There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches
One such part involves boredom
Routine
And petty frustration
The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about
By way of example
Let’s say it’s an average adult day
And you get up in the morning
Go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job
And you work hard for eight or ten hours
And at the end of the day you’re tired
And somewhat stressed
And all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early
Because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again
But then you remember there’s no food at home
You haven’t had time to shop this week
Because of your challenging job
And so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket
It’s the end of the workday
And the traffic is apt to be
Very bad
So getting to the store takes way longer than it should
And when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded
Because of course, it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping
And the store is hideously fluorescently lit
And infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop
And it’s pretty much the last place you want to be
But you can’t just get in and quickly out
You have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want
And you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts
And eventually
You get all your supper supplies
Except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open
Even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush
So the checkout line is incredibly long
Which is stupid and infuriating
Stupid and infuriating
Which is stupid and infuriating
Stupid and infuriating
But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register
Who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front
And you pay for your food
And you get told to
‘Have a nice day’
In a voice that is the absolute voice of death
Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left
All the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot
And then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera
Everyone here has done this, of course
But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine
[Chorus]
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
But it will be
And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides
But that is not the point
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing
Is gonna come in
Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think
And if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to
I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop
Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home
And it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way
And who are all these people in my way?
And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed
And nonhuman they seem in the checkout line
Or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line
And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is
Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting
I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge stupid
Lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers
And V-12 pickup trucks
Burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas
And I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers
Always seem to be on the biggest
Most disgustingly selfish vehicles
[Audience laughter]
Driven by the ugliest -
[Interrupting audience applause]
This is an example of how NOT to think
[Chorus]
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
One such part involves boredom
Routine
And petty frustration
The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about
By way of example
Let’s say it’s an average adult day
And you get up in the morning
Go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job
And you work hard for eight or ten hours
And at the end of the day you’re tired
And somewhat stressed
And all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early
Because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again
But then you remember there’s no food at home
You haven’t had time to shop this week
Because of your challenging job
And so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket
It’s the end of the workday
And the traffic is apt to be
Very bad
So getting to the store takes way longer than it should
And when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded
Because of course, it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping
And the store is hideously fluorescently lit
And infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop
And it’s pretty much the last place you want to be
But you can’t just get in and quickly out
You have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want
And you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts
And eventually
You get all your supper supplies
Except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open
Even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush
So the checkout line is incredibly long
Which is stupid and infuriating
Stupid and infuriating
Which is stupid and infuriating
Stupid and infuriating
But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register
Who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front
And you pay for your food
And you get told to
‘Have a nice day’
In a voice that is the absolute voice of death
Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left
All the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot
And then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera
Everyone here has done this, of course
But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine
[Chorus]
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
But it will be
And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides
But that is not the point
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing
Is gonna come in
Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think
And if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to
I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop
Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home
And it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way
And who are all these people in my way?
And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed
And nonhuman they seem in the checkout line
Or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line
And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is
Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting
I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge stupid
Lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers
And V-12 pickup trucks
Burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas
And I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers
Always seem to be on the biggest
Most disgustingly selfish vehicles
[Audience laughter]
Driven by the ugliest -
[Interrupting audience applause]
This is an example of how NOT to think
[Chorus]
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
D-D-Day after week, after month, after year
(Japanese dialogue from Naruto Shippuden between Naruto & Pain)
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe
The realest, most vivid and important person in existence
We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness
Because it’s so socially repulsive
But it’s pretty much the same for all of us
It is our default setting
Hard-wired into our boards at birth
Think about it
There is no experience you have had
That you were not the absolute center of
[Chorus]
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
And so on
Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow
But your own are so immediate
Urgent
Real
Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues
This is not a matter of virtue
It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work
Of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting
Which is to be deeply and literally self-centered
And to see and interpret everything
Through this lens of self
People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being
‘Well-adjusted’
Which I suggest to you is not an accidental term
[Chorus]
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe
The realest, most vivid and important person in existence
We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness
Because it’s so socially repulsive
But it’s pretty much the same for all of us
It is our default setting
Hard-wired into our boards at birth
Think about it
There is no experience you have had
That you were not the absolute center of
[Chorus]
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
And so on
Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow
But your own are so immediate
Urgent
Real
Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues
This is not a matter of virtue
It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work
Of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting
Which is to be deeply and literally self-centered
And to see and interpret everything
Through this lens of self
People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being
‘Well-adjusted’
Which I suggest to you is not an accidental term
[Chorus]
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
The world as you experience it
Is there in front of YOU
Or behind YOU
To the left or right of YOU
On YOUR TV or YOUR monitor
Given the triumphant academic setting here
An obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect
This question gets very tricky
Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education
At least in my own case
Is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff
To get lost in abstract arguments inside my head
Instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me
Paying attention to what is going on
Inside me
As I’m sure you guys know by now
It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive
Instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head
It may be happening right now
Twenty years after my own graduation
I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about
Teaching you how to think
Is actually shorthand for a much deeper
More serious idea
Learning how to think
Really means learning how to exercise some control
Over how and what you think
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to
And to choose how you construct meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life
You will be totally
Hosed
Think of the old cliché about, quote
“The mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”
This
Like many clichés
So lame and unexciting on the surface
Actually expresses a great and terrible truth
It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in
The head
The head
They shoot the terrible master
And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger
And I submit that this is what the real
No bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about
How to keep from going through your comfortable
Prosperous
Respectable adult life
Dead
Unconscious
A slave to your head
And to your natural default setting of being uniquely
Completely
Imperially alone
Day in and day out
That may sound like hyperbole
Or abstract nonsense
Let’s get concrete
The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what
‘Day in day out’
Really means
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
An obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect
This question gets very tricky
Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education
At least in my own case
Is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff
To get lost in abstract arguments inside my head
Instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me
Paying attention to what is going on
Inside me
As I’m sure you guys know by now
It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive
Instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head
It may be happening right now
Twenty years after my own graduation
I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about
Teaching you how to think
Is actually shorthand for a much deeper
More serious idea
Learning how to think
Really means learning how to exercise some control
Over how and what you think
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to
And to choose how you construct meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life
You will be totally
Hosed
Think of the old cliché about, quote
“The mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”
This
Like many clichés
So lame and unexciting on the surface
Actually expresses a great and terrible truth
It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in
The head
The head
They shoot the terrible master
And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger
And I submit that this is what the real
No bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about
How to keep from going through your comfortable
Prosperous
Respectable adult life
Dead
Unconscious
A slave to your head
And to your natural default setting of being uniquely
Completely
Imperially alone
Day in and day out
That may sound like hyperbole
Or abstract nonsense
Let’s get concrete
The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what
‘Day in day out’
Really means
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
[Chorus]
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Here’s another didactic little story
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness
One of the guys is religious
The other is an atheist
And the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer
And the atheist says
Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God
It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing
Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard
And I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing
And it was 50 below
And so I tried it
I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out
‘Oh, God, if there is a God’
‘I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me’
And now, in the bar
The religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled
‘Well then you must believe now’ he says
‘After all’
‘Here you are’
‘Alive’
The atheist just rolls his eyes
‘No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.’
It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis
The exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people
Given those people’s two different belief templates
And two different ways of constructing meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief
Nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true
And the other guy’s is false or bad
Which is fine
Except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from
Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys
As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world
And the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired
Like height or shoe-size
Or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language
As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of
Personal
Intentional
Choice
Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance
The nonreligious guy is so totally certain
In his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help
True
There are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists
At least to most of us
But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever
Blind certainty
A close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up
The point here
Is that I think this is one part
Of what
Teaching me how to think
Is really supposed to mean
To be just a little less arrogant
To have just a little
Critical awareness about myself and my certainties
Because a huge percentage
Of stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out
Totally wrong
And deluded
I have learned this the hard way
As I predict you graduates will, too
Meaning from experience
Meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
[Faded]
Meaning from experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness
One of the guys is religious
The other is an atheist
And the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer
And the atheist says
Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God
It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing
Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard
And I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing
And it was 50 below
And so I tried it
I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out
‘Oh, God, if there is a God’
‘I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me’
And now, in the bar
The religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled
‘Well then you must believe now’ he says
‘After all’
‘Here you are’
‘Alive’
The atheist just rolls his eyes
‘No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.’
It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis
The exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people
Given those people’s two different belief templates
And two different ways of constructing meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief
Nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true
And the other guy’s is false or bad
Which is fine
Except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from
Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys
As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world
And the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired
Like height or shoe-size
Or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language
As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of
Personal
Intentional
Choice
Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance
The nonreligious guy is so totally certain
In his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help
True
There are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists
At least to most of us
But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever
Blind certainty
A close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up
The point here
Is that I think this is one part
Of what
Teaching me how to think
Is really supposed to mean
To be just a little less arrogant
To have just a little
Critical awareness about myself and my certainties
Because a huge percentage
Of stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out
Totally wrong
And deluded
I have learned this the hard way
As I predict you graduates will, too
Meaning from experience
Meaning from experience
[Chorus]
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
[Faded]
Meaning from experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Experience
Experience
Meaning from experience
Greetings, thanks and congratulations
To Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005
There are these two young fish swimming along
And they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way
Who nods at them and says
“Morning, boys. How’s the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit
And then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes
“What the hell is water?”
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches
The deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories
The story thing turns out to be one of the better
Less bullshitty conventions of the genre
But if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish
Please don’t be
I am not the wise old fish
The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that Are hardest to see and talk about
Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude
But the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence
Banal platitudes can have a life or death importance
Or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning
To try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value
Instead of just a material payoff
So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre
Which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about, quote:
“Teaching you how to think.”
Think
If you’re like me as a student
You’ve never liked hearing this
And you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody
To teach you how to think
Since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think
Think (faded)
Think (faded)
But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché
Turns out not to be insulting at all
Because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this
Isn’t really about the capacity to think
But rather about the choice of what to think about
If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing
I’d ask you to think about fish and water
And to bracket for just a few minutes
Your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
To Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005
There are these two young fish swimming along
And they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way
Who nods at them and says
“Morning, boys. How’s the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit
And then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes
“What the hell is water?”
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches
The deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories
The story thing turns out to be one of the better
Less bullshitty conventions of the genre
But if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish
Please don’t be
I am not the wise old fish
The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that Are hardest to see and talk about
Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude
But the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence
Banal platitudes can have a life or death importance
Or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning
To try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value
Instead of just a material payoff
So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre
Which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about, quote:
“Teaching you how to think.”
Think
If you’re like me as a student
You’ve never liked hearing this
And you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody
To teach you how to think
Since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think
Think (faded)
Think (faded)
But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché
Turns out not to be insulting at all
Because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this
Isn’t really about the capacity to think
But rather about the choice of what to think about
If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing
I’d ask you to think about fish and water
And to bracket for just a few minutes
Your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?
What the hell is water?