To Me, on My Graduation Day, By Bruce Ditman

To me, on My Graduation Day.

It is graduation season and, consequently, inspirational commencement speeches will soon flood our social streams and email boxes.  Always one to spot a trend and also, as per my habit, one to write speeches to imaginary audiences

Bruce giving commencement speech, or might be Teddy Roosevelt at Berkeley, 1903.

celebrating fictional events, I have decided to write a graduation speech of my own this year.

Any speech writer worth their salt will tell you, one must carefully consider who the audience is.  As I have none (officially) it appears the answer to that question is entirely up to me.  After consideration, I’ve landed on a target. I have decided to share my wisdom with the most desperately in-need-of-it audience I could think of…me.  Today, with this speech, I mark my own graduation and share what I’ve learned of myself with myself.  And while I’m not actually a matriculating student, I am (we are) graduating always, this moment to the next.  I feel it is worth it, at interval, to reflect on that change and instruct oneself to one’s own benefit and without regard for one’s own reservations.

So here it goes: A speech by me to me (I hope I pay attention):

Congratulations, Brucie!

You’ve made it! Graduating from there to here and from then til now wasn’t easy, I’m sure, and I applaud you for making it to this next…thing.

Well, my friend, I stand before you today with good news and bad news.  The good news: It ain’t over. You’re alive and tomorrow’s another day.  The bad news: it ain’t getting any easier out there for us.

To that end, I’ve collected what we’ve learned together and distilled it into some advice I want us to try to take to heart.  You don’t have to listen to me (for sure – you’ve seen me do tons of dumb stuff) but I’m asking that you give me a minute and in that minute I’m going to do more than try to just save you some pain.  I’m going to tell you what is my best guess at how to be happy.

Listen, Bruce, life is short in the good parts and long in the bad so, in so far as you have any control of what happens to your body, heart and mind during your time here, here is my best swing at it, in a tidy, one-sentence, imminently forward-able package:

Fill Your Life With Things You Love.

That’s it, bro.  Fill. Your. Life. With. Things. You. Love.  Fill it up…or, and I promise you this, it will fill up all on its own.

It sounds simple and it is simple.  But it is not without pitfalls.  So here are the rules:

1. Life will conspire against your success.
2. Passivity will be rewarded with a kick in the teeth.
3. You will have to fight to be successful at this and, guess what, tough guy…you will lose fights.
4. Jealousy is your alarm clock.
5. This job cannot be outsourced to spouses, children, drugs, money or any other awesome thing.
6. Happiness is the precipitant of action, not the agent.

BUT…it’s not all hard knocks. The following is equally true:

1. Happiness, in reasonable amounts, is yours to take.
2. You don’t need to own, buy or consume something for you to love it.
3. And, relax, you don’t need to be good at something to love it.

While we all end up in the same place (in the dirt) not all lives are equally lived. Breaking even at the casino after 5 hours of playing and a bunch of free, watery drinks is a win. Breaking even in the parking lot is truancy. You only have so much time — show up, do something.

Remember that no one who spent their life doing the things they love wished, on their death bed, that they had had more time NOT doing it. Free time is a trap. Release yourself from this of this worthless metric of success.

You, on the other hand, ARE free to enrich, sweeten, spoil, develop, complicate, simplify, mess up or succeed in all aspects of your life.  Free is exactly what you are so act like it.

Lastly, and above all, a life lived well is work – whether careful and considered or reckless and instinctive, it is crafted not created. We are workers and machinists and fabricators. So, make something. Make something of your life. Make something of yourself.  Make love, make money, make art, make noise, make a home – make the life you want.

Be a curator not a docent of the halls of your life.

Fill your life with things you love.

And remember, I love you.

Best,

Me.