We are all here today to celebrate the accomplishments of a small group of dedicated students who are coming to the end of a shared journey. This journey was undertaken by each of them a little over two years ago. I have had the honor of being a small part of that journey as an instructor, a supervisor, a colleague, and now today as a commencement speaker. It is the last of these roles that I have found to be the most challenging. What do you tell a group of soon to be graduates and their invited guests at their last official gathering? It is a daunting task indeed. So I did what I normally do when I am stumped by a situation or need for information on how to proceed; I did a google search on commencement speeches. Unfortunately, I did not find a ready made speech or a good how to manual on giving a commencement speech.
What I did find of interest was Kin Hubbard’s take on commencement speeches. I doubt that any of you have ever heard of Mr. Hubbard. He was an Indianapolis newspaper humorist who wrote under the name of Abe Martin.
Mr. Hubbard found fault with commencement speeches in general in that they give the impression that all the really important information is withheld from the student until the very end. He thought that all the really important information should be spread out over the course of a student’s course of study rather than saved up for one really big speech at the very end. According to his view, the speaker is then placed into the position of being expected to answer the questions like what is life all about and what are the new graduates supposed to do with all this new knowledge that they have learned?
Kurt Vonnegut says that colleges and universities usually hire an outsider to give this speech because no truth-loving teacher can answer those questions in class, or even in the privacy of their office. He says that no respecter of evidence has ever found the smallest clue as to what life is all about, and what people should even do with it if they do manage to figure it out.
He concedes that there have been lots of brilliant guesses about the answers to these questions, but identifies them as just that – guesses.
I am here today to share with this class my best guesses about where you go from here. These are things I wish someone had told me when I sat where you are sitting today.
- Predicting the future is tough so sit back and Enjoy the ride
Today each of you are embarking on a future path that is unknown to you. Your best guesses about what you will be doing a year, two years, five years, ten years from today will most likely be wrong in many respects.
Being the well educated, well-intentioned individuals that you are trained in the art of assessment and the treatment of emotional processes, does not afford you much, if any, of an advantage in your endeavor to predict the future. History is full of examples of our poor ability to predict the future.
“I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers”
– Thomas Watson Chairman of IBM
We don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles
There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. – Albert Einstein
These examples show us that often times our best guesses as to what the future holds for us are simply wrong. I believe we are often wrong about our futures because we are unable to step outside of our perspectives and see all the variables that influence our future.
I haven’t told you these stories to prove to you that we have a poor ability to predict our futures but to suggest to you that in trying to predict and worrying about how our future will turn out we often miss out on the actual journey to our futures. We have a tendency to focus on the anticipated content of our futures and in the process miss out on the process of the journey. Don’t get so wrapped up in reaching your future that you miss out on the journey.
- Embrace the lions
Old maps of the world used the Latin words Hic Sunt Leones (There are Lions Here) to describe those unexplored lands where, for one reason or another, mapmakers had not gone or the unknown terrain was believed to be dangerous.
The same is true of us when we start a new chapter in our lives. New chapters in our lives are unknown lands, uncharted territories, potentially dangerous and fearful places. Today each of you are embarking on a new journey in your lives which none of you quite know where it will end.
Despite your best efforts, the journey you are starting today will be marked by lions that your map did not warn you about. These lions will be unavoidable. Some of you may struggle with passing your licensure exam; some of you may struggle finding that right initial job; some of you may feel like you are in over your head on that first day of work at that new job; some of you may even doubt if you have what it takes to be a counselor day in and day out; some of may grapple with the prospect of paying off student loans in a field not known for its income potential; some of you may struggle with managing your emotions and the counter transference that your clients will elicit from you; some of you may have your personal relationships suffer as a result of your over involvement with work or clients;
Whatever lions mark your journey, I believe that it is not so much what the lions are but how you approach and handle the lions that matters. Do you face lions head on or do you tend to steer a path away from the lions? While the better part of valor may be discretion, I want to suggest to you that we often experience the most growth by facing our lions and our fears head on.
You may recall from some of your studies the work of a number of theorists who advocate that the best way to address a fear is to actively seek out opportunities to face that fear.
I know that in my own personal and professional life, I have learned more from those times in which I faced the lions and my fears than when I avoided them.
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am fairly introverted. I am not by nature an overly social person or a talker. I was painfully shy as a child and even today my natural instinct is to blend into a social scene if possible. I believe that this was in part due to the fact that I spoke like Elmer Fudd as a child. I worked with speech therapists for a number of years and only talk like Elmer on my really bad days now. All joking aside, I am fortunate to have been encouraged from an early age not to let such factors define me, but to define myself in spite of these factors. From an early age I was encouraged to face these lions or fears head on. Ever since, I have actively sought out experiences in which I would be forced to face my worst fears, talking to other people.
Irony of all ironies, I now talk for a living as a therapist and teacher. Being a glutton for punishment apparently, I even agreed against my natural instincts to give this address today. As an aside, for anyone who is not clear on the often recommended strategy for speaking in front of a crowd, imagining your audience in their underwear is not at all helpful. It tends to either completely distract me or completely traumatize me.
Facing lions in your professional life may also be helpful. When I was preparing to start graduate school, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to choose between a handful of schools. In the end it came down to two schools, one which was nearby and would have been very convenient for me and my family; the other was halfway across the country in a large, unknown city in which we had no pre-existing connections. We chose to move across the country and take up residence in a city we knew nothing about. It was a very difficult decision to make, but we often look back on that decision as being one of the best decisions we ever made. It was not easy by any means. We had to adjust to new surroundings, living in a big city, and enduring times when money was tight. But by choosing to not take the easy and comfortable path, I had a wider array of educational and training opportunities available to me but more importantly my wife and I grew together as a couple and learned many important lessons about life we would not have learned in the comfort of a familiar environment.
I could have easily gone into a career that did not require me to talk or I could have easily gone to a school that was convenient and did not require a great deal of sacrifice. But I truly believe that my personal and professional lives would not be as full or rich as it is now if I had chosen to steer clear of those challenges, those areas that were marked by lions on my map.
While I do not mean to suggest that you should tackle every lion or obstacle that comes your way, I am suggesting that you not flee from a lion simply because facing it may be difficult or require you to step out of your comfort zone. We grow best when we are stretched. Don’t always take the safe and easy path. Don’t avoid the opportunities to grow that come your way.
- Don’t forget to leave the lights on
Continuing with my nautical theme, I want to encourage each of you to locate those lighthouses or sources of light that will guide your journey. Each of you are entering into a field that has left many a well-intentioned person in its wake and personal wreckage littered along the shoreline.
The job of a counselor is stressful. Many times you will be looked upon to have all the answers and to have them quickly. You will be challenged with cases and situations that you feel are beyond your ability, training, or competence and you will receive little sympathy for your plight. Your mistakes will have consequences you may never know of. You are not working in a factory where the assembly line can be stopped or the order can be sent back to the kitchen. You will be expected to have it all together and any sign of distress will be viewed as a sign of weakness or incompetence.
The specter of burnout will be a frequent sight in your rear view mirror. If we overlay the statistics on burnout to your class we get the following sobering predictions:
2 of you will be completely out of the field within 5 years.
3 of you will struggle with some form of addiction.
1 of you will have a significant boundary violation with a client.
There is a real need as a counselor to develop a plan of care for yourself. You will need a series of lights in your life to prevent you from being swept away by the tide of burnout and unrealistic expectations placed on you by others and even those you place upon yourself.
Those lights are going to be different for each of you but will encompass those things, persons, activities, routines that keep you grounded and protect you from yourself. You are going to want to do things like take up a hobby like sewing or karate, exercise regularly, waste time watching TV or surfing the internet, learn to laugh at yourself, don’t take yourself so seriously that nobody likes you including you, spend time with your family and friends (they are the ones who put up with you during school and hopefully are going to continue to put up with you now that you are done), for some of you there is a need to reconnect with your faith, don’t skip lunch, find someone who is willing to tell you when you are being a jerk and kick you in the tail until you stop being a jerk, and for those of us who are more dense than others place visual reminders in your environment that remind you to stay grounded.
In my office I have a small relic that symbolizes these things for me. Those of you who have been in my office have probably never even noticed this relic. It is a small stone oil lamp from the time of Jesus given to me by one of my mentors, Tom Kirchberg, a catholic priest who lost his way only to find it again and resurface as a psychologist. Dr. Kirchberg taught me many valuable lessons. He gave me that stone oil lamp as a parting gift with the admonition to keep two things in mind: 1) that we often serve as temporary lights for others on their journeys and I believe more importantly 2) that we must jealously guard and protect our own lights. Today I want to urge you to identify those sources of light in your life and take the steps necessary to protect them. In doing so, you are protecting yourself.
4. Burn the ships
This final best guess I have for you today is the one that has been the most difficult for me to accept and practice in my own life. That final best guess is that when you finally reach your destination burn the ship that carried you there. This may seem like a fairly radical idea. It is not original with me but comes from the time of Hernando Cortez. When Cortez landed his ships in Mexico in 1519, he ordered his men to burn the ships which had brought them to Mexico from Europe. It is not known if he was concerned about a mutiny, determined to explore the land before him, or never intended to return to Europe but his order of burning the ships showed that he was totally committed and allowed himself no option of turning back.
Many people interpret this act of burning the ships as a means of cutting off escape routes to your goals so you won’t turn back. Done right it increases motivation by goading you to press on where you might otherwise give up prematurely.
I personally have a slight spin on the phrase. I take the phrase to mean that you completely and fully embrace your situation wherever it may be; you bloom where you are planted. I personally have had a lot of changes over the last dozen years. I counted it up as I was preparing to give this speech and discovered that I had moved 9 times in those 12 years with various job changes, school, and other training opportunities. After those first couple of moves, it started to get real old and depressing thinking about the prospect of not being at a given place for very long. I started thinking “I’m only going to be here a year or two anyhow, why get to know people, make close friends, find things I like to do here, only to have to leave it all behind and start all over again”. That approach certainly worked well in the sense that I didn’t have to worry about leaving activities and friends.
Then one day I heard a person who would later become a good friend give a talk in which he told the story of Cortez burning his ships upon his arrival to Mexico. The story hit me like a ton of bricks. Everywhere I was going, I was leaving my ship anchored in the bay ready to go, not even unloading everything from the ship in anticipation of my next journey. From that day forward, I have promised myself to try and live fully in whatever situation I find myself. It is easy to resent not being where we want to be and in the process not enjoy the many wonderful things that are around us. As you all visit different ports of call on the journey to your eventual destination, don’t forget to live fully in your present situation.
CONCLUSION
In closing, I want to thank the students we are honoring here today. I am honored and humbled that you chose me to speak to you here today on this day of celebration. It is my sincere hope that at least one of my best guesses resonated with you and will be of some help to you as you begin a new journey in your life. Thank you.
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