School of Education Convocation

May 17, 2003

Graduating students, honored guests, Dean Lumpkin, fellow faculty and staff, family and friends:

My wife reminded me this morning that on occasions like this, brevity is cherished more than wisdom. I reminded my wife...I'm a college professor!

A popular exercise for career counselors is to have people close their eyes and imagine themselves living a typical day 10 years into the future. I teach people how to do career counseling, so it's an exercise I'd used maybe a hundred times before I sat down years ago and made myself do it on paper.

I wrote out what my life, especially my work life, might look like 10 years down the road, presuming those 10 years had been reasonably good to me, and that things had turned out mostly how I'd hoped they would.

I was shocked by what I wrote. I imagined a life very similar to the life I already had. I was still at KU, teaching classes, doing research, mentoring students. But there was a big difference between my life as I was experiencing it, and the idyllic life I imagined for myself. In my fantasy, I was enjoying it.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Up 'till then I was thinking that if I just got out of graduate school, or once I got a real job, or once I got tenure, or once...But it was clear, happiness is a skill. It's NOT about what you have or where you live. Sure, these are important over time, but most of our day-to-day, minute-to-minute experience has more to do with happiness as a skill.

At some point down the road, you'll look back at your years at KU as the good old days. But the trick is to be here today, to experience today as one of the good old days, while it's happening.

So don't be looking at your watch today. Don't be thinking about what you'll be doing tonight or tomorrow. Sit here right now, take a deep breath, and...just sit here. Look around and take in all the color, the sounds, the bigness of this moment.

One of my top 10 books of all time is by Matthew Fox called Prayer as a Radical Response to Life. Fox says our purpose for being here is twofold, to enjoy life, and to create a world that's better than the one we were born into.

The great religions of the world have struggled with this duality, yielding those that emphasize mysticism, or being in the world and savoring every moment; and those that emphasize prophecy, or calling the world to a better order of justice and mercy.

I suspect there are two groups of students in this room: those whose strong suit is playing--the mystical side; and those whose strong suit is working--the prophetic side. You know which one you are.

E. B. White once said, "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, I could handle that. But I wake up in the morning torn between a desire to save the world, and a desire to savor the world. And that makes it particularly hard to plan the day."

Of course, the answer is that every day we have to find moments to do each of those. And real mastery comes in those moments when we're doing them both at the same time.

Those moments don't happen often. We hope your experience at KU has taught you the value of learning to create those moments over the course of your life.

So tomorrow morning when you wake up, lie in bed for a minute and struggle with how in the world will I spend this day doing both of these things, saving the world and savoring the world.

But right now, be in the good old days. Be in your graduation. Don't drift away, stay right here. When it's time to be happy, smile and know that this is a great moment. And when it's time to be sad, and you will have some of those times today, smile and know that this too is a great moment.

Thanks for being here.