where the dining car is and why some stations have people to push you onto the train and jam everyone in as tight as sardines. Some of you have overcome tremendous obstacles to be here, and all of you no doubt face many more, but tell the people who matter to you that you love them; you don't know when their next stop is.
As the non-rich, non-famous, minimal-wisdom guy speaking to you today, all I can ask is for you to live as if there's a better tomorrow that we all have to share. There is a place in this world for optimism and cynicism and skepticism and atheism and baptism and little kids who sing Christmas carols off key. A well developed sense of humor will get you through everything, and a poorly defined version of irony will make you wealthy and famous, as long as you're Alanis Morrisette.
And with that, our common experience comes to a close. You look at the woman next to you; she's going to start the next social networking fad. The weird looking kid on the aisle? He's got two chords in his head that could change the world and he MIGHT find the third one in the next decade. The guy three rows in front of you - he's going to start the next Enron and probably head to federal prison. Look up here at me; I'm going to be on a plane in three hours looking for the next palm tree, and hoping to God my luggage came along for the ride.
Before I stop speaking, I'd like you to take a second, close your eyes tightly, and make sure to commit this moment to memory. This achievement belongs to you for the rest of your life.
Congratulations to you all.
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