My sister sent me this awhile back when I was in the depths of despair. It helped me to put some of my pain in perspective. Hope it helps. Love to you all... <P><BR>Anna Quindlen's Villanova Commencement Address at Boston College...<BR>------------------------------------------------------------------------<P>It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive<BR>an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to<BR>follow my great-uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle<BR>Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you<BR>something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce.<BR>I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a<BR>disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human<BR>nature. Real life is all I know.<P>Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only<BR>part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator<BR>Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because<BR>he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I<BR>wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words<BR>my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race,<BR>you're still a rat."<P>Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of<BR>the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other<BR>plans."<P>You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else<BR>has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree;<BR>there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a<BR>living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of<BR>your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at<BR>a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just<BR>the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank<BR>account, but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much<BR>anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.<BR>But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or<BR>broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and<BR>they're not so good.<P>Here is my resume. I am a good mother to three children. I have tried<BR>never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no<BR>longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen.<BR>I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make<BR>marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I<BR>am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there<BR>would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard<BR>cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show<BR>up. I listen. I try to laugh. I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at<BR>my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first<BR>rate at your work if your work is all you are.<P>So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life. A real life, not<BR>a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger<BR>house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you<BR>blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a<BR>life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a<BR>breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a<BR>red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with<BR>concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and<BR>first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you<BR>love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is<BR>work.<P>Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a<BR>student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others.<BR>Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug<BR>your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the<BR>azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full<BR>moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night. And realize<BR>that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking<BR>it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to<BR>spread it around. <P>Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in<BR>a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well.<BR>But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.<P>It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It<BR>is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of<BR>the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids' eyes, the way the<BR>melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It<BR>is so easy to exist instead of live.<P>I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened<BR>to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my<BR>druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned<BR>from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned<BR>to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a<BR>dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned<BR>to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back<BR>because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that,<BR>in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:<BR>Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read<BR>in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think<BR>of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with<BR>joy and passion as it ought to be lived. Well, you can learn all those<BR>things, out there, if you get a real life, a full life, a professional<BR>life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a<BR>connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open.<BR>Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is<BR>everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his<BR>deathbed "I wish I had spent more time at the office."<P>I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe<BR>15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the<BR>homeless survive in the winter months. He and I sat on the edge of the<BR>wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about<BR>his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were<BR>gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing,<BR>hiding from the police amidst the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Cyclone and some<BR>of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he<BR>stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting<BR>now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he<BR>read them. And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters?<BR>Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just<BR>stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at<BR>the view." <P>And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to<BR>look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today,<BR>words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to<BR>go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.
