2012 Baccalaureate and Valedictory Celebrations Speech
I am proud to offer formal and official congratulations to you, our graduating class of 2012.
I also congratulate and honor those of you –- parents, spouses, family members and friends -- who have supported our graduates. Your belief in our graduates, your time, and your efforts over the years have sustained them throughout their time at New York University.
I know our graduates want to thank you and I ask you, graduates, to stand and applaud those who supported you in getting to this graduation day.
And you, dear graduates, Class of 2012, when you step outside this magnificent hall this afternoon, and leave the ceremony at Yankees Stadium Wednesday, you will be graduated for the first time from New York University.
You, in a new and graduated way, will be responsible for making all your own decisions -- about partners, about jobs, about friendships, about where you will put your time, creativity, and efforts.
So today, in my parting words, I ask you to draw inspiration from the people who are seated next to you.
Look around you.
Look at the friends who stayed up with you during the all-nighters; who attended your recitals and your crits, your exhibitions, and your poster sessions; who held your hand when your heart was breaking; who consoled you when you didn’t get the internship or practicum you wanted; who stayed with you and pulled you back together when you had made a complete fool of yourself, and then made you laugh. Think of your friends from Washington Square, from NYU.
The Irish understanding of friendship is rooted in two words: "Anam" which means soul and “cara” which means friend. So an Anam Cara is a friend of one’s soul, a soul friend.
In his book, Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue gives us a theology of friendship. He tells us that to have a soul friend, an anam cara, is to have a friendship that is both an act of recognition and belonging. The recognition arises out of the act of attending -- listening with a generosity of “self forgetting.” Listening so intently that we help another person recognize herself.
In the early Celtic world, before we had psychology or research, an anam cara was more than a friend. An anam cara was a teacher, a companion, a guide. An anam cara was a person who listened, and through listening understood.
It is in a friend’s shared reflection that we come to know ourselves.
Think of your faculty and friends and family who have been your guides, your teachers, who have led you to self-knowledge, who have said to you “I AM HERE for you.” Think of the one who has called you out for being less of a person by saying “You are not acting like yourself.” (At the time you may not have known you were hearing ancient Celtic wisdom.)
This is so different from the plugged-in lives we lead tethered to our electronic devices. Right now I am wondering how many of you are holding some sort of device in your hand right now. How many are checking your email, tweeting, sending a text message, or checking your newsfeed on Facebook? And yet, though tethered, we are not really connected, and that is a problem.
Human beings crave connection.
Psychologists, media experts, health professionals tell us people are healthier and happier when they have attachments to others. The infant needs to be held securely in loving arms for healthy development. Sick people heal faster surrounded by their loved ones. We are healthier when we have connections that are worthy of the name friendship, worthy of being called anam cara.
Connecting requires eye contact, gesture, voice, and, most of all, attentiveness – selfless attention.
Graduates, if you measure your life by how much you love others, rather than how much you are loved, you will find happiness and deep love,
If you seek to be an anam cara, you will find your anam cara.
As you leave us, try to touch lives different from your own. Challenge yourself to make new friends, different kinds of friends. Step outside your circle of connections, move beyond your digital contacts to embrace friends less fortunate than you -- in the South Bronx or in Myanmar -- friends around the world, in Ghana, China or Abu Dhabi. And hold on to your anam cara from the Washington Square.
Class of 2012, return often to your alma mater so that we may celebrate your successes and hear about who and what you have learned to love; who you have reached out to; and who has been enriched and enlarged by your great gifts.