I’ve been writing a commencement address.
In my head.
It’s what I do when I drive.
Or mow the lawn.
Or sit in a meeting on a topic about which I can’t give two shits.
Which is frequent.
So, I’ve been crafting my narrative for some time.
Not because anyone has ever hinted that I might be invited to deliver such an address.
My alma maters are out of the question.
I’ve been long forgotten in my hometown.
It’s doubtful I’d ever give a speech to the graduating seniors of my former high school.
The Naval Academy’s out.
The President or a Cabinet member typically keynotes commencement exercises there.
It ain’t happening at Harvard.
Because . . . well, it’s Harvard.
People like Bill Gates or Oprah take the podium there.
Still, I keep working on my address.
Part of it is vanity.
I love the idea of being on a stage, spouting wisdom to a rapt audience.
The thought of crafting a story that hooks and holds people from opening syllable to climatic end thrills me.
A story that simmers in the minds of both young and old.
One that delights and entertains in the moment, but ultimately informs and enlightens upon reflection.
Public address as performance art: That’s how I see it.
And somehow, despite being more intro- than extraverted, I crave such a performance.
I want to be on that stage.
Plus, life’s kicked me in the stomach enough times to give me something interesting to say.
Perhaps even useful.
I think.
It’s mostly about my quest to make sense of it all.
To connect the dots.
Which seemingly ran off the page some twenty years ago.
That was the point at which friends and colleagues stopped saying, “Wow . . . you make it look easy.”
And would instead console me, “Tough break. That was hard.”
It was when people—bosses in particular—stopped talking about my amazing potential.
And instead began wondering aloud why I was wasting it.
It was also when I discovered that some people—bosses in particular—are complete shit, and fuck them.
But anyway.
My commencement address opens with an observation.
That those in attendance likely conform to a normal distribution.
A very small number of graduates—the outliers—knows exactly what to do with their lives.
They’ve always known, in fact, and will go on to do precisely what they’ve intended.
They will experience success, perhaps even happiness, without ever staring into the abyss, asking, Who Am I?
They’re the lucky ones.
And they disgust me.
In a polite way.
There is another small number of graduates—also outliers—that has no idea what to do, never has known, will never figure it out, and really doesn’t give a shit.
They’ll live in people’s basements, play hours of Fortnite, and show up late to work.
If they work at all.
To those people, I say, so be it.
Just pay your taxes, keep your online rants to a minimum, and stay out of the way.
Peace.
And then there are those graduates clustered around the mean, comprising the majority of the area beneath the bell curve.
These are the people who may have vague notions of what to do, but aren’t entirely sure, and feel a bit overwhelmed with the whole notion of Figuring It Out.
Their lives will unfold as a series of fits and starts, of minor successes and failures, that may or may not, over time, lead them to what it is they’re supposed to do.
They will come to appreciate the Buddha’s observation that the purpose of one’s life is to find one’s purpose.
Or was that Oprah’s?
She spoke at Harvard, you know.
Such people will learn to put one foot in front of the other and make the best of it, come what may.
And will likely find their way to mostly satisfying lives.
Or not.
And that’s fine.
At this point in my remarks, I will concede that none of this is particularly novel or insightful.
Nearly everything, and everyone, conforms to a normal distribution.
But then I’ll share what I didn’t appreciate when I was a graduate.
And that was that one could move between the different areas within the distribution at multiple points throughout one’s life.
You can move from certainty to doubt and back again many times.
The question is, how do you effectively manage those transitions?
Because they can be quite unsettling.
I, for example, was certain in high school that I was going to be a lawyer.
Of course, there was not a scintilla of evidence, to borrow a legal term, to suggest I was the least bit equipped for a career in jurisprudence.
But I was certain nonetheless.
Mostly, I liked the idea of being a lawyer.
Well, it never happened.
I wound up in the Navy instead.
And there, I fell in love with the idea of being a Navy pilot.
This time, I did make it happen.
Even after I nearly ran off a runway in flight school, at full throttle, because I had memorized the wrong rudder pedal to step on to counteract the propeller’s torque and keep the nose straight.
I was not a Chuck Yaeger or an Alan Shepard.
Despite having every expectation I would be.
I assumed that one day I would wear a Top Gun patch on my sleeve and four stars on my shoulder.
It was a foregone conclusion.
At least it was in my mind.
Eventually, I came to understand how such a course failed to align with reality.
Being a career Naval Aviator just wasn’t in the cards for me.
So, I pivoted to business.
Where I assumed I’d be the next Jack Welch.
But then discovered, following years of pain and frustration, that I didn’t give a shit about making or selling widgets.
And it’s all widgets.
So then what?
By coincidence, I came across two pieces that spoke to the same predicament, but in different ways.
A friend forwarded me a link to Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address to Stanford’s graduating class.
I’d seen parts of it before, but never the entire thing.
In it, Jobs says that you can’t connect the dots looking forward, only backwards.
Exactly how the events in one’s life will unfold to support a certain outcome cannot be discerned by contemplating tomorrow.
Only by looking to the past can a person appreciate how certain things needed to happen to provide the raw material for one’s current success.
Jobs didn’t understand it at the time, but by dropping out of college and later being fired at Apple, he was better equipped to do all the wonderful things he did when he returned to the company he’d co-founded.
Like create the iPhone.
The message is to persevere.
And to trust that it will all add up to something one day.
But what if it doesn’t?
That was the question posed by Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s 2023 weirdo-artsy movie.
I saw it the day after I’d watched Steve Jobs’ commencement address.
Frankly, I’m not sure I got the movie.
But that may have been the point.
In one of the closing scenes, the main character steps off the stage and approaches someone—the producer or director, I don’t know—and says, distraught, “I still don’t understand the play.”
He’d been acting as the main character for the entirety of movie, but still didn’t get it.
And it bothered him.
In response, the producer-director tells him, “It doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.”
Keep going.
One foot in front of the other.
Whether you’re certain or in doubt, don’t think too hard.
Just keep telling the story.
Life may indeed be a series of random, disconnected events that don’t add up to anything.
You may never get the chance to connect the dots.
I doubt I will.
And I’m cool with that.
But that doesn’t make my life, or anyone’s else’s, a failure.
Hardly.
I’ve had a rich life, filled with interesting experiences and unexpected plot twists.
It’s been a fantastic story.
And so, to the graduates of Wherever State University, I would say,
Keep telling the story.
Whatever it may be.
Until your time runs out and there’s no more story to tell.
That’s the point.
So, there you have it.
That’s my speech.
The commencement address I’ll never give.
Except, maybe, in the shower.
What do you think?
That’s some pretty great shit.
Right?