A Graduation Speech That Won't be Read

This speech is a simple reminder to focus, for the final fleeting moments in our grasp, on the connections that we have made, rather than on a future that recedes always further from our grasp. For those who have kept up with this site, it is clear that this speech – its phraseology, its ideas – is not new, but rather it is a reformulation, and I think for this reason its value as a graduation speech is greater not lesser. I was not picked to speak at graduation, so I'm posting the text here. (The speech that was chosen is certainly much funnier than this one, so I guess that's nice.)

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We have spent tonight, with good reason and great deservedness all around, contemplating the past that has brought us to this stage, and the future that awaits us when we walk off of it. This stage is a literal barrier between the place we came from and the place where we are going: everything will be different when we leave. So, today, with good reason and great deservedness all around, we should embrace the nostalgia of the past and what it has given us and the excitement of the future and what it has to offer us.

However, I am not going to talk about either, the past or the future: I'm quite certain there are others who can talk about school better than I can, and all I can do as a student is guess about what will come next. Instead, in the no-man’s-land between these two places, the past and the future, yesterday and tomorrow, is the present. And if only for a few minutes of your time, "the present" is the setting of a short, fictional story I would like to tell. Nothing big, just a story.

The story begins very dramatically. The tragic hero of our tale lives in a quaint house off Todd Road. (I live on Toad Road, but this is not about me, it, at least a little bit, perhaps, is about everyone.) One day, maybe on the Today Show or the Journal News, he sees a map of the Katonah-Lewisboro school district. With pride, he quickly locates his house. No sooner can he point to the dot of his house, then a feeling of horror pulses through his veins. For all his life, he had known his address to read Todd Road, Katonah NY -- to his friends, his family and to the U.S. Postal Service, he is a member of Katonah. But, his house, he sees, with anguish burning in his eyes, is geographically at the heart of God's Country: his house is in Lewisboro, NY. You heard correctly: his address is Katonah, but he lives in Lewisboro. Obviously, these are the trappings of an existential crisis. He is suspended between one town and another. He is suspended between one culture and another. He is literally the dash on the Katonah-Lewisboro School District's letterhead. He realizes that he has no identity. He realizes that he has no home to call his own. Caught between Lewisboro and Katonah, welcome in neither, he is the “Man without a Hamlet.”

So the Man without a Hamlet wanders on the roads searching: He travels from the hills of Waccabuc to the waters of Cross River to the dark, frightful depths of Vista; he asks for answers from the academic, from the athlete, from the adolescent; with his head in his textbook, he travels towards the corner of Naviance; he runs towards the endzone, under the lights of the turf; he searches for the next quick thrill, at Cameron’s Deli, in the darkness between dusk and dawn.

The hero of our story travels different roads, the roads that many on this stage have traveled too, searching for that place where he can park his car, along the cobblestone, greeted by the smiles of forever. The Man without a Hamlet searches for a place to call his home; he searches for what we learned in John Jay High School is called the American Dream. The roads that he travels – that we on the stage have travel to get here – are different, of course (in the textbook, on the turf, at Cameron's Deli) but all roads towards anything are, in a sense, very much the same. They wind far onto the horizon, so that Man without a Hamlet can only see what is directly in front of his eyes. The divider lines flash rhythmically in front of him, hypnotizing him. Beating forwards with the wind whipping on his face, the line hypnotizing him, the horizon obscured and winding far into the distance, the Man without a Hamlet does not notice a bit of the scenery he is passing. He cannot enjoy the beautiful stone walls or the quotes during his morning announcements or the people around him, because he is too busy searching for something better on the road that whispers a promise of happily ever after.

One day, though, his car breaks down and he steps off the road. He does not have anywhere to go, without his car, so he decides to lie on the grass. With the sun beating on his back, he notices for the first time the people around him, and their smiles are the best part of his day. No longer traveling down the road, he feels that time is standing still, the earth is no longer rotating and the present, that Now, is everywhere. The Man without a Hamlet finds a home the moment he stops searching for it.

Perhaps at some points, we all are, in this community of vast opportunity and privilege, men and women without Hamlets. Perhaps, at some points, we all are so busy searching on the road late at night for something better, that we do not notice the scenery as it whirls by us.

I believe in ambition and idealism – I believe that this spirit, the wisdom of youth, is no less important than the wisdom of old age, just because it comes first and, sometimes, is lost like a receding hairline. That wisdom is a burning compulsion in a great many of us: we have hopes and dreams and fears; we will change to world, I am quite certain of it. However, this wisdom, I have come to believe, is only so important. Perhaps, in the final moments on this stage, before we walk off and can never really return, in the final moments we have with the school that has given us its firm hand, the town that has given us its woods and streams, and the people who have given us their hearts – perhaps for at least a few moments, we ought to stop looking to a future that beats on, forever receding in front of our eyes, and look to our home, around the stage and in the audience, in the present, and be thankful for the smiles that we see.