graduation speeches. Here is the most recent incarnation of the text:
live with intention.
walk to the edge.
listen hard. play with abandon.
practice wellness. laugh. risk love.
continue to learn. appreciate your friends.
choose with no regret.
fail with enthusiasm.
stand by your family.
celebrate the holidays that make sense.
lead or follow a leader. do what you love.
live as if this is all there is.
Richard Kesler, a MacGyver kind of man to whom I gave my father's pocketknife—because he knew so many helpful things to do with it and because he is a father figure to so many kids—has a different view toward his history. He never rewrites his history. He turns his experiences into types of tales, or parables, so that he and others might continue to learn from them. He explains his telling of his own history in this way: “It's not a scar, it's a story.”
Anyone who has been blessed with having children in their lives will know this story well. My three daughters have enriched my life with six grandkids. The oldest is Austin. He is the real author of the quote above. I have a few reminders left from a well-spent youth permanantly etched onto my face, leg, and back. They are scars from car accidents, sports injuries, and the every-man scars we all get just living. My grandkids, like all kids, don't see me as just a person. One day I'm a horse giving rides to a place only a child's eyes can see. On another day I'm an amusement park ride, flying them through the air. And, of course, I am always Superman. On one particular day, lying on the floor, I am a racetrack. My grandson drives his toy cars up and down the three surgical pieces of artwork that resemble railroad tracks covering the length of my back. He asks how they got there. I answer in short versions. Just enough to satisfy his curiosity about each spot. Then, stopping to touch my face, then looking at my leg, then retouching the scars on my back, he finally assesses, “You know, Grandpa, you sure have a lot of stories.”
From then on, inspired by Austin, I would tell anyone who asked about a particular remnant from my youth, “It's not a scar, it's a story.”
Intention is not groggy in the morning. The day is met with a particular enthusiasm. The possibilities of the day are partners—not adversaries. Intentional living recognizes that, while accidents happen, life is not an accident. Days are built choice by choice. Intention savors moments of peaceful contemplation equally with production initiative. Intention knows each moment of the day as a precious investment.
Life is not a series of accidents, and you are not a victim. You can exert power and influence over your own actions, attitudes, and resources.
Be honest.
Speak directly.
Recognize it is more appropriate (at times) to remain quiet.
Define your person in the context of that which is positive and possible. Do not identify yourself by your shortcomings or that which you are (as yet) unable to do.
Choose your qualities. You can become the person you long to be. In a very real sense, in your longing—you are already that person. In practical terms, you are a project. A project undertaken by a qualified director . . . you. If you have habits you do not enjoy, (study and) find a way to get rid of them. Are there qualifications you need? Learn more about them and acquire them.
Walk to the Edge
it is not the easy or convenient life for which i search, but life lived to the edge of all that i may be.
one often meets their destiny on the
way to somewhere else. at first glance
it may appear too hard. look again. always
look again.
i awakened. isn't that a wonderful
statement? i awakened. oh that it were true in
every cell of my being. i awakened! i no longer
slept. i did not draw down the shades of my
spirit and remain forever slumbered to the
vitality of life. i set aside numbness and even
willingly choose pain over not feeling. ah. there's
a lesson here. is it the self-punisher who would
contrast a willingness for pain over numbness?
i see the reach but i must invent a new internal
dynamic. i would choose joy. i would choose
JOY over pain.
I asked a participant in my wordshop, Art for the Creatively Reluctant, if he was happy with his work. He responded, “How would I know if I am happy with it if I have never done it before? I have nothing to compare it to.”
Implicitly this asserts it is only by comparison or contrast that we make assessment and assertion. (I am tempted to measure experience against experience and myself against other people.)
Where do I fall on the continuum? If that person is excellent then must I be less than excellent? And if this experience is peak, does that mean the elevation of this other experience is lower? Can we not stand atop many tall mountains and savor each of their views without comparison? Could my guest have taken a snapshot of his immediate feelings and simply allowed himself to be “happy” with words, with creating, with the enthusiastic support around him? Apparently, not so easily. He required a frame of reference, a means of comparison in order to feel good about his creating.
Comparison and qualifiers. “You are this, but you are not that.” Or “This experience contained this, but it was absent that.” This is how we encounter disappointment. Comparison breeds expectation, and expectation envisions. If the actual sight is different from the vision, then rather than producing surprise or delight, it creates disappointment. So in this day and then day by day collected into the larger frame which is the picture, the snapshot of my life, may I awaken with anticipation, not expectation, that I may experience delight rather than disappointment.
Walk to the edge.
Said another way (as it has been said many other ways): live boldly. Not an endorsement of recklessness or cavalier behavior, but an urging to push personal limits. Live boldly, not loudly. Not at the highest volume on the dial, but dialed to the best reception. What a grating experience to listen long to a radio station that is not dialed to the best reception. One must strain to hear even incorrectly—the programming comes in and goes out. You are uncertain if the missed details were key to understanding. What did you miss? Being dialed in—fully receiving the signal—that's what it is to live boldly. And that is what it takes to walk to the edge.
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