Young graduates can be heard asking the ever-vexing question: Now what?
At my graduation ceremony earlier this month from the University of Colorado, speakers enjoined us to more or less follow our dreams. It’s lovely advice, but it wrongly assumes that our dreams are worthy of being followed. Often they are not.
With this in mind, if I had given the commencement speech, it might have sounded something like this:
“As many of us are still thinking about the future and what lies ahead, let’s consider dreams and ambition. These are noble things. They drive our technological, economic and academic successes. But I worry about how dreamy and ambitious we have become. I lament that we are now more a nation of dreamers than a nation of doers, because the truth is that even those with small dreams can do big things.
“As a graduate, I feel the pressures to succeed financially. But there just isn’t the same emphasis on good character – though there should be. Our social ethos has become ‘Live and let live,’ and ‘Don’t forget to smile for the camera.’
“We used to be modest about our dreams. Most people – even graduates from prestigious universities – did not expect to be high-powered attorneys or prominent politicians. And, most surprising to students today, their lives were nevertheless quite fulfilled.
“There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with fame, of course, as long as it’s rightly earned by good character. The problem is that today you can become famous without being good. (Paris Hilton would not have been newsworthy 50 years ago.)
“Today, it seems, there is an expectation of young people, particularly at top universities, to not just do well but to be the best. We are told that as the nation’s elite, we must earn the top salaries, invent the greatest invention, and become leaders among leaders. I wonder, though, if in our pursuit of the highest rung, we forget about the simple, ordinary task of being good and decent.
“I say ‘simple’ and ‘ordinary,’ but being good and decent isn’t really simple or ordinary at all. This newspaper is scorched with the latest woes of this country’s most talented elite. Stars are leaving Beverly Hills for Betty Ford. Athletes are routinely arrested for substance or spouse abuse. Business executives are being convicted in messy corporate scandals. Politicians are violating ethics rules.
“This is supposed to be the cream of the crop, where the masses turn to when a little wisdom or leadership is needed. But ironically, many of these folks are the most unqualified to lead. Prestige doesn’t always make a good leader.
“The country is waiting for leaders and, ready or not, we are it. But we must know what leadership is all about. It isn’t about six-figure salaries or national prominence. It’s about the little things that are really the big things. It’s about building and protecting social pillars like faith, family and country.
“The 19th century British author G.K. Chesterton wrote, ‘There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.’ Who you are depends on the small, unnoticed things you do. A leader, at the core, is nothing more or less than a person who radiates and inspires qualities of grace, nobility and humility in his or her actions. Grace won’t earn you a spot on ‘Larry King Live,’ but it will better the lives of those around you. This is greatness, and it doesn’t even require a college degree.
“But in a noisy culture that values secondary things like wealth and fame, it’s difficult to bring primary things like faith and family into focus. There are too many temptations that woo us away from the primary things. That’s why leadership is rare in our culture; it’s too easy to become taken by the distractions.
“Our dreams need to be brought back down to earth – from the lofty heights of fame and fortune to the every-day business of decency and character. Leadership for this generation needs to be about the simple, unnoticed things like faith, family and character.
“The last generation didn’t have to sweat the small stuff. We do.”
Chris Rawlings (christopher.rawlings@colorado.edu) graduated this month from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in political science.
