Doris "Granny D" Haddock To the Freshmen Class at Franklin Pierce College, New Hampshire
Friday, September 5, 2003
(Note, as it is in several other colleges, Doris Haddock's book is required reading for the incoming freshmen. This speech was followed by a long visit for questions and answers.)
Thank you.
It is a great pleasure to grow old and to be asked to dispense advice and to not have to follow it oneself. In that department, let me urge you to go to bed early, get up at dawn, keep well ahead of your studies, stay well behind your credit limit, refrain from smoking and drinking and wild living. I give you that advice, not because I have ever followed it myself, but because life's pleasures are all the more delicious if an old lady has told you to do otherwise.
The fact is, life is a feast of great pleasures and we are rude to our Creator if we do not partake of the beauty and fun and pleasure of this life. So I do hope you will take care of yourself and that you will mind your schedules to the extent that you will not always be behind and worried and stressed and missing out on the joy all around you. The captain of a well-run ship can afford the time to enjoy the breeze and the view. Be that to your own life, starting with college. It is a challenge, I know, but if you keep at it, you will get the hang of living well in this life.
You will see that some of the students around you are forever behind and worried, and others seem on top of it and have a smile. Your choice, indeed. The moment of truth is when you are tempted away from your resolve. Will you be a person of strong character? Here is the test of it: a person of character stays true to a task, long after the passing of the mood in which that resolution was made. Watch for that: Your conscious overview of your daily life can guide you toward improvements that will strengthen your hold on life and its happiness. Let me warn you more specifically that problems like depression and chronic procrastination are always a good excuse for a visit to the health center where you can get very useful help. The brain is no less fixable an organ than the stomach, and we do get our aches and pains and should go for help sooner rather than later.
Now, that is all boilerplate advice. Let me tell you something more interesting. You come into college with the expectation of learning many new things&emdash;of becoming an expert in many areas. But there is one area where you are already the expert, and where the professors and the other old birds are not. Young people bring something special and, if you are not fully aware of this superior quality, you might waste it unknowingly.
I am not speaking of your athletic or more personal areas of strength and stamina, though I am sure you are very impressive to watch in action. I am speaking of your view of the world, which in many ways is superior to the view seen by older eyes.
Trust your sensibilities toward justice and fairness and toward the environment and peace. Understand that your value judgments in these areas are better because they have not been beaten down or crusted over. Information overload can make us insensitive. While your eyes are wide open--and so also your heart--trust what you see. Do not hang back from involvement in addressing the problems of the world, waiting to become an expert. You are expert enough. You are our annual re-supply of new eyes and fresh hearts to give our sorry species its best hope for improvement and survival. Take your part in the great dramas and the great struggles now still in their opening acts in this world. It is the part where you storm on stage with a confused but mischievous look and the audience cheers you madly. Don't wait to know the part too well, or the moment will pass without you.
What is your passion? There is a place for you in that passion. Or are you drifting, looking for your passion? Let your curiosity lead you to it. Trust the force of that curiosity &endash;it is a lighted way for you, and just for you. Be brave when your curiosity takes you to places you would rather not go--it knows what it is doing and it has served you well for much longer than you can possibly imagine.
Look around every now and then and wonder what all this life is about. Whom is served by all this life? Whom does life serve? Life serves life, and we are happiest and at our best when we let our full life force&emdash;indeed our divine life force--rise within us as we engage our lives in service to the world, to the life around us. We are happiest when we are serving life and adding to its health and bounty. We are simply made that way&emdash;made for cooperation and joining of every kind.
This is an extraordinary time you have chosen to come. What an amazing world! The young woman college student in Iran, wearing her Levis under her burka, is your sister and your friend. The farmer in Central America who is trying to get a fair price for his coffee beans so that he can build a better house for his children is your uncle and a man you deeply respect. The Navajo woman who is fighting for the right to stay on land that has been her family's for generations is your grandmother, and she needs your help.
It is not too much. It is all quite beautiful. Cast your heart into this world right now, for your eyes and your heart are open and your senses of justice and fairness and your sense of the right thing to do by the planet that sustains us are fully matured and at their perfect moment to give hope and progress to the world. Don't save yourselves for later; spend yourselves today in love, and your investment will come back to you a hundredfold if you survive.
Most of the social progress of the past hundred years has come from college students demanding a better world.
A good friend of mine was flying across the U.S. this past week and his seat-mates were a young man and woman from Iran. The man was a naturalized U.S. citizen. The young woman had come here more recently. She told my friend how she had grown up under the artillery barrages of the Iran-Iraq War. She described how the Iranians saw that war: that the Americans had built up the Shaw's army to be among the strongest in the region, but that, when he was toppled by the Ayatollah, the U.S. then armed Saddam Hussein in Iraq and encouraged him to take down the Iranian army a few notches. It was in that game that she found herself as a child target of artillery. My friend asked her if she did not resent Americans for that time in her young life. She said that she tried not to hold Americans responsible for the actions of their government, as she hoped she wouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the Iranian government. She said that Americans seemed so kind and so unaware of what was being done in their names around the world, and she said she thought it must be like being the children in a family where the daddy is a mobster--their lives are comfortable, but they know there is something wrong. They do not ask too many questions because they love their way of life. Se said that she did not like to tell Americans about all that she knew, because it was kind of a shame to wake them up to all this when their lives were so cluelessly blissful&emdash;her words.
Well, she was wrong on many counts. As citizens of a democratic republic, we are indeed responsible for what our nation does in our name. And it is no discourtesy to help us be the awakened citizens we must be.
America is a great country and we love it. We love this planet, too. And you young people here today are the bright eyes that must be the open and awake eyes, though still full of joy and honor, love and mischief, duty and courage to serve life in a time when life is challenged by its old foes: fear and hate and ignorance.
Be you a great brotherhood and sisterhood of love and action. Arrange your personal lives so that you have the time and resources to take your part on this great stage. And smile the smile of the peaceful warrior whose weapons are love and light, and ever more love and more light.
Thank you and good luck this great scholastic and political year.
If it gets too crazy, come down to my porch in Dublin and we'll talk it over&emdash;if I'm not away on some adventure of my own. Call first.
Thank you very much.