Commencement: Follow your . . .
I like this time of year because I enjoy reading or hearing the variety of commencement addresses that are delivered at colleges and universities around the country. I have long passed the “young adult” age (18-35 year olds), but don’t think of myself as “middle-aged” just yet. I am the oldest end of Generation X. I don’t have the issues that Boomers take into the world, but I do have some of their characteristics along with Gen Y. David Brooks is one of my favorite “conservative” writers who pens a column for the New York Times. His latest speaks to the culture that awaits those graduating from college and the personal adjustments they will have to make.
It’s Not About You
David Brooks | The New York Times | May 30, 2011But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.
More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.
Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.