Valedictory Address

“Valedictory Address” (May 1999): 1-3. (UA Case 68, Box 2)

Today, as we balance on the edge of this precipice called graduation, teetering as we look both back into the years of the study that we are celebrating here and ahead to a horizon called our “future”, I have chosen to turn back for a few minutes to review what it is I have learned during this closing era. I do this instead of straining ahead to see our undoubtedly diverse futures. While I do not plan on standing here in front of you and giving the traditional address about how hard we all have worked and about how successful we are all going to be in the future as a result I do intend to share what is also traditionally found in these moments…advice.

It is my goal to take these minutes that I am fortunate enough to have in front of all of you, my fellow graduates, friends, family and professors, to extend some words that are not meant to guide anyone to noticeable life successes but are intended instead to help us all remember that each day forms part of our lives and is precious in itself. This is why I am looking back into the chapter that we are here to finish reading as a group. This chapter is often seen as a preparatory stage, one that is meant to lead to the achievement of some goals we have set out for ourselves.

It has been part of human nature for an eternity to set goals for our lives, I know that I have, but it seems to me that this “life” and its goals are all too often set to be achieved at some hazy point in time, an unknown date in this distant future. While I do not propose ignoring or diminishing the importing of these goals, I do advocate this: every part of our lives is precious and it is too easy to miss out on many wonderful things if we focus too myopically on these far-reaching goals.

Today, I would like to leave one seemingly simple, and commonly mentioned, piece of advice. It is not my own but it is something that I have come to hold on to as a way to ground myself in the times of stress or uncertainty that have arisen throughout my years at UNBSJ, be it related to studies, work or personal events in life. Not only has it guided me through, it has lead me to look back at university as so much more than a step along the long path towards my life goals. I look back at this time as one that is full of friends, laughter, tears, struggles, successes, hard lessons and positive experiences all of its own. The phrase is simple..Live every day to the fullest and take nothing for granted.

I am well aware that these words, when spoken, do not do justice to the complexities they entail. It seems easy to think that we live each day to the fullest, but how many of us have let a small incident, be it a strain on our clothes or a difficulty at work, mar the whole day for us, leaving us, and those who we take our frustrations out upon, in a bad mood. Looking back, I can’t even remember what made me realize that these days were beginning to outnumber the days in which I had done things in order to live my life to the fullest. This hasn’t been something that I have learned to any particular lecture or class at any particular time; it has been instilled in me by many events and the influence of countless professors, friends and family members. No matter when I actually learned it or started to live by it, now that I am able to use it and step back from any situation and evaluate it based on this principle of being, I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Over the past weeks as I have been contemplating how I would get up here and convey this simple concept to you, I have been trying to put into words what it means to me to live each day to the fullest and to not take anything for granted..and this is what I came up with. I live and enjoy each day by doing many little things; actually, I have decided that I have been able to guide my life in this direction because I have finally learned, through my time in university, that much of what I was taught when I was six is really true. Spoken to me as a child by my family, these are the words that have found clarification for me recently. There are five lessons that make up what I have used in my development of the way that I live and I would like to share them with you so that perhaps some of you will be able to use them in your own lives, in your own efforts to live each day for what it is, an equally important part of your whole life. So, here they are.

The first lesson: don’t cry over spilled milk. This elementary principle can be used to evaluate so many situations. I have not been known to be good with failure or the attainment of anything less than what I have strived for. As many of my friends and family know, I tend to be a little stubborn in this respect. However, two things have helped me to embrace this lesson of putting things into perspective, the first being an idea given to me by a professor and the second being an experience that I had a few months ago. The idea given to me was that, if something goes from and it involves another person, don’t sit and worry about it if you can be fairly sure that the other person is not going to be thinking about it fifteen minutes after the incident is over. So, why go home and worry about a mistake you made if you know your boss, or whoever, has forgotten about it by the time they reach their car to go home? I also learned not to cry over spilled milk when I went on a trip in March to a poor country and I saw that those people live with. It is safe to say that ninety percent of our “problems” would be considered luxuries to those people. Now, as a result of their first lesson, if something goes wrong, I can step back and put it into perspective before I let what is usually a small incident ruin my day.

The second lesson: treat others the way you would like to be treated. Not something I learned on any given day, this I have learned from watching my professors as they taught so many students with the patience and a level of respect that they would expect. This helps me to put myself in the shoes of the other person in a given situation and has proven to lead to cooperation and a happy tone in shared endeavors, Basically, this makes work feel less like work as everyone feels confident and approaches a task in positive manner. As anyone here knows who has been treated in any other manner, this small effort to show respect can have overwhelming impacts on a person.

The third lesson that I have come to understand is that you cannot be everything to everyone. This one I have had personal trouble with. I would have to say that this has been a single most important lesson for me to learn in my pursuit of enjoyment for each day. The influence of some very special friends has helped me to realize that it is okay to say no sometimes and it is okay to make priorities and to say forget it to the other things that arise and not to worry about them. That, in my mind, is the key to allowing oneself a low level of stress, which is probably the bare necessity of living each day to the fullest while allowing one to take notice and appreciate what one has. After all, how can you be happy if you are worried, and running yourself ragged, all of the time? Thank you to those friends; you have changed my life more than you know….and also to the professors who loaded us up with work so that we had to choose our priorities and live satisfied with our choices.

The last two ideas that I have used in living each day to the fullest balance each other. While the things that are worthwhile are often not easy, it is important to not keep both feet firmly planted on the ground at all times. The first idea speaks for itself as we have all worked our way to get here today and are all well aware that this worthwhile experience has been anything but easy. The second has come from, shall I say, experimenting with ways to take the pressure off at certain times of the year during the last two years. I didn’t let myself do this during the first two years of university and it took a toll on me as I felt burned out even in times that weren’t overly busy. Taking your feet off of the ground is a sort of permission that I have learned to give myself to act like a kid again. I owe credit for this to a trip that a few people took great pains to organize last year. So, as the last of the lessons that I have learned, these two help me by reminding me that, although I know that I have to work hard to get what I want, I also have to let loose sometimes.

Remember, these lessons, not crying over spilled milk, treating others as I want to be treated, not trying to be everything to everyone, being prepared to work for things that are worthwhile and allowing myself to take one foot off the ground as I need to, are not words that I live by for the long run. I don’t look back on a situation that bothered me two weeks ago and think that I shouldn’t have gotten worked up about what happened after the fact and I don’t wait until I am in panic before letting myself get away…these are the things I try to do each and every day…these are what I live by in my attempt to live each day to the fullest and not take anything for granted.

I have come to think of university as much more than a place of study which I have attended in order to travel a few steps on my path of goals; it has become my haven for learning to live a rich, fulfilling life made up of single days, no matter whether or not I should ever reach that hazy horizon where my goals site waiting. With that said, I hope that my words here have done some justice to my beliefs. I thank everyone who has been a part of these fourteen hundred and sixty days of my life that I will remember as university and I also thank everyone here for being a part of this day for celebration. To the graduates, congratulations on all you have learned!!