Today my son finishes the 7th grade, and how strange it is to me to see my not-so-long-ago little bundle of joy becoming a young man, soon to be out there facing the world.
And this morning on the news I heard about the commencement speech that Oprah Winfrey presented at Harvard University. I have always felt that Oprah is a remarkable woman with her head squarely on her shoulders, full of wisdom and good common sense. Here are some of the things that she said in her speech that I especially like:
Tyler Kingkade, writing at the Huffington Post, reports:
“I know you know the truth,” Winfrey told the Class of 2013. “We all know that we are better than the cynicism and the pessimism that is regurgitated throughout Washington and the 24-hour cable news cycle — not my channel, by the way.”
Winfrey got one of her few bursts of applause when she got political, embracing expanded gun background checks, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and expanded education and opportunities for the poor.
“We understand that the vast majority of people in this country believe in stronger background checks because they realize that we can uphold the Second Amendment and reduce the violence that is robbing us of our children,” Winfrey said to applause. “They don’t have to be incompatible.”
She evoked the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, encouraging people to pull themselves out of darkness and devote themselves to something positive.
“There’s a common denominator in our human experience,” Winfrey said. “Most of us, I tell you, we don’t want to be divided. … What we want is to be validated. We want to be understood.“
And, according to Melinda Henneberger, writing at the Washington Post:
…the best thing she said was this: In doing more than 35,000 interviews, she’s learned that everybody wants to be validated. Everyone she’s ever sat down with, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to “Beyonce in all her Beyonce-ness,” has asked, in his or her own way, after the TV lights went out, “Was I OK?” Just like we all want to know, “Did you hear me? Did what I say matter to you?” So on the campus where Facebook started, she challenged grads to “have more face-to-face conversations with people you may disagree with.” Which is purpose enough, given how little this occurs now…
Then there are the American University grads of 1963, who 50 years ago on June 10th heard JFK make history by speaking, at their graduation, about “not merely peace for America, but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.” Those words so moved Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that he actually allowed the address to be broadcast in the Soviet Union, and the address led quite directly to the signing of the nuclear test ban treaty later that summer.
On a personal level, says ’63 grad Faith Shrinsky Kirk, the speech “was the thrill of our lives,” and for many in the class, set the course. To her, it said, ‘Wait a minute; start thinking; isn’t that why you came here?’
“He was the inspiration for my generation to start questioning the status quo,” Kirk said. And that talk led her to spend her whole working life advocating for people with disabilities. “I don’t want to go so far as to say it was life-changing,” said another ’63 grad, Carl Cook, who has worked as an adviser at American almost ever since. “But intellectually, it was.”
For those of us who did not have JFK to point the way, though, or were busy thinking about lunch, or soon-to-be-exes, or — in better times — job offers, here’s a brief compilation of what a few people I asked said was the best piece of advice anyone had given them in the years since they wore a cap and gown:
Never turn up empty-handed. If they shoot at you, crawl forward and keep your butt down. If it doesn’t look yummy now, why stick it in the fridge? From a Girl Scout leader while lost on a hike: When in doubt, take the high road. Don’t let anyone take pictures of you naked. And no matter how much you feel like leaving with nothing but the clothes on your back, oh do take the pots. (Love may fade, but cast iron is forever.)
The Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, who didn’t remember what Adlai Stevenson told Radcliffe grads in 1963 until she looked it up in preparation for her 50th reunion this week, said it was actually quite a remarkable speech, too. Stevenson addressed a class that, just a month after the publication of Betty Friedan’s ‘Feminine Mystique,’ was “the first to receive the message that we were the elite women who could write the Great American Novel while the children were napping.”
In one way, it was ahead of its time, asking whether graduates soon turn from “scholar to slave,” while changing diapers. Yet in another way Stevenson, too, was a product of his time, praising Radcliffe for allowing students “to carry on their scholastic and professional interests part-time to prepare for greater participation in the post-domestic years.”
“Throw another hero on the fire,” Goodman joked. In the years that followed, the best advice she didn’t take, she says, was just this: Wear flats.
Good advice. And good luck to the Class of 2013! It won’t be long until I see my baby boy out there hearing similar speeches. (And who knows what things will be like in 9 or 10 years!)
You can read the above articles in their entirety, as well as watch a video of Oprah’s entire speech, at the following:
Oprah Harvard Commencement Speech: We’re Better Than Washington’s Cynicism and Will Harvard grads remember what Oprah said?