Me Thinks

I would like to highlight one more excellent commencement ceremony address given by David Brooks at the University of New Hampshire. He started with some humor: 

I especially like all the Commencement addresses telling graduates how important it is to fail. These started a few years ago with a Steve Jobs and J.K. Rowling and from these addresses we learn that failure is wonderful if you happen to be Steve Jobs or JK Rowling. For most people, failure just stinks. Don’t fail.

The right question to ask is, What does life ask of me? What do my specific circumstance ask that I do? Or to put it more specifically: What is the defining challenge facing my generation and what is my responsibility in meeting that challenge?

I would say the biggest crisis of today, the one you will all have a chance to address, is the crisis of connection, the crisis of solidarity. Like a lot of countries America is divided, distrustful, angry. The social fabric is in tatters. Only 32 percent of Americans say they can trust the people around them. Only 8 percent of Americans say they have important conversations with their neighbors. The suicide rate has risen by 30 percent since 1999, and suicide is a proxy for loneliness. The teenage suicide rate is up 70 percent, and the teenage suicide rises from pain and solitude. Mental health problems are skyrocketing. Depression rates are skyrocketing. The American lifespan is declining, in part because 72,000 Americans die of opioid addictions. Our politics are defined by bitterness and division. Social media is often cruel, addictive and empty. We are losing the common stories that used to unite us, the common pride in who we are.

We just don’t treat each other well. We don’t see each other deeply. So, I’d say your generation’s assignment is to take a society marked by separation and distrust and create a society marked by trusting relationship, thick connection and healthy community--and you have to do it at a moment when we are becoming the most diverse nation in the history of the world. How are you going to do it? Well, obviously I have no idea. My generation’s job was to screw things up. It’s you guys who have to fix it. But I do have some inklings.

The first is about the root cause of all this disconnection.  We live in culture that is too individualistic when it should be more communal, in a culture that is too cognitive when it should be more emotional, in a culture that is too utilitarian when it should be more moral.

We told you the lies of hyper-individualism. The first lie is that life is an individual journey, that the goal of life is individual happiness. The second lie is: I can make my own truth. Each individual person gets to have their own truth and their own facts. The third lie is: I can make myself happy. This is the lie of self-sufficiency. If I can just get one more promotion, lose fifteen pounds or get better at yoga. We tell this lie even though when you talk to people near the end of their lives they report that they were really happy when they defeated self-sufficiency, when they are in deep and interdependent relationship with other people, when they were least individualistic and most connected.

Then we tell you the lies of the meritocracy: Career success can make you feel fulfilled; you are what you accomplish; you’re not a soul to be saved, you’re a set of skills to be maximized; the people who are smarter and more accomplished are more valuable than other people.We’ve taken individualism to the extreme and in so doing we’ve weakened the connections between people.

I ask you to weave—weave relationship together. Some of you will do radical weaving but most will just do the little things that shine the spotlight on others. The most important weaving is happy and fun. You’ll organize a club, or maybe a croquet or a volleyball league. The best way to Weave is through aggressive friendship. If you embrace aggressive friendship you’ll be the one who organizes the summer barbecue on your street. The best kind of weaving involves music, so maybe you’ll organize an annual talent show. Being in your early twenties is really hard so maybe you’ll organize a monthly book club to talk about vocation.   Maybe you’ll find an organization that meets once a month with people completely unlike yourself. Aggressive friends are not content within boundaries.

Your generation is called to repair the social fabric by having fun. That sounds like a pretty good life to me.