Lxx)k around you. There are people
in this room that will be worthy com
panions through your lifetime, whose
lives and cultures will enrich you be
yond measure. Seek them out, let
down your defenses, be open to new
relationships you may uncover in the
classrooms, on the playing fields, in
the laboratories, in the hallways of
your residence hall, even during the
forest panies. Seek out some of our
campus characters — they got that
way because of a strength of personality
that has been worn and polished by
experience and time and by their love
of teaching.
This college is deliberately unlike
the real world. The difference is sig
nified by symbols like these hot and
stuffy robes we are wearing and these
funny looking hats which we try to
keep on our heads. But the difference
really resides in the once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity you have here to take in
tellectual risks. To escape the normal
human laziness which which we are all
afflicted. To take courses that may
seem at first frivolous or unconnected
with any career aspiration, simply be
cause you have “never taken something
like that,” but are willing to try it out
once in your life.
You know by now your own ac
customed patterns of learning. You
know what it takes to prepare for an
exam. You know how much you have
to study in order to be ready for a class.
I am suggesting that there is a fortune
to be found if you push yourselves
beyond these comfortable habits.
Be curious about the way other
people learn. Attend a performance
and lectur^ by a talented young pianist,
blind sinc6 birth, because you want to
understand how she has managed to
command a wide keyboard and memo
rize hours of the most intricate of
Beethoven’s, Mozart’s and Chopin’s
music, all without recourse to what is
for most of us the single most impor
tant sense of all, the single most impor
tant measure of orientation — that of
sight. Then push yourself to stretch the
current limits of your own senses.
Through di scipline and taking chances,
forge new synapses in your brain. It
really can be done.
Ask a Japanese friend how about
his views of what is happening in the
world, express your concern to him
about the latest earthquake to hit his
nation, reach out to him when the
newspaper carries news of a student
from his county who has been shot in
one of our cities.
Ask friends from Yugoslavia and
the Republic of Georgia what have
been the values they have found most
important to hang onto as their politi
cal and economic structures have dis
integrated and many of their friends
and family have been killed in civil
war. What have they and their families
found to sustain themselves through it
all?
Ask a friend from The Gambia in
West Africa about the fascinating poli
tics of his country which has a com
paratively long tradition of political
stability in spite of a complex ethnic,
linguistic and political diversity that
would make Rush Limbaugh seem like
Jesse Jackson’s brother.
Exchange views with a friend about
what each of you finds most beautiful
or ugliest in this world, and rejoice in
the common ground you may find.
Learn how to say “good morning” —
that most universal of greetings in
the languages of your friends from
abroad. Think to yourself how lonely
it would be to go a whole year without
greeted familiarly in your native
tongue.
Ask your professor or the secretary
in your departmental office about what
she or he most enjoys doing outside
class you will find this campus
chock full of unexpected talents and
passionate hobbyists. There is some
one at this college who knows and
cares a lot about almost any subject in
which you might have an interest. Seek
that person out.
Above all, push yourself into ac
tivities you’ve never tried before. Go
to concerts, lectures, plays, athletic
events, because they are full of a dif
ferent kind of learning from what you
meet day to day in the classroom. Make
a commitment to yourself to do
something absolutely new at least once
a week, even if your first reaction may
be to gag, as you and I did when we
were 2 1/2 years old and our parents
made us eat something we had already
made up our minds we wouldn’t like.
Get in the habit of pushing yourself
beyond your fears and the limits of
your comfort zone. So condition your
mind and spirit, that at some time in the
future,, you too will rise to meet some
human crisis armed with the moral
courage and clarity of that young
woman on the streets of Tbilisi. You
can prepare yourself for this moment,
even as a musician or an athlete pre
pares. Just as a practiced pianist’s
fingers seems to float unconsciously
through a Schubert impromptu or as
Michael Jordan appears to float ef
fortlessly toward the basket, you may
someday find yourself rising to a hu
man crisis so spontaneously and so
naturally that it will take your breathe
away, and make you feel truly human,
as if for the first time.
Students and colleagues, we are
gathered here in a privileged place of
learning, of aspiration and of human
community; this place where some of
us will remain but a few years and
others, for a lifetime; a human place,
resonant with a rich range of values,
cultural and ethnic backgrounds, in
terests and beliefs; a place that has the
resources to enlarge our minds and our
spirits so that we go forth from here
capable of changing the world for the
better through our attentiveness to God,
our love of others, and our stewardship
of this beautiful, blue-green planet that
is our home.
I am honored to welcome you to
this privileged place, the world of
Brevard College, in this month of
September in the year nineteen hundred
ninety three.