An Admission, an Attack, a Story, and a Regret

A Message to the Class of 2024

by Micah E. Weiss

The following is the commencement address I gave this past Sunday.  The tradition at the school where I’ve been a teacher and administrator for 10 years now is that the graduating Seniors elect a speaker from the staff and from the students.  This was my fourth time being selected by a graduating class, and it was easily my best speech.  I was very grateful for the opportunity since I will be leaving this school for another position this year, and I was overjoyed for the opportunity to go out with a bang.  

A few contextual notes: the Abby I refer to is the Head of School Abby Hood, an amazing person who took over as Head four years ago. She has been my supervisor throughout my 10 years at this school and always welcomed and valued my opinions even when they ran hard against the grain.  

The “Greg” I refer to in the speech is Greg Vogel, our Associate Head of School, and also an extraordinary person.  He’s a deeply committed educator, and makes the student-life side of my school really sing.  So much so, that his disciplinary talks with students have been lovingly dubbed “Vogeling” or getting “Vogeled” by the students over the years.  It’s a very impressive thing to have your name turned into a verb in a positive sense.  It is important to note that he started his life as an educator as a college soccer coach.

There may be some other in-side jokes, but for the most part, this speech was as much intended for the parents and families who don’t know the school as not.  Occasionally, I’ll put a note in about whom I gestured to.  It’s unfortunate that all my little turns of phrases, gestures and off the cuff additions aren’t something I can include in text (particularly in the “story” I told, where I didn’t follow the written text very closely), but I still felt it was worth sharing the speech.  I hope you enjoy it, and as usual, welcome your thoughts.     

Thank you so much, parents, Abby, class of ‘24.  I am so grateful to you, soon to be graduates, for allowing me these parting words. 

Today, on this day of achievement and celebration, when considering what I might say to you who are to be celebrated, who have achieved, I have an Admission, an Attack, a Story, and a Regret.

First, the admission: how I teach is kind of a trick.  I cheat like crazy.  I have a reputation for telling the truth as I see it, and always being honest with you—and as far as I know I’ve never lied to you—but I certainly bend things around a lot.

I say something controversial to provoke you, and you get mad, or at least confused, and then you demand an explanation, and we have a great conversation.  It’s a cheat, but it works a lot of the time, and it's only gotten me in trouble a few times. So far, I’ve gotten lucky. 

You know some of the old bangers, right?  Some of the ole’ hot take imperatives and opinions?

Throw your phones away!  Annihilate social media.  Electric cars aren’t good for the environment, yet—neither is recycling or solar panels.  

As some of you know, I’m not overly fond of Therapy, Make-Up, or Drag Queens–I’m pretty sure that social sciences aren’t real science, and I think there probably shouldn’t be university athletics at all (that one’s just for Greg).  Also, I do love, without apology, both Western Civilization and The United States of America–and I am terribly dismayed that those opinions are considered controversial.  

Did I provoke anyone?     

If any of you want to find out why I’m not a terrible person, I’m happy to talk about these things after—but for now you’ll have to take their word for it. *gestures to the graduates*   

In the meantime you might understand why my classrooms are so lively. 

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about any of those things–I mean, I actually really do, but not right now.  I did come up with few final provocations that I thought might be more appropriate for the occasion, so, just for fun, I thought I’d share them to illustrate the cheap bag of tricks that got me here:

1.       I don’t want you to be happy.  Stop trying to be happy.  Many years ago, Starting with my own closest friends, and future parents, I started hearing this refrain: “I just want my child to be happy.”  I say that’s rot.  I say instead, be a good and virtuous person, and work hard, and forget trying to be happy--that’s what I want for my children, and in an important way, that includes you.  *gestures to the graduates*  

If you are good and you work hard, first, you will be good and useful, which is better than being happy, and second, people will like you for your goodness, and your hard work, and they will want to be near you–those are your relationships.   And the secret is, that’s when I’ve seen you happiest all year–when you gave of yourselves, when you worked hardest, and sitting right here.  

So stop trying to be happy. 

2.       I don’t care about your Identity, and neither should you.  Anybody can jump on the ole’ interwebs and find a bunch of identity labels and say “hey, that’s me.”  It isn’t.  It isn’t you.  It’s irrelevant to who you are—you are yourselves, you are all individuals; you are Sarah, and Zoe, and Caeden and Meiling and Clay and Alex first, and some waste of time terminology second—a very distant second.  I have seen you all strive and succeed, struggle and grow, and you didn’t do it as a racial or ethnic or gender category, you did it as your beautiful and amazing individual selves.  

Most of these silly identity words were conceived of either by some nerd-academics with too many letters after their names, or some narrow-minded bigots with not enough, so why listen to them?  Listen to me! Your souls are lovely, sublime, miraculous things, and totally unique to you—your name is all I need to know to love you.  Your kindness, your creativity, the power of your minds—these are uniquely you and would exist regardless of the boxes our culture insists you put yourselves in.  

You walked into this school with an identity, but because of your willingness to work, strive, and succeed, you are walking out with character.  Character is better—it's yours to build and define, and is unique to you.  Keep building it; keep growing your character.  

I’ve got one more

3.       Don’t be weak.  It says here: pause for gasps from audience. 

No, really, Be strong, choose strength, choose courage—they are choices, not traits, so make the choice.  You sitting here is proof that you’ve made that choice time after time: so keep doing it.  Here at our school it’s been hilarious to watch your strength, especially when you don’t know you are being strong—you’re there, lying in bed, moaning perhaps, feeling down, looking tragic, and the refrain goes “I just can’t handle going to class today”—yeah, sure, but you can stand up to a Vogeling, explain that!!!  I can; that’s strength!  Sometimes it's like watching someone try and lift a board they’re standing on, but one thing it isn’t is weakness.  

You fought your parents, your schools, me, sometimes your friends, yourselves, and always proving that you are strong already—so choose to use that strength wisely, choose the virtue of courage, and face the world with the same strength with which you fought us.  

That’s my trick.  

See how I did that?  Don’t be happy, stuff your identity, and don’t be weak.  Three provocations that I used to shock you, and maybe some in this audience, and all to get to say what I really mean to say in a way that will hopefully get you to really think about it, which is: “I admire you, I love you, I’m proud of you, keep it up!”   See what I did there?  It’s just rhetoric.  A trick my favorite teachers played on me a thousand times.  And that is my admission.

I am sad I won’t get to do it anymore for you, but in a way, I am also heartened because it seems like the trick worked a time or two, even as I had to play the bad guy once in a while.    

Which puts me in mind of a great thinker and poet from our age, who said:

One Day I’ll watch as you’re leaving
‘Cause you got tired of my scheming (for the last time)
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me
At tea, time, everybody agrees

Now for my attack: on nihilism.  The universe is not an endless meaningless expanse of chance occurrences.  Today’s culture of so-called optimistic nihilism is half-baked, and EVERYWHERE—movies, songs, politician’s messaging.  It drives me nuts because it’s such a dinky philosophy.  I’m pretty sure it was taken from a poor reading of a syllabus of an undergraduate intro seminar on bad French philosophy–one of my favorite redundancies.  

And what does it always boil down to?  The universe is an empty materialist meaningless random set of evolved nothings on the one hand, but don’t worry, on the other hand, your family and friends, your passions and pursuits, Love and loving—you can act as if these things are meaningful, because at least they feel meaningful.  

This tik-tok-length construction misses the real reason why those things feel meaningful: BECAUSE THEY ARE!    

These truths--your family, friends, loves, and whatever work you bring your passion to--these aren’t imbued with meaning by you, they are meaningful in and of themselves.  

Meaning is part of their definition, not an add on, not an addendum, not a patina; meaning is the inherent quality of that which has a soul: you, and that which you pour your soul into–your work, and the people you love.  

IF we could add or subtract meaning from these things at will, if meaning were merely value-added or a product of the accident of consciousness, 

• then loss wouldn’t hurt so much, and 

• Vulnerability and sacrifice in gaining these things wouldn’t mean anything, 

• and the love of them wouldn’t exist at all.   

Without meaning there would be no triumph, no tragedy, and you all know how real our triumphs and tragedies are.  My attack is more bluntly put like this: your lives have meaning and Love is not an accident.   

Like all bad philosophies, optimistic nihilism relieves you of responsibility.  If it’s true, then hey, why worry?  Just float along from one hedonistic pleasure to another until you’ve wasted your life—at the end of your life you can always talk about the meals you’ve had and feel vaguely satisfied with your products, right?   

The hard part about acknowledging that your life has inherent meaning is that it actually will make your life harder and you might get hurt, because it leaves you vulnerable to loss, and requires change and sacrifice, and the courage to embrace all of life’s meaningfulness.

But—that’s okay, as I said, you are strong, you can handle it.

Which leads me to the story, a personal anecdote, my favorite one about being young.   Abby’s probably sick of it by now, and most of you know it, *gestures to the graduates* but many of you *gestures to the audience* don’t, but it's important, so I have to tell it one last time before you *gestures to the graduates again* and I leave this school. 

When I was 15 I was in love with a girl named Marie.  I knew her from church camp, and I had fallen hard, and it was ugly—so ugly that I made a mixtape of just the Righteous Brothers’ song Unchained Melody recorded over and over again, and I used to sit in my room listening to it, trying to cry.  Anyway, camp lasted one week, Sunday to Sunday, and the goal for every teen was to find a romantic partner by Wednesday, because Wednesday was the Amusement Park trip, and you wanted someone to hold your hand in the haunted house, or sneak a kiss on the ski-lift ride, and snuggle with on the long bus ride on the way back late at night. 

So, I was in love, it was ugly, and I was oh, so, terribly, insufferably, irredeemably 15— and I was a coward.  I told everyone I was in love with Marie in the first three days, everyone except Marie.  Word got around, there were only a hundred kids there, and I was getting encouragement from my friends: “dude, you gotta tell her, come one!” or whatever, and finally, on Tuesday night, I finally screwed my courage to that awkward teenage sticking place, and confronted her. 

The camp was on a long hill with a road running down it. She was standing in a small crowd of our friends at the top of the hill, and I walked up to her and said “Marie, I have a question for you.” 

And she said, “No!” and ran down the hill. 

Being a valiant lover, I gave chase.  Somehow, on the hill, our legs got tangled up, and we tumbled into a ditch into a pile of old leaves and dirt.  And while we tumbled, I finally said: “Will you go out with me?”

And she said: “NOOOO!” 

I love that 15 year old version of myself, he was faithful and valiant and noble and true, and so deeply embarrassing and pathetic.  I usually end this story by making the point that you are always changing and growing, and that if you think about it, looking back on your life 4-5 years ago, there’s a lot to be embarrassed about, and that’s okay.  

Just four years after I was tackling my lady-love into a ditch only to be rejected and sent to my room with only the Righteous Brothers as companions, I went back to that camp, and fell in love with my future wife.  

Being open to being different than you were, that’s a process that will continue for a while yet.  When you are 24-25, you will think of yourselves in the here and now and probably cringe at who you were at times, and we all do it; I still do it.  To think you have things all figured out, and then stick to it thoughtlessly, these are the “foolish consistencies; the hobgoblins of little minds.”  

Which leads me to my regret: I first spoke at this podium 9 years ago, and I feel embarrassed about some of that speech.  I cringe at it a little.  Because I lied.  The lie was another rhetorical trick—but just so you know that the process never ends, that you will spend your life growing and changing, and that that’s okay, I’ll tell you what I said. 

I said: “I don’t really believe in God, but I believe in Beethoven.”  It’s not just a lie because I was agnostic then, not an atheist, or so I claimed to be.  It was a lie because believing in Beethoven is believing in God, and I knew it, sort of, well, enough to admit to it now.  Now I’m not saying you should believe in God, I’m no preacher, but the meaning in Music, the great mystery of what it is, and the way it makes us feel, that I know you believe.  Beethoven heard the voice of God and let it flow through him, even when it was the only thing left that he could hear–we forget that, sometimes.  

And alright, you might not like Beethoven—we may not love the same music, that’s because we are unique individuals; but that we know and love Music at all, that’s God.  

It took me 25 years of adulthood to accept that transcendence, that meaning, that Love, as God, and I can’t pretend to really understand it, I feel that I am at the beginning of understanding, not the end, and maybe I never will, and maybe you never will, and that’s fine, 

BUT I do know that life is long, meaningful, and beautiful and a gift, and it’s yours and no one else’s, and, in the words of almost every Marvel movie: you only get one shot.  Make it count.    

Do more—love, work, build those relationships, care for your soul and the souls of others.  Let yourself be vulnerable to Loss—“We all take a beating every day” as Hemingway wrote, and the grief will be great, but the joy that comes with that vulnerability will flood in after. 

Abby, would it be terribly hypocritical of me if I quoted Khalil Gibran?  Abby may remember that I mocked Gibran in a parent zoom once years ago when she quoted from him.  Here, though, his wisdom endures:  “The deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”   

Which leads me to a final thought: 

For the first time in a long time, I can relate to how you feel with the immediacy of the moment.  We are leaving this school together and I hardly know what to do with this.  

My son is leaving for college right along with you, he is also in the class of 2024.  In one summer, I will lose my community of ten years, the best boss I’ve ever had, a staff of coworkers I respect and admire, you, my students, and my eldest child—and I’m losing them not because I did anything wrong, I hope quite the opposite.  I’m not losing them forever, I know, and not completely.  But 95% or more of the time I will ever spend with my son, or at this school, and with you, is ending, right now.   These are the times that wrench your heart, the thoughts that threaten to overwhelm you with grief—but I know the joy will come when I am not looking for it.

I will hear about this school succeeding in most capable hands, I will hear about my boy out in the world, I will hear about each and everyone of you over the years, and I know as sure as I love you, that you will do wonders—and without seeking it, the joy will come.  Thank you.