A Commencement Address

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

--T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I didn’t get T.S. Elliott when I was in high school, just as I didn’t get a lot of the larger lessons of life. As my 30th High School Reunion gets closer, there many things I wish I could tell my 18 year old self. Not that I would listen. I don’t remember much from the three commencement addresses of my academic career, except that Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby compared newly minted lawyers to hamsters. At any rate, here is the commencement address that I will never be asked to deliver and which I wouldn’t have paid attention to if I had heard it.

High School Is Not Life

The first thing I would tell myself is that high school is not life. I remember one day in the cafeteria listening to two girls who agreed that high school was the best time of their lives and that everything would be downhill from there. My thought at the time was shoot me now, because I don’t think I can stand it if things get much worse. My high school years were an awkward time for me. I didn’t have the right clothes or the right friends (or many friends at all to tell the truth) and I didn’t have a driver’s license until my senior year. I cultivated the persona of a cynical outsider partially because it helped to rationalize the alienation that I felt and partially because I was just a jerk. When I dared to return for my first reunion twenty years later, I found out that many of the people I went to school with had become pretty decent people or maybe they were that way all along.

Regardless of whether my perception of high school as a hellhole where the jocks and the popular kids and the bullies crushed nerds like me under foot was real or a self-induced hallucination, life did get better. While Bowling for Soup wrote a really catchy song to the contrary, high school does end and my life got better. I got a job, I went to college, I fell in love. While the path wasn’t always linear, I am reminded of George Carlin’s comment in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, where he said, “They do get better.” The same could be said for my life. It did get better.

Life Is Fickle, So Keep a Sense of Humor and Be Willing to Do Some Things Badly

I spent a lot of my life being very driven. I was a National Merit Scholar. I graduated Summa Cum Laude from college. I got into one of the best law schools and was awarded Order of the Coif (which is a big deal). However, no matter how much I achieved, I was never number one. Someone else was always valedictorian or class president or got the best job out of law school. I think that’s how life is. No matter how much you achieve, there is always someone who is smarter, stronger, is more popular or has more money. Since being perfect is not a realistic option, try to keep a sense of humor and have some fun along the way. Law school was both an exhilarating and frightening time for me. I had to work really hard just to keep up. I lived in an apartment in a not so great part of town. However, what I really remember were the silly movies that my wife and I went to see at the UT Student Union. I remember Tony Randall proclaiming “I’m king of the elevator,” a drunken Jimmy Stewart calling out for C. K. Dexter Haney in “The Philadelphia Story” and Cary Grant being suave and silly in “Bringing Up Baby.” Even if the air conditioning in our apartment couldn’t quite keep up with the summer heat or I made a C in Torts (despite the fact that I was taught by Bill Powers who is now a really important dude at the University of Texas), those movies made life fun.

As I have grown older, I have had the courage to do some things badly just to see if I could do them. In high school, I was a gangly, un-athletic kid. Today, I am an overweight, middle-aged un-athletic adult. However, that hasn’t kept me from playing soccer badly or trying to run a half-marathon. After a while, I have come to realize that some things are worth doing just because you can. I wrote a series of legal articles on Shakespeare just because I felt like it. We went to visit a family in Ukraine when our children were 2 ½ and 5 just because they invited us. Our lives have been richer because we did some things which were absurd or improbable or unlikely on the surface. I never got the job with a big law firm or became wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. However, we did find some interesting things to do.

Let’s see, did I have a point here? Don’t expect to be the best all of the time, since you won’t and can’t possibly be. Strive to excel, but don’t self-destruct if it doesn’t happen all the time. Be willing to have some fun and do some things badly.

A Third Point

All good motivational speeches should be built around three points. However, after 30 years, I have really only come up with two so far. As a result, I will leave you with this: “Oh... one other thing. If you guys ever have kids and one of them when he's eight years old accidentally sets fire to the living room rug... go easy on him.” All right, that’s not very practical even if it s stolen from a great movie.

Probably the most profound thing I can end with is learn how to be friends. This is bittersweet because it is a lesson I did not learn well. I spent much of my high school years obsessed with girls, but I wasn’t friends with many girls. As a result, my romantic life suffered (until I was in college when I met my wife and we became friends and fell in love all in the space of a very short time). When I look at my older daughter, who is now in her high school years, I am amazed at how effortlessly her group of friends interacts. They date each other, they break up, but they continue to be friends. Whether it is bouncing on the trampoline in our back yard or floating down the Guadalupe River, they are like this living organic unit. I never had that experience. Of course, I passed Geometry on the first try so maybe it’ s ok.

If I had to sum it all up, I would say, don’t despair if you don’t have it together by high school, because there is a lot of life which comes after and it can get better; achieve, work hard, strive, but don’t get bummed out when you’re not perfect; don’t be afraid to do some things badly; remember lines from silly movies; and try to chill out, be friends and be happy. Oh, and also, listen to your dad and try to pass Geometry.