Look at the view!

[Guest guest]

I hope you enjoy reading this as I did.

Happy New Year!

Ingrid Kloet

Quindlen's June 1999 Villanova Commencement Address:

It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive

an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to follow my

great-Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a

remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you something

important about their professions, about medicine or commerce. I have no

specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage,

talking to you today.

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. The second is only part of the

first.

Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Tsongas when the

senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with

cancer: " No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in

the office. " Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard

last

year: " If you win the rat race, you're still a rat. " Or what Lennon

wrote

before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: " Life is what

happens

while you are busy making other plans. " 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.

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, still learning how to best treasure

your connection

to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom.

Hug your

Dad.

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, and 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.

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.

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.

Ingrid Kloet

New Mexico Poz Coalition

1193 Morning Dr.

Santa Fe, NM 87507

Phone/Fax: 505-438-4767

Cell Phone: 505-280-2218

www.planetpoz.org

www.gnpplus.net

www.actalive.org

www.onevillage.org