SPEECH FOR A HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE

By Roger Rosenblatt

Your official speaker will exhort you to climb every mountain and follow your passion. Your paternal speaker suggests that you climb every other mountain and keep your shirt on. But he does have a few thoughts to offer, culled from half a century of immeasurable wisdom. They should just about cover the page.

Do your own laundry. Your college will undoubtedly provide some easy pickup service, but my advice is, do the things yourself. The generation that runs the country now grew up leaving trash in the streets for others to haul away. If you take care of your own mess, you'll be surprised how clean you'll feel. Use Tide on pizza stains.

Believe in institutions--governments, universities, families, all that. No one believes in institutions anymore, not even the institutions, but endurance is not chopped liver. You are an institution (quite a fine one, if your mother and I are any judge), a composition of tested parts that have evolved into a body that stands.

Believe in institutions, but do not marry them. Establishments exist to moderate; they look for function. You are likely to work for some company or other, but keep a safe distance. There is no contempt as bitter as that felt by compromised minds for the independent ones that have joined them. Grin broadly at the water cooler, and go home to where you live.

On that: If you decide to live in the city, choose a neighborhood where the houses are low-built--brownstones or frame jobs with little gardens out front or back--so that you can always see a mass of sky and preserve a sense of scale. If you live in the country, go to the sea rather than the mountains, which, while monumentally beautiful, will depress you over time. If you live near your parents, excellent.

As for how you live, be out of things as much as possible, without acting like a crank. Daydreams are part of reality too. When your old man was caught gazing out a classroom window, the teacher would ask him, "Would you care to rejoin the group?" He always thought, "Not really."

Do not mistake knowledge for learning. Real learning comes from being out of things, from taking the information you acquire and carting it off to a state of reverie. "We must learn to imagine what we know"--that was Shelley's advice.

Which reminds me: Spend some portion of each day studying beauty, in any form. Especially study the line, be it in Shakespeare or Conrad, or in a song by Louis or Ella, or in a drawing by Jules Feiffer or Chuck Jones. The line is the basic unit of beauty.

Spend some other portion of the day in idleness, ardent and blissful idleness. Young people today work too hard, are worked too hard, for no purpose but someone else's gain. At the same time, keep up your love of sports. (I know I hardly have to tell you that.) Sports are about clean victories and perpetual renewals; every old game has a definite end, and every new one is a world reborn. Jogging is nice, but be sure to play something you can win. Winning is nicer.

Your art teachers think you a budding painter, though you shrug that off. That's O.K. But if you should become an artist, ignore the critics. Some precious few critics have an artist in them, but most are a desperate, shriveled lot who have found a way to touch art without making it. The half-nuts architect Roark in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is confronted by the critic who tried to destroy him. "Why don't you tell me what you think of me," says the critic. To which Roark responds, "I don't think of you."

If you find yourself in a fight, never strike first, but when you hit back, hit hard. Pick your time and place, and nuke 'em. Do not worry about making enemies. The right enemy will be a sign that you're growing up and that God loves you.

Eschew ideology. It leads to hysterics.

Avoid complaint. It only sours the puss, and things are not going to get better anyway.

Whatever you do in life, be sure to admire others who do it as well as or better than you. My trade of journalism is sodden these days with practitioners who seem incapable of admiring others or anything. It is a matter of creativity as much as truth. They do not know that generosity is creative.

A few endnotes: Vote, always vote. You'll feel a fool if you don't. Get a dog. You will not find that touching trust in a human face. Never say the following: "no-brainer," "no problem," "at this point in time" or "focus group."

Finally, arise early. Six o'clock occurs in the morning too. Take my word for it. And if you get up at 6 (5 is better), you can watch the sun struggle up into place. You will be grateful for the silent glory of that sight, as the sun, at once enlarging and moving farther away, becomes the sky it enlightens. I am thinking, of course, of you. Goodbye, my boy.