Now that they’ve come this far
The nation heard President Obama’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame in May, and we’re hearing about other high-profile speakers and honorees as they address this year’s graduates. I saw film clips on television the other day of addresses given by First Lady Michelle Obama, First Lady Laura Bush, Justice Clarence Thomas, Oprah Winfrey and even comedian Ellen DeGeneres.
It must be very difficult preparing one of these, trying to come up with inspiring and unique thoughts that haven’t been expressed a thousand times over by other speakers.
But now it seems there is a different message, you can probably call it unique, and a number of this year’s speakers are delivering it.
In 1969, baby boomers took podiums at college graduations around the country and pledged to redefine the world in their image.
Forty years later, they have, and now they are apologizing for it. Their collective advice for the class of 2009: Don’t be like us.
This is bittersweet, this admission by the boomers (finally) that ‘we screwed up’.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, 60 years old, told the graduating class of Butler University last month that boomers have been “self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, 55, told Grinnell College graduates in Iowa that his was “the grasshopper generation, eating through just about everything like hungry locusts.”
And Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, at 44 barely a boomer himself, told seniors at Colorado College that the national creed of one generation standing on the shoulders of the next was at risk “because our generation has not been faithful enough to our grandparents’ example.”
In fact, the piece points out
boomers focused more on “their own inner voyage” and less on their obligation to society.
An outgrowth (if you will) of the Woodstock culture.
The speeches, which were tailored to their audience of early 20-somethings, understandably dwelled on what younger people could do to help fix the country’s problems. And no matter what this year’s crop of speakers said, they were likely to encounter skepticism from students entering the worst job market in decades.
All things considered then, what did they say?
In his address at Colorado College, Sen. Bennet, a Democrat, used three figures to make his point about boomers’ failures. Since the beginning of the decade, annual median family income in the U.S. declined by $300; health-care costs climbed by 80%; and the cost of higher education jumped 60%.
“We have limited the potential of future generations by burdening them with our poor choices and our unwillingness to make tough ones,” Mr. Bennet said.
That theme echoed around the country. At Texas Tech University, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley, 51, told graduates: “I know you’re looking up here at my generation and you’re thinking, ‘Great, thanks, just when it was our turn, you broke it.” Speaking at the Boston College commencement last month, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns compared the divisiveness of this era with the Civil War period. In an interview, he said the boomers’ tragedy was to “squander the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II.”
What’s the ‘sweet’ in this bittersweet story? Maybe it’s the younger generation seeing their elders take responsibility for their mistakes, hold themselves accountable, and make the humbling (if not humiliating) admission that they set a bad example. And that they’re sorry.
Okay. This is a reconciliation that can heal a lot of divisions.
But as Desmond Tutu so eloquently told the graduates he addressed, the human spirit is capable of many things, and forgiveness is greater than evil and all things are possible to those who believe. In any generation.
And no matter what the circumstances or surroundings, the spirit is capable of soaring, if exhorted and elevated.
You know the story of the farmer who in his back yard had chicken, and then he had a chicken that was a little odd looking, but he was a chicken. It behaved like a chicken. It was pecking away like other chickens. It didn’t know that there was a blue sky overhead and a glorious sunshine until someone who was knowledgeable in these things came along and said to the farmer, “Hey, that’s no chicken. That’s an eagle. “Then the farmer said, “Um, um, no, no, no, no man. That’s a chicken; it behaves like a chicken.
“And the man said no; give it to me please. And he gave it to this knowledgeable man. And this man took this strange looking chicken and climbed the mountain and waited until sunrise. And then he turned this strange looking chicken towards the sun and said, “Eagle, fly, eagle. “And the strange looking chicken shook itself, spread out its pinions, and lifted off and soared and soared and soared and flew away, away into the distance. And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be — eagles, not chickens.
