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You walk out of here this
afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out
there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do
for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a
bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your
heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. People don’t talk about the soul
very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But
a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or
lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the test results and they’re not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my
profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center
of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they
say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing
to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone,
and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
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So here’s what I wanted to
tell you today: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the
bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those
things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast. Get a life
in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside
Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water
gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with
her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And
remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma,
remember that you are still a student, learning how to best treasure your connection to
others. Pick up the phone. Send an e–mail. Write a letter.
Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the azaleas in the suburban
neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky
on a cold night. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no
business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread
it around.
Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup
kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do
good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to
take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the
color of our kids eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears
and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live.
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I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad
happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it
would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to
be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I
learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I
learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I
believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others
what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the
fuzz on a baby’s ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be
happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy
and passion as it ought to be lived.
Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a real life, a full life, a
professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection
to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the
classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever
said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.
I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It
was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.
He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he
told me about his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone,
sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police
amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides.
But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just
the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after
he read them.
And I asked him why. Why didn’t he go to one of the shelters? Why didn’t he
check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said,
"Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."
And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view.
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And that’s the last thing I
have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place
to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You’ll never be disappointed.
—Anna Quindlen
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Probing the
Issue: Land Use
(The following is excerpted from a
booklet put out by the Cleveland Diocese titled, "Proclaim Jubilee, Proclaim Justice:
A Reflection and Action Guide on the Jubilee Pledge for Charity, Justice and Peace."
We will be running these throughout the Jubilee year.)
"It is clear then that we are challenged on two fronts" we must
recognize and respond to the needs of the urban poor, who have been hurt by outmigration,
and we must change governmental policy relative to outmigration."
– The Church in the City,
Bishop Anthony
Pilla
Urban and rural landscapes are not two landscapes but one. They created
each other. They transform each other’s environment, economy, social dynamics, and
cultural and religious heritage…To ignore the way they do affect each other is to
miss our moral responsibility to the ways we shape each other’s landscapes and alter
the lives of people and organisms within our boundaries."
–
– Br. David Andrews, National Catholic Rural Life
Conference
Development:
Balanced, sustainable development between urban, suburban, and rural areas
addresses both the costs and the benefits of development from economic, social,
environmental, and community perspectives within a region. By disconnecting costs from
benefits, local governments unwittingly create socialized growth.
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Our society – and our planet
– cannot sustain current rates of growth. In the past 30 years Northeast Ohio has
experienced sprawl without growth; we have spread out an essentially stable population
over a larger and larger geographical area. The result has been the deterioration and
abandonment of our inner city cores, while placing tremendous pressure on our existing
farmland and green spaces. A Comprehensive Land Use Plan addresses land use patterns and
their affect on existing resources, population density, housing diversity, farmland,
zoning, utilities, and transportation.
Impact of Outmigration:
Massive increase in cost of maintaining increased number of roads, utilities,
sewers, schools.
- Depletes tax base and reduces property values of cities and first ring suburbs, reducing
their ability to maintain services.
- Causes storm water runoff (roofs, parking lots) which causes flooding downstream.
- Places tremendous development pricing pressure on open spaces and natural areas
- Increases polarization by income and race
- Removes population concentration necessary to support mass transit
- Increases traffic congestion and air pollution.
- Puts pressure on farmland economics
- Destroys sense of community.
Community Planning:
Community involvement is needed in determining a desired vision for the future. A
vision should include initial goals, objectives and policies to address environment,
natural resources, housing, economic development, quality of life, green space
preservation, recreation, education, city services, and resources.
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Reflection:
How is the community at the most local level involved in the
decisions that affect their lives? How does society best maintain, nurture, and protect
the diversity of peoples, cultures, natural resources, and agricultural practices local to
a given community? How might we encourage sustainable development in our own
lives/business/communities?
Action:
Determine if your city and/or county has a comprehensive land use or master plan
for development of urban city cores. Investigate ways to become involved in initiatives
that are focused on development of affordable housing in the inner city and redevelopment
of its neighborhood, industrial, and business sectors.
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Padre Franco The Bellringer
(Editor’s Note: Frank Schiros
derives the title for this column from the movie, "Cinema Paradiso," where the
village priest was the local censor. Whenever he found objectionable parts in a film, he
would ring the bell and the projectionist would cut the scene out. While Frank is a little
like the priest in the movie, ringing a bell with his words, he takes some license with
the concept in rating the films, using a scale of one to five bells – the more bells,
the better he liked the picture. – D.A.)
Bicentennial Man %%%
Robin Williams must act out his fantasies about the perfect person.
First it was "Mrs Doubtfire," where he portrayed the perfect housekeeper
preferable to a not so perfect husband. In "Bicentennial Man," he portrays a
perfect robot that is superior and preferable to any human husband. The movie implies that
if women had their druthers they would pick something other than a male as a companion
simply because they’re not as inconvenient or imperfect.
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