Where Everybody Knows You're Numb

So what does this Methuselah have to say to you, since he has lived so long?

I'll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He's Joe Heller,

author, as you know, of Catch 22. We were at a party thrown by

a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, ''Joe, how does it make

you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more

money than Catch 22, one of the most popular books of all time,

has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?''

Joe said to me, ''I have something he can never have.''

I said, ''What's that, Joe?''

And he said, ''The knowledge that I've got enough.''

His example may be of comfort to many of you Adams and Eves,

who in later years will have to admit that something has gone terribly wrong

-- and that, despite the education you received here, you have somehow

failed to become billionaires.

This can happen to people who are interested in something other than money,

other than the bottom line. We call such people saints -- or I do.

Well-dressed people ask me sometimes, with their teeth bared,

as though they were about to bite me, if I believe in a redistribution of wealth.

I can only reply that it doesn't matter what I think, that wealth is

already being redistributed every hour, often in ways which are absolutely

fantastic.

Nobel Prizes are peanuts when compared with what a linebacker for the

Cowboys makes in a single season nowadays.

For about a hundred years now, the most lucrative prize for a person

who made a really meaningful contribution to the culture of the world

as a physicist, a chemist, a physiologist, a physician, a writer, or a maker

of peace, has been the Nobel Prize. It is about a million dollars now.

Those dollars come, incidentally, from a fortune made by a Swede who

mixed clay with nitroglycerin and gave us dynamite.

KABOOM!

Alfred Nobel intended that his prizes make the planet's most valuable

inhabitants independently wealthy, so that their work could not be inhibited

or bent this way or that way by powerful politicians or patrons.

But one million dollars is only a white chip now -- in the worlds of sports

and entertainment, on Wall Street, in many lawsuits, as compensation

for executives of our larger corporations.

One million dollars in the tabloids and on the evening news is "chump change"

in 1998.

I am reminded of a scene in a W. C. Fields movie, in which he is watching

a poker game in a saloon in a gold-rush town. Fields announces his presence

by putting a one-hundred-dollar bill on the table. The players barely look up

from the game. One of them finally says, "Give him a white chip."

But the cost of a college education, a minor fraction of a million dollars,

is anything but chump change to most Americans. Have academic degrees

in the past been passports to international glory, to wealth grotesquely

out of scale with the needs of ordinary families?

In a few cases. Rice can no doubt name a handful of celebrities who came

from here. Larry McMurtry I know about. But most graduates from Rice,

or from Harvard, or Oxford, or the Sorbonne, or anyplace else you care to name,

have been of use locally rather than nationally. They have commonly

been rewarded with modest but adequate amounts of money -- and even

less fame. In place of fame, they may have had to be content with

someone's seemingly heartfelt thanks for something well done from time to time.

In time, this will prove to have been the destiny of most, but not all,

of the Adams and Eves in this, the Class of 1998 at Rice, and the graduate

students as well. They will find themselves building or strengthening their

communities. Please love such a destiny, if it turns out to be yours --

for communities are all that is substantial about what we create or defend

or maintain in this World.

All the rest is hoop-la.

For your footloose generation, that community could as easily be in

New York City or Washington, DC or Paris -- as in Houston -- or Adelaide,

Australia, or Shanghai, or Kuala Lampur.

Mark Twain, at the end of a profoundly meaningful life, for which he never

received a Nobel Prize, asked himself what it was we all lived for.

He came up with six words which satisfied him. They satisfy me, too.

They should satisfy you:

''The good opinion of our neighbors.''

Neighbors are people who know you, can see you, can talk to you --

to whom you may have been of some help or beneficial stimulation.

They are not nearly as numerous as the fans, say, of Madonna or

Michael Jordan.

To earn their good opinions, you should apply the special skills you have

learned here, and meet the standards of decency and honor and fair play

set by exemplary books and elders.

It's even money that one of you will get a Nobel Prize.

Wanna bet? It's only a million bucks, but what the heck. That's better than

a sharp stick in the eye, as the saying goes.

This speech is now almost twice as long as the most efficient oration

ever uttered by an American: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln was murdered for his ideals. The founder of this university,

William Marsh Rice, another idealist, was murdered for his money.

Whatever! The good both men did lives after them.

Up to this point this speech has been new stuff, written for this

place and this occasion. But every graduation address I've delivered

has ended, and this one will, too, with old stuff about my Uncle Alex,

my father's kid brother. A Harvard graduate, Alex Vonnegut was locally

useful in Indianapolis as an honest insurance agent. He was also well-read

and wise.

One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings

was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy.

He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet.

We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the

summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say,

"If this isn't nice, what is?"

So, I hope that you Adams and Eves in front of me will do the same

for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully

, please pause a moment, and then say out loud:

''If this isn't nice, what is?'' Hold up your hands if you promise to do that

That's one favor I've asked of you.

Now I ask you for another one. I ask it not only of the graduates,

but of everyone here, including even Malcolm Gillis, so keep your eyes on him.

I'll want a show of hands, after I ask this question:

''How many of you have had a teacher at any level in your educations

who made you more excited to be alive, prouder to be alive, than you had

previously believed possible?''

Hold up your hands, please.

Now take down your hands and say the name of that teacher to someone

sitting or standing near you.

All done? Thank you.---vonnegut

You 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 minds, 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 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 is 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 gap 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.

Once in a while 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 kid's eyes,

the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.

It is so easy to exist instead of 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 to 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.---ana quindlan

"You remember the old joke about how television news would have reported

the story of the Ten Commandments: 'God today issued 10 commandments, three

of which are...'

"He is my list: 10 things to help you avoid making the world worse than it already

is:

"One: Bend down once in a while and smell a flower.

"Two: Don't go around in clothes that talk. There is already too much talk

in the world. We've got so many talking people there's hardly anybody left

to listen. With radio and television and telephones we've got talking furniture.

With bumper stickers we've got talking cars. Talking clothes just add to the uproar.

If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don't boast about it by

wearing a tee shirt that says 'underachiever and proud of it.' Being dumb is not

the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses

the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.

"Point three follows from point two, and it's this: Listen once in a while.

It's amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can

hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the

sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling

on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister

gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven't

heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody - now gone - whom you loved.

Or sometime when you're talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you

can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to

yourself. It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next

time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly

, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.

"Point four: Sleep in the nude. In an age when people don't even get dressed

to go to the theater anymore, it's silly getting dressed up to go to bed.

What's more, now that you can no longer smoke, drink gin or eat bacon and eggs

without somebody trying to make you feel ashamed of yourself, sleeping in the

nude is one deliciously sinful pleasure you can commit without being caught by

the Puritan police squads that patrol the nation.

"Point five: Turn off the TV once or twice a month and pick up a book.

It will ease your blood pressure. It might even wake up your mind, but if

it puts you to sleep you're still a winner. Better to sleep than have to watch

that endless parade of body bags the local news channel marches through

your parlor.

"Six: don't take your gun to town. Don't even leave it home unless you lock

all your bullets in a safe deposit box in a faraway bank. The surest way to

get shot is not to drop by the nearest convenience store for a bottle of milk

at midnight, but to keep a loaded pistol in you own house. What about your

constitutional right to bear arms, you say. I would simply point out that you

don't have to exercise a constitutional right just because you have it.

You have the constitutional right to run for president of the United States, abut most people have too much sense to insist on exercising it.

"Seven: learn to fear the automobile. It is not the trillion-dollar deficit that

will finally destroy America. It is the automobile. Congressional studies of

future highway needs are terrifying. A typical projection shows that when

your generation is middle-aged, Interstate 95 between Miami and

Fort Lauderdale will have to be 22 lanes wide to avert total paralysis of

south Florida. Imagine an entire country covered with asphalt.

My grandfather's generation shot horses. Yours had better learn to

shoot automobiles.

"Eight: Have some children. Children add texture to your life. They will save you

from turning into old fogies before you're middle-aged. They will teach you

humility. When old age overtakes you, as it inevitably will I'm sorry to say,

having a few children will provide you with people who will feel guilty when

they're accused of being ungrateful for all you've done for them.

It's almost impossible nowadays to find anybody who will feel guilty

about anything, including mass murder. When you reach the golden years,

your best bet is children, the ingrates.

"Nine: Get married. I know you don't want to hear this, but getting married

will give you a lot more satisfaction in the long run than your BMW.

It provides a standard set of parent for your children and gives you that second

income you will need when it's time to send those children to Connecticut College.

What's more, without marriage you will have practically no material at all to work

with when you decide to write a book or hire a psychiatrist.

"When you get married, whatever you do, do not ask a lawyer to draw up a

marriage contract spelling out how your lives will be divvied up when

you get divorced. It's hard enough making a marriage work without

having a blueprint for its destruction drawn up before you go to the altar.

Speaking of lawyers brings me to point nine and a half, which is: Avoid lawyers

unless you have nothing to do with the rest of your life but kill time.

"And finally, point 10: smile. You're one of the luckiest people in the world.

You're living in America. Enjoy it. I feel obliged to give you this banal advice because, although I've lived through the Great Depression, World War II, terrible wars in Korea

and Vietnam, and half a century of cold war, I have never seen a time when

there were so many Americans so angry or so mean-spirited or so sour

about the country as there are today.

"Anger has become the national habit. You see it on the sullen faces of fashion

models scowling out of magazines. it pours out of the radio. Washington

television hams snarl and shout at each other on television. Ordinary people

abuse politicians and their wives with shockingly coarse insults. Rudeness has

become an acceptable way of announcing you are sick and tired of it all and are

not going to take it anymore. Vile speech is justified on the same ground and is

inescapable.

"America is angry at Washington, angry at the press, angry at immigrants,

angry at television, angry at traffic, angry at people who are well off and angry

at people who are poor, angry at blacks and angry at whites. The old are angry

at the young, the young angry at the old. Suburbs are angry at the cities, cities

are angry at the suburbs. Rustic America is angry at both whenever urban

and suburban invaders threaten the rustic sense of having escaped from God's

angry land. A complete catalog of the varieties of bile poisoning the

American soul would fill a library. The question is: why? Why has anger

become the common response to the inevitable ups and down of nation life?

The question is baffling not just because the American habit even in the worst

of times has traditionally been mindless optimism, but also because there is so

little for Americans to be angry about nowadays. We are the planet's undisputed

super power. For the first time in 60 years we enjoy something very much like

real peace. We are by all odds the wealthiest nation on earth, though admittedly

our vast treasure is not evenly shared.

"Forgive me the geezer's sin of talking about "the bad old days," but the country

is still full of people who remember when 35 dollars a week was considered

a living wage for a whole family. People whine about being overtaxed, yet in the

1950s the top income-tax rate was 91 percent, universal military service was

the law of the land, and racial segregation was legally enforced in large parts

of the country.

"So what explains the fury and dyspepsia? I suspect it's the famous American

ignorance of history. People who know nothing of even the most recent past

are easily gulled by slick operators who prosper by exploiting the ignorant.

Among these rascals are our politicians. Politicians flourish by sowing discontent.

They triumph by churning discontent into anger. Press, television and radio also

have a big financial stake in keeping the county boiling mad.

"Good news, as you know, does not sell papers or keep millions glued to

radios and TV screens.

"So when you get out there in the world, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to

find yourself surrounded by shouting, red-in-the-face, stomping-mad politicians,

radio yakmeisters and, yes sad to say, newspaper columnists, telling you

'you never had it so bad' and otherwise trying to spoil your day.

"When they come at you with that , ladies and gentlemen, give them a wink

and a smile and a good view of your departing back. And as you stroll away,

bend down to smell a flower.

"Now it seems I have run past the 15-minute limit and will have to buy my

own lunch. That's life Class of 1995. No free lunch.---russell baker