You may say I’m a dreamer.
But I’m not the only one.
—John Lennon
Dear Members of the Class of 2021,
Where to begin? It has been a year without precedent in our collective lifespans, and as this chapter in your educational journey draws to a close, who could have imagined that you would be approaching this milestone having lived your entire senior year enduring one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of civilization? The world you grew up in has ceased to exist entirely, and the world you will help co-create in the next phase of your life is not yet here. The intervening months of limbo have been an eternity of endless hours on screens, a litany of lost moments and opportunities, and a crushing isolation bereft of hugs and other human contact. It has been a time of great mourning.
Yet as you graduate, it is also a time of great celebration, and age and maturation will lead you to discover that this paradox of simultaneous grief and joy is the very heart of all moments of significant transition: as the old saying goes, the monarch is dead; long live the monarch. It is why we have so many ceremonies for these moments. Weddings, funerals, commencements, retirements…they are our public opportunities to take stock of both what needs to be mourned and what needs to be celebrated, and we fill them with speeches and speakers about the stock-taking not because anyone is actually going to remember any of the words spoken but because the act itself of saying them is the punctuation mark to remind us: this is what is important to our lives; this is what is significant; do not forget this about ourselves.
And so, in that spirit, here is my own punctuation mark for all of you.
First, I have to start by acknowledging that the world which I and the rest of your elders are handing to you is seriously broken and filled with its fair share of what my nephew (who graduates this year as well!) would call “stupid people.” The pandemic has stripped bare the racial and economic inequities of our society, revealed the incredible lengths to which White people will go to defend and protect their privilege, and demolished any remaining cultural delusion of exceptionalism as we have allowed more people per capita to die of this plague than almost any other nation on earth. Our elected officials who cater to their anti-intellectual constituents as well as corporate greed have failed so badly to slow the rate of human-induced climate change that what were once 500-year weather events have become annual affairs, and our over-consumption of resources as a species has initiated the first great mass extinction event on this planet since the asteroid took out nearly 100% of the dinosaurs and 75% of all other life at the time.
And what’s scary is that I could continue with this litany of brokenness for page after page. Indeed, entire books have already been written about just how much damage and harm our species has done over the centuries—to each other as well as to the planet—and both the archeological and paleontological record are clear: this is not a uniquely Western, European Civilization thing or an Industrial Revolution thing. Humans have been permanently altering every environment they have inhabited since we started moving out of Africa. As environmental educator, Jennifer Klos, notes: it is perhaps we who are the ultimate invasive species.
However, I did not set out to write this letter to fill all of you with despair and a sense of despondency. No, I open with this acknowledgement of our broken world you are inheriting because like columnist, Thomas Friedman, I want to suggest that the capacity for fixing it already lies within each and every one of you: what Friedman calls “Mars thinking versus Texas thinking.”
Now, to understand what he means by that, I need to remind everyone that in mid-February of this year, two unrelated events happened simultaneously: the landing of NASA’s rover, Perseverance, on the surface of Mars and the extreme winter storm that utterly overwhelmed the State of Texas’ power grid. Friedman was moderating a virtual event at the time on the impact of the wildlife trade on the likelihood of future zoonotic transfers of viruses such as COVID-19 into humans, and when the panel of experts make it abundantly clear that pandemics such as the current one could become regular events due to human encroachment into previously untouched environments, Friedman declared: you know what the problem is? Mars thinking versus Texas thinking!
He then went on to elaborate that the kind of thinking needed to deliver Perseverance to a successful landing was the kind of creative, rational, and farsighted thinking necessary to prevent future pandemics and solve other environmental problems. Meanwhile, he argued, the kind of thinking that failed to buttress a deliberately isolated state power grid against extreme weather was the kind of shortsighted, illogical, immediate profits-driven thinking necessary to cause millions of Texans to suffer and over 100 of them to die totally preventable deaths. We need, Friedman declared, more “Mars thinking.”
And that’s where all of you come into the picture. As Friedman suggests, we already know how to think in the ways that can fix what we have broken, and a species that can deliver a school-bus sized object 293 million miles to land on another planet can certainly come up with manufacturing processes that are nearly 100% recycled as well as socio-economic systems that are equitable for all and energy systems that do not require us consuming 40% of the photosynthesis that takes place on this planet. Anyone and everyone is capable of “Mars thinking,” and while I’m certain none of you would have deliberately chosen to inherit the world we older generations have given you, I am equally certain that you have the capacity to choose what type of thinking you employ in your decision making to make matters aright.
Because as individuals entering the adult world, you have the power to choose what you consume, choose whether you consume, and choose how much you consume. You have the power to choose what resources you invest, choose whether you invest those resources, and choose how you invest them. You are even fortunate enough to live in a country where you have the power to choose whose thinking will represent you in those situations where you cannot directly involve yourselves.
Whether you decide to do all this choosing sustainably (“Mars thinking”) or unsustainably (“Texas thinking”) is up to you.
Yet as you begin to do all this choosing, there is an important reality about being human that I think Friedman misses that is critical to any of our individual and collective efforts to fix a broken world. He presents the choice as if it were binary: “Mars thinking” OR “Texas thinking.” But the larger truth is that we all choose BOTH “Mars thinking” AND “Texas thinking” all the time. As the educator, Parker Palmer, reminds us, there is that of the Light and that of the Dark in each and every individual, and it is only in our owning and reconciling with our Dark selves that we can achieve the wholeness our souls need to function properly and lovingly in this world. Or to put it another way, grace and sin are like the self’s inhaling and exhaling, and just as the body needs both to survive and potentially thrive, so too does the self to do the same. Because as I have said in this project’s Afterward, the point of breathing is that it simply makes life possible; it is how each self then lives this life that genuinely matters.
So as you prepare to enter the larger world, always remember this fundamental truth and be graceful and forgiving at those times when you find the Dark at work in your life, recalling that exhaling also has a purpose. But perhaps even more important, always remember that this truth of BOTH/AND applies to every other person you will ever encounter as well, and that consequently, each individual you meet throughout your entire life is their own unique story, unfolding in all its complexity. You see the cashier at your grocery store, but do you see the harried single parent of two who is slowly earning their chemistry degree? You see the homeless person begging at the traffic light, but do you see the formerly successful doctor before an injury and opioids unraveled their life? You see the professional athlete, but do you see the successful romance novelist who writes under a pseudonym? You see the landscaper mowing a lawn, but do you see the Ph.D. who simply discovered they liked working outdoors?
My point is that none of us can ever fully know what another’s person’s management of the Light and Dark within them will lead them to do with their lives, and therefore, it behooves all of us to be as empathetic and generous of spirit with one another as possible. The cliché about “walking a mile in another’s shoes” is a cliché precisely because of the importance of this truth, and only when we acknowledge and accept the reality of each other’s brokenness as well as our own struggle with it can we create the reconciled wholeness we will need to fix our broken world.
And again, that’s where all of you come into the picture. As you graduate, with all the traditional joys and sorrows that go with that, it is important to take stock of who you are right now, where you are in your own “Mars thinking” AND “Texas thinking” journey, and decide what’s next for you. Then turn to your neighbor and support them to do the same, recognizing that their efforts to fix the brokenness may not look anything at all like yours and loving them and yourself into wholeness anyhow.
To my graduates of all ages, congratulations and best of luck!
References
Cornell Wildlife Health Center. (February 23, 2021) Emerging Disease, Wildlife Trade and Consumption: The Need for Robust Global Governance. Cornell University. https://wildlife.cornell.edu/our-work/our-planet-our-health/special-event.
Friedman, T. (March 16, 2021) One Year Later, We Still Have No Plan to Prevent the Next Pandemic. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210317&instance_id=28136&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=56989331&segment_id=53572&user_id=c704fc9ed48c3e493f8da0c67ecfb906.
Klos, J. (May 3, 2016) The Threat of Invasive Species. TEDEd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spTWwqVP_2s.
Palmer, P. (2004) A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Light a Candle 