This commencement speech by Annie Lamott is longer than our normal offerings, but we loved it and hope you will also.
LET US COMMENCE
by Annie Lamott
I gave the undergraduate and interdisciplinary studies commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley in May. A number of people asked for a copy of the speech, and I told them I’d post it on Salon. So here it is, shorter and slightly fiddled with.
I am honored and surprised that you asked me to speak today.
This must be a magical day for you. I wouldn’t know. I accidentally forgot to graduate from college. I meant to, 30 years ago, but things got away from me. I did graduate from high school, though – do I get a partial credit for that? Although, unfortunately, my father had forgotten to pay the book bill, so at the graduation ceremony, when I opened the case to see my diploma, it was empty. Except for a ransom note that said, see Mrs. Foley, the bookkeeper, if you ever want to see your diploma alive again.
I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons
– to learn – but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons - to become a writer. Those of you who have read my work know that instead, I accidentally became a Kelly girl for a while. Then, In a dazzling career move, I got hired as a clerk typist in the Nuclear Quality Assurance Department at Bechtel, where I worked typing and sorting triplicate forms. I hate to complain, but it was not very stimulating work. But it paid the bills, so I could write my stories every night when I got home. I worked at Bechtel for six months but I had nothing to do with the current Administration’s shameless war profiteering. I just sorted triplicate forms. You’ve got to believe me. It was a terrible job, at which I did a terrible job, but it paid $600 a month, which was enough to pay my rent and bills.
This is the real fly in the ointment if you are crazy enough to want to be an artist – you have to give up your dreams of swimming pools and fish forks, and take any old job. At 20, I got hired at a magazine as an assistant editor, and I think that was the last real job I’ve ever had.
I bet I’m beginning to make your parents really nervous – here I am sort of bragging about being a dropout, and unemployable, and secretly making a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what they want is for you to do well in your field, make them look good, and maybe also make a tiny fortune.
But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
At some point I finally started getting published, and experiencing a meager knock-kneed standing in the literary world, and I started to get almost everything that many of you graduates are hoping for
– except for the money.
I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled – all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you – stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame. The culture says these things will save you, as long as you also manage to keep your weight down. But the culture lies. Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred - I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money.
I’d been wanting to be a successful author my whole life. But when I finally did it, I was like a greyhound catching the mechanical
rabbit she’d been chasing all her life – metal, wrapped up in
cloth. It wasn’t alive; it had no spirit. It was fake. Fake doesn’t feed anything. Only spirit feeds spirit, in the same way only your own blood type can sustain you. It had nothing that could slake the lifelong thirst I had for a little immediacy, and connection.
So from the wise old pinnacle of my 49 years, I want to tell you that what you’re looking for is already inside you. You’ve heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can’t buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the world can’t give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security – besides which, there ain’t no such thing. J.D. Rockefeller was asked, “How much money is enough?” and he said, “Just a little bit more.”
So it can be confusing – most of your parents want you to do well, to be successful. They want you to be happy – or at least happy- ish. And they want you to be nicer to them; just a little nicer – is that so much to ask? They want you to love, and be loved, and to find peace, and to laugh and find meaningful work. But they also – some of them a few of them – not yours-- yours are fine - they also want you to chase the bunny for a while. To get ahead, sock some away, and then find a balance between the greyhound bunny- chase, and savoring your life. But the thing is that you don’t know if you’re going to live long enough to slow down, relax, and have fun, and discover the truth of your spiritual identity. You may not be destined to live a long life; you may not have 60 more years to discover and claim your own deepest truth – like Breaker Morant said, you have to live every day as if it’s your last, because one of these days, you’re bound to be right.