Secretary Reville delivers keynote address at Merrimack College commencement

On Sunday, May 17, Education Secretary Paul Reville delivered the keynote address to the Class of 2009 at Merrimack College. In his address, Secretary Reville encouraged graduates to continuously challenge themselves and strive for success. Additionally, Secretary Reville was conferred an honorary Doctor of Education degree.

Dr. Kerry Johnson, professor of English at Merrimack College and chief marshal of Commencement; Secretary Reville; and Dr. Ronald Champagne, president of Merrimack College prior to the start of commencement.

Secretary Reville's speech

Thank you Kerry. Very Reverend, Father Provincial Riley, Chairman DeMers, President Champagne, Trustees, Faculty and Staff, Students, Families, Alums and Fellow Honorees,
My deepest thanks for the great honor you have bestowed upon me today. I am humbled and very appreciative of this recognition from such a distinguished institution.
I must begin by congratulating today's graduates. You made it. You are ready to close out one chapter and commence the next. I join with your teachers, family and friends and my boss, Governor Deval Patrick, in commending you for your exceptional efforts and achievements and wishing you all measures of success as you go forward.
I want to acknowledge the leadership of President Ronald Champagne and all the outstanding work by faculty and staff that have led to the exceptional achievements we celebrate today.
Finally, as a parent, I want to congratulate all you parents who have labored long and hard to support your children in taking full advantage of the educational opportunity of a Merrimack College education. Your perseverance and sacrifice is richly rewarded today. Congratulations!
Also as a parent, I love the opportunity of making graduation speeches. Since my own children will seldom listen to me dispense advice, it's heartening to have you, a captive audience, for at least a few moments.
Finally, I want to acknowledge a dear friend, a Merrimack graduate, one who in my mind stands for thousands of Merrimack graduates. His name is Jim Caradonio and he's celebrating the 40^th anniversary of his Merrimack graduation. He recently retired as superintendent one of our state's largest urban school system, the Worcester Public Schools. His lifelong commitment, both to children and better education, has been an illustration of the mission driven ideals I will discuss today. I want to celebrate his life of devotion and leadership. Thank you, Jim and all Merrimack graduates for your service to our society.
Gary Trudeau, the Doonesbury cartoonist, once said, "Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated."
If I'm to be sedating, I still hope to challenge you and be brief at the same time, so let's get started.
I said earlier that graduation signals the commencement of the next chapter of your lives. For many of you, the challenge of the next decade will be to find a meaningful path through life, to seek and discover direction for your lives, that is a purpose, and a mission.
Part of that quest for a meaningful path, a path with heart, will be to find fellow travelers, partners in the quest. Many of you will rely upon and nourish old, familiar friendships for security and support. All of you, I hope, will find new friends with whom to share the path forward.
Many of you will seek, and often find, life partners to whom you will pledge your love and lives in a sanctified bond that commits you to jointly address the challenges of the future, and to also share the burdens and hardships that will inevitably come, to celebrate the joys of life, including, maybe, that extraordinary gift of having your own children.
Finding fellow travelers in the quest for meaning and mission is vital, but I want to talk about the central challenge of your next decade, one on which your happiness and prosperity will depend, finding purpose and meaning in your life's work, not just your vocation, but in the way in which you spend your precious time on earth. I am talking about finding a mission, a connection between your existence and meaning, a reason to be.
This quest for purpose, what some have called a "path with heart", I would submit is the preeminent challenge that each of you face as you walk away from graduation today.
It's a challenge with which young people of your age, all around the world, are particularly struggling in this 21^st century day and age.
It's a challenge that schools and families typically ignore. We could and should in our key institutions do a much better job of helping young people connect to meaningful purpose in their lives, helping them find opportunities to live into and live out their values.
I am a lifelong educator. I have been blessed to find my purpose in helping this nation to realize its ideal of an education that is at once excellent and equitable for all. I have long been convinced that one of our principal roles as educators is to help connect our young people to the complex world that surrounds them, to help them find a place, a meaningful place in a world that seems to isolate youth, often marginalizing them. Young people of the 21^st century, more than ever before, are asking the question "Where do I fit in? What's my place? How does the world need me? How will my life make a difference?" And the answers aren't always clear.
Our job as 21^st century educators should be to assist each of our students in finding that place where they can become contributing, gratified members of our society. We are growing the talent of the next generation and before we're done as educators, we must place that talent in an ever more complex, confusing world.
This means that our educational processes must, to be sure, build traditional, core content knowledge and skills in all the basic subjects, but at the same time, we must build connective tissue in our students, the kind of connective tissue that will allow them to climb aboard a rapidly changing world. We must equip and empower them to express themselves persuasively, both orally and in writing, in English and probably at least one other language. We must make sure that they're capable of working in teams which is the way most contemporary work in the public and private sector gets done. We must prepare them to apply the formidable power of ever evolving technologies to solve the societal and business challenges of today and tomorrow. We must enable them to see the place of our nation in an ever changing global economy. We must stimulate their creativity so as to enable them to solve problems of which we've never even dreamed. In short, we have to ready them to be lifelong 21^st century learners.
Only with such preparation, perspective and skills, such connective tissue will they be prepared to launch their quest for a personal mission.
This quest for purpose is hardly a new concept or a 21^st century invention. It's at the heart of human nature. Religious leaders, philosophers, graduation speakers, even psychologists, have discussed it for time immemorial. Let me share some of their observations:
First a definition from William Damon, a contemporary human development scholar who has written extensively on this subject. He calls purpose "...a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential to the world beyond self."
A noble purpose, he continues, needn't be heroic, it can be found in the day to day work of life, such as a mother or father caring for a child. At the same time, he warns us, a noble purpose, like overcoming poverty, disease or hunger, may be so ambitious as not to be achievable in a single lifetime, but the point is that those ambitions large and small, personal and global, are the essence of a life well lived.
Rick Warren, the mega pastor, has written a mega best seller on this topic entitled "The Purpose Driven Life" subtitled, "What on earth am I here for?" Warren like other religious leaders through time traces the quest for meaning in one's relationship to God and a higher purpose.
Your approach may be religious or secular or some of both, but in the end the feeling is the same. One of my favorite writers, George Bernard Shaw, got it right when he said, "This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a meaningful one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
In other words, it's not about the pursuit happiness straight on. Happiness will come through engagement in a larger purpose, through the quest, not through the attainment of particular goals, riches or success.
Damon argues from psychological evidence, "...the happiest people are rarely those who expend a lot of effort trying to attain pleasure for themselves. In fact many of the things people tend to lust after in their efforts to become happy seem to have little to do with it." Including affluence. But an Augustinian education has already, no doubt, taught you that.
Damon finds evidence that "What does matter for happiness is engaging in something that the person finds absorbing, challenging, and compelling, especially when it makes valued contribution to the world beyond the self."
When I'm no longer Secretary of Education, I will be back at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where I help to prepare students to become tomorrow's education leaders. I frequently tell my students "We should all be thankful to have this good work, this compelling, engaging work, the most important work in our society to do. This is a great gift. To get up each day and want to go to work and to be able to make a contribution to addressing one of the greatest challenges of our era that of educating all of our children, and all means all, so that they and our society are ready to be successful. We are indeed very fortunate to be able to play a role in meeting such a challenge."
I want you all to have that feeling of privilege, engagement and satisfaction in your chosen work.
So, how do you get from here to there. The Bible will describe a faith based route to purpose that Rick Warren helps to interpret. Many self-help books offer tempting tips. But I can only tell you what my experience in life and with my children and students has taught me. Here are a few things I've learned about this quest for the purposeful life.
Be courageous rather than comfortable. Do something each day that stretches you beyond your familiar, comfort zone, makes you a little uneasy. Take risks. Don't be fearful of failure. Instead view failure as a rich learning opportunity. Theodore Roosevelt said we should praise the person "...who comes up short again and again, who fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Be thoughtful, self-aware and reflective. Know thyself, know your strengths, get feedback from others, be realistic but bold. Seek to make a difference, not just make a point. Keep your eyes on the prize and on the future. Dag Hammarskjold, the renowned, former Secretary General of the UN, said, "Only he who keeps his eyes fixed on the far horizon will find the right road."
Find people from whom you can learn and attach yourself to them. Mentors are of critical value in finding direction. Worry less about the uncertain job market and financial security in the early years than in finding a strategic point of entry, for example, a good organization doing good work where you can attach yourself to someone whom you admire and can learn from. Finding the right mentor can be even more valuable than pursuing a graduate degree.
Stay focused. Don't be distracted by a culture obsessed with distorted definitions of success and an obsession with money and fame.
Seek broad experience. The pathway to where you're headed, or think you're headed, may be twisting and indirect. Those of us who are of advanced age can often recite flawless narratives about our pathway from youth to where we are today, but in truth, the route was never all that obvious. For many of us, it only became clarified in hindsight. In your quest for jobs, don't let your desire for the perfect drive out the good. Take a chance. Learn how to make jobs the way you want to take them. Accumulate experience and milk it for all the learning it will provide.
Ask questions, be curious, be a seeker of knowledge. Keep reading. You're not done as a student today. You're just beginning the next phase of your education. We expect you to be lifelong students now that you have the tools to be lifelong learners.
Keep looking. Keep climbing. Use the great privilege of the education you've received here to be smart about the future. And while you're at it, remember what Jesus said about privilege, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." You have enjoyed a great privilege here at Merrimack. We now will expect much of you.
Persevere. The world is changed by those who show up. If you get knocked down, get up and keep going. Nothing comes easily. Work hard. Hard work is good work, interesting work, challenging work. In his recent best seller, "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell researches success and concludes that talent is over-rated and success has much to do with the sheer volume of effort, those who work longest and hardest are far more likely to achieve top level performance.
Keep your sense of humor. Don't take yourself too seriously. Arrogance and self-importance are terrible impediments not only to relationships but to learning.
Finally and importantly, Have faith and keep moving. Whether secular or religious in your faith, you must believe that YOU WILL GET THERE, WHEREVER YOU ARE GOING. However, it's not the destination. Remember: It's the route and what you learn from and contribute during your time of travel.
Even pop culture icon, Hannah Montana (my seven year old dragged me to the movie the other day) apparently knows that it's all about the climb. Here's an excerpt from her song, "The Climb"
There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna want to make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah
Keep moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Finally, one more metaphor, aquatics. The great psychologist and educator, Jean Piaget, described human development by talking about the achievement of balance, equilibrium in life, by talking about swimming. As Damon reports, Piaget eschewed treading water as a waste of time and energy, doomed to failure. "You must swim," he argued, "and in a direction. You must move forward. That will keep you steady. Plus, you may have the advantage of getting somewhere. That is what equilibrium in (human) development is. It is moving forward steadily, never trying to stay in place."
So, sedation administered, my job is done. And speaking of swimming, it's now time for you to jump into the water. It'll be refreshing, even on a day like this, especially after all the time you've spent in class. The water may seem cold at first but you'll warm right up once you get moving.
Your education has prepared you so that you're ready to dive in. Remember it's all about the swim.
Congratulations on bravely setting out on your journey. May you have many adventures, make great friends, learn and love much and achieve the success of which you dream while contributing to the betterment of the world in which we live. May you embrace the journey and appreciate each destination along the way.
May God bless you!