Anna Quindlen speech

Anna Quindlen

It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family

to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university.

It's an honor to follow my great Uncle Jim, who was a gifted

physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable

businessman. Both of them could have told you something

important about their professions, about medicine or

commerce.

I have no specialized

field of interest or

expertise, which puts me

at a disadvantage talking

to you today.

I'm a novelist. My

work is human nature.

Real life is all I know.

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The

second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget the words

my father sent me on a postcard last year:

"If you win the rat

race, you're still a rat."

Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in

the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you

are busy making other plans."

You will walk

out of here this

afternoon with

only one thing

that no one

else has.

There will be hundreds of people out there with your

same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you

want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive

who has sole custody of your life.

Your particular life. Your entire life.

Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or

at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of

your heart. Not just your bank account but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so

much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a

resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're

sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test

results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume.

I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to

let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I

no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show

up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my husband.

I have tried to make marriage vows

mean what they say.

I show up. I listen.

I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my friends, and

they to me. Without them, there would

be nothing to say to you today, because

I would be a cardboard cutout. But I

call them on the phone, and I meet them

for lunch.

I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those

other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at

your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I

wanted to tell you today: get a life.

A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the

bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so

very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one

afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing

itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop

and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water or the

way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick

up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and

who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is

work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that

you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your

connection to others.

Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your

Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous.

Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood

where you grew up;

look at a full moon

hanging silver in a

black, black sky

on a cold night.

And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no

business taking it for granted.

Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it

around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give

it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or

sister. All of you want to do well.

But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be

enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our

minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the

azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color

of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and

falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist

instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad

happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that,

if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all.

And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the

hardest lesson of all.

I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned

that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only

guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the

world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it,

completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by

telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear.

Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be

happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you

do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.

Well, you can learn all those things,

out there, if you get a real life, a full life,

a professional life, yes, but another life,

too, a life of love and laughs and a

connection to other human beings.

Just keep you eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the

classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam

comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed "I

wish I had spent more time at the office."

I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney

Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing

a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.

He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our

feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule,

panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds

were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went

below freezing , hiding from the police amidst the Tilt-a-Whirl

and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides.

But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the

and the boardwalk facing the water, just the way we were

sitting now, even when it got cold and he had to wear his

newspapers after he read them.

And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters?

Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox?

And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the

view, young lady. Look at the view."

And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I

try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell

you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his

pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be.

Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.