What do you tell a new college graduate? by gimleteye

Last night I invited my son and a group of his friends to dinner. They are on the verge of graduating from a liberal arts college with assorted, impressive majors. None, scientists or engineers. They are at the end of a four year voyage; a time for work and play, a time to form lasting friendships and to become adults. They are relieved, excited, and no longer anticipating another year of college in a place that values the acquisition of knowledge above all else. Perhaps this demarcation is artificial; but graduation marks a passage of becoming, to being.

What do you tell these graduates, in America, today? The standard ceremony includes speechification by one dignitary or another. The boundless future, opportunity without horizons, great responsibility, and the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Send them out with a hug and a push.

I am not sure how to advise them. Find a relative: go work for county or city government? A friend texted me from an airplane on a runway in Beijing yesterday. Thirty five years ago he and I worked together in China for an American business. On my first visit in 1976, its airport had just opened. It was an empty cavern. There were no passengers. No business. Parked on the tarmac next to the gate where I arrived was China's first Boeing 727, wrapped in canvas because the Chinese had not decided how to use it, or, who to fly it. The taxi drivers at night drove with their lights off, convinced by doing so  they were conserving energy. China was a nation that could scarcely afford to import gasoline.

Before my father passed away, he reminded me his generation arrived in carts and wagons drawn by mules and horses, passed through the horrors of war threatening to break everything apart, yet assembled the skills to put a man on the moon. Having learned to manipulate digital circuits, our generations made the world smaller and larger at the same time. Smaller, because the flow of information and technologies knitted economic interdependence in new, startling ways. Larger, because the same flow of information increased our inventions exponentially. Smaller, because our advancements paradoxically collide with ancient hostilities. Larger, because the mysteries of creation are now tools that belong to us.

This flowering of information and technology has not necessarily advanced the cause of liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. We created very powerful capacities but we do not use them to our best purposes. To do so requires judgment, common sense and compassion. It also requires standards of excellence unhindered by defensiveness and base motives.

On filing out from dorm rooms and shared bathrooms that may need a pressure cleaning to be fit for the next arrivals, our graduates will step into a bright, uncertain future. It will be a little like leaving home. Where will these last bags be unpacked? I hope my son and his friends go forth with excitement, flush with confidence and the liberty to find their way. I wish, too, that the world of experience we inherited, and the place we left our marks, provided more clearly marked opportunities.

What do you tell a college graduate? Challenge yourselves to do better. It is your turn now.