Dear all,
We have work to do and lives to lead. Does work define your life or do you determine a life that you want to lead? Read this inspiring speech by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.
Enjoy the read! Thanks!
Cheers,
Wen Shih
> "I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real
> life is all I know.
> Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work.
> You will 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 accounts but also 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 cold comfort on a winter's
> night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when
> you've received your 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 work stand in the way of being
> a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre 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 am a good friend to my friends and
> them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to
> you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I
> call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be
> rotten, 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. 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 pay cheque, 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 at the seaside, a life in which
> you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the
> water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she
> tries to pick up a sweet 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. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write
> a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. 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 beer 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,
> and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the
> colour 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 to live.
> I learned to live many years ago. 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 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 back yard 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".