Commencement Speech & Poem

Woodlawn School | 6 June 2024

To Seniors: 

I’m honored the seniors asked me back to give this talk. I miss you. I’m proud of you. You are amazing, strong, creative, kind, and passionate. I’m envious of the education you’ve had here at Woodlawn, and I know you’re going to transform over the next few years into even more amazing young adults.

In the month leading up to today, I think I wrote a new speech in my head every night. I wrote a speech about when I met each of the seniors: taking their photos for yearbook when they were in third grade . . . seeing them in class on the day they first moved to North Carolina . . . or first came to Woodlawn . . . knowing them first as the younger brother of one of my longtime students . . . meeting their parents first and telling them about Woodlawn . . . or maybe my wife was their doctor when they were three years old. 

I wrote a speech about funny stories in the classroom, about what the students taught me, about how the first thing I learned to give up in the classroom was my dignity. If I wanted the students to do something, I did it first. I crawled through the cardboard box of the Transformation Machine. I did the silly dance and made the zine. I memorized the poem, wore the costume, and talked in a funny voice. 

I wrote a speech about how I learned the importance of creating projects that encouraged students to make their own choices. The more choices you make, the stronger you get. If a student makes a good argument for doing something their way, I might let them do it. And if they changed their mind two days later, I might congratulate them on having the strength to do so. Make a choice, see how it feels, change your mind, keep going. 

Anyway, I had a lot of speeches I was excited to give, but these types of graduation-day speeches are more often about giving advice. I know you have to be careful giving advice because the risk is someone might actually take it. Ten years later, you might come back to me and say, “Mr. B., I did what you said, and it did not turn out well for me.”

So what I’m talking about today are just ways of thinking. And these ways of thinking have stuck with me and helped me in my life.

Embrace the stages of your life. I’ve seen so many people who are unhappy because they resist the stages of their own human lifespans. They’re young . . . and want to be older. They’re older . . . and want to be younger. They’re about to enter a rite of passage and want to resist it and live in denial, or skip it and get to the other side without embracing the experience. People make themselves so unhappy when they keep wishing they were someone else, somewhere else. 

You are a unique personality. No one else can live your life for you. No one else can ride the bike, write the story, run the race, or stomp through the puddle. You are what you’ve got, this whole personality: body, mind, limbs, hair, heart, freckles, dreams, likes, quirks, and especially imagination.

Be honest about your desires. State your desires as a courtesy to others. Other people assume you are where you want to be, that you’re doing what you want to be doing, and that you are who you appear to be. So get where you wanna get, and do what you wanna do, and become who you wanna become.

Do the work you feel that you must do. This starts with paying attention to how you feel. Take yourself seriously. Don’t work against the grain of your personality. And don’t get hung up on how people divide work into categories and opposites: work, play, chores, games, jobs, careers, professions. We make up rules for defining different kinds of human activity. But sometimes you can just ignore those rules and define your own pursuits for yourself.

You only find the work you feel you must do . . . by paying attention to how you feel about the work you’re doing.

Maybe you feel you have a calling. Maybe you don’t. So do stuff. Pay attention to how you feel. If you feel a spark, then do some more of that stuff. If you don’t feel a spark, quit that stuff, and quit fast. There’s something else that you’re supposed to be doing, and you have to get there as fast as you can. Don’t be afraid to change your mind, especially when it comes to searching for your calling. 

(And if you heard my bio and all the things I’ve done, you’re thinking, “Yeah, you would say that.”)

A calling is an action adventure of the personality. You create your personality year after year, through choices, work, love, imagination, and relationships. And eventually you want to get to the point in your life when you can operate at your fullest capacity.

When I talk about personality, I don’t mean like “He’s a charming little devil.” I mean personality in a deeply dynamic sense. 

Do the work that fills your spirit and suits your soul because that’s the only way to grow your personality.

I do the work I love in order to grow my personality, which I express by doing the work I love.

Beauty is developing your personality and helping others develop theirs.

. . . . .

In the past, people have expected me to rap, because I’ve been known to do that. For today, I wrote a few timely verses—no rapping.

“Why Bother Being Human?”

Why bother being human . . . when there’s ChatGPT?

Why bother being you . . . or us . . . or me?

Why bother learning . . . or swinging on a swing

When you can get a robot . . . to do the exact same thing?

Why bother being neurotic . . . when you have neuralink,

A chip implanted so you don’t have to think?

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I’m not.

Whether a robot’s in you, or you in a robot,

Our only vacation . . . is in a wifi hot spot.

Why bother visiting Grandma . . . or Grandpa? They’re fine.

They’re getting couples massages from HomeCare Robots Models Oh-8 and Oh-9.

Why bother to mow the lawn, or are you forgetting? 

The Roomba has a Kentucky-blue-grass setting.

Why bother dreaming about all the things that you’ll do?

Why bother feeling . . . if the robots feel, too?

Why bother asking . . . about who, what, and why?

The answer is up . . . with the drones in the sky.

And why bother with worry . . . about a robot uprising?

Why bother with ethics . . . and strategizing?

We may not know when it happens. There may not be a fuss.

We may not feel the change . . . when they’re playing with us.

But that won’t last long because humans are icky.

We make a terrible racket, and our fingers are sticky.

We eat, cry, and wiggle. Our morals are spotty.

Plus we need so much sunscreen, and our noses are snotty.

Success is being able to keep doing what you’re doing,

but if the robots can do it, why bother pooh-poohing?

Why bother writing? It’s already written.

Why bother smiting? We’ve already been smitten

By algorithms, androids . . . software, shiny toys.

So why bother being human . . . when there’s technology?

Because the human life that we’re given is for you . . . and us . . . and me.

Why bother working, playing, or having fun?

The trick is to find work you enjoy getting ready to do, doing, and having done.

Why bother being human?

Why bother being you?

I’d like to tell you more. I’d like to tell you today.

But the robots are listening, and they don’t want me to say.

I know you’ll figure it out. You’ll know what to do

Because the beauty of life . . . is the beauty of you. 

. . . . .

Congratulations, Seniors!

_____

My daughter attended Woodlawn School from 2008-2013, and I taught at Woodlawn School from 2013-2021.