St. Lawrence commencement – May 20, 2007
Jane Hamilton

Here you are, about to be released, and with the great unknown in front of you, the long stretch of your twenties.  Time, it seems to me, moves more quickly for you than it did for my generation; the summers, my children report, speed by, the school year,  gone in a flash.  I don’t know why this should be so, except that there seems to  be a general nervousness in the air, the strain, perhaps, of keeping up – There is so much to communicate and in so many mediums, so much to listen to and read and  watch, so much to hurry through.  Your generation has been scheduled with activities, and urged to as much perfection as you can wring out of yourselves, and so you may have had less time to feel useless, less time to be bored on a long, hot summer day, less time, probably, in an everlasting July, to live in the slow world of a good book.  At St. Lawrence, part of your education has been about slow time, about developing sensitivity to beautiful or difficult or nuanced ideas, about learning how much time it takes to begin to know a thing deeply.

I’d like to tell you three short stories about time, and here is the first:

I was walking down a city street recently, the noon time crowd jostling, and along came a young man talking on his cell phone.  He was staring straight ahead.  Did he see me?  Did he see any of us?  Did he know everyone on the street could hear him?  Did he care?  This is what he said into his flat little red phone:  “WHAT I WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP – AND WHAT I WANT IN A WOMAN, ARE TWO THINGS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE.”

I hope that you have time to break up in person and in a room somewhere, a place where no others are present except the unfortunate soon-to-be ex-beloved.  I hope it is you who brings us back to civility.

Story Number Two:

Last winter I was teaching writing on a cruise ship. On, in fact, the Love Boat.  In the first hour of the workshop I asked the students to jot down their goals for the week.

Workshop Goals, Louise wrote:

“I want my life to relieve the suffering of mankind.”

In five short days, Louise?  Bear in mind that it took Jesus far longer to accomplish this task – although, I did not say, he might have come to the cross far sooner, had he been doing a writing workshop on a cruise ship.

There was a rhyme I learned as a girl at camp:

Bite off more than you can chew, and chew it.
Plan to do more than you can do, and do it!
Hitch your wagon to a star, keep your seat and there you are.

I was never sure, as a child, about the wisdom of this kind of ambition. I imagined chewing more than you could bite – a large, dry lump of overcooked beef stuffed into your mouth, all that – mastication.   Would any of it taste good, and might you be in danger of choking?   Furthermore, should you really hitch your wagon to a star?  The cold journey though space to get there, and then, such heat, and such loneliness. 

I hope you can take your time fashioning and living out your dreams and goals, that you are neither too hot nor too cold as you get there, and that these things you do are fantastical and lofty and noble and somewhat impossible and also reasonable.  That is: allot more than five days, if you want your life to relieve the suffering of mankind. 

One more story: 

A few weeks ago I was in New York City, and I stumbled on a place on Fifty-seventh street where you can pay 18 bucks for 30 minutes to take a nap.  By yourself.  You are put into a cubicle, the lights are turned off, you are given a soft blankie.  Monks are chanting from time immemorial.  When the session is up a rosy light glows from the floor, steadily climbing along the wall.  The sun, it is rising!  Wake! Wake!  You are rested!  You are restored to yourself!  You can go back to the mighty race!  (If, just so you know, you are dead asleep, the girl at the front desk with the thick blond braids, and the leather boots up to her thighs, and the little  black dress, will rap on the door). 

I hope you have time and space for reverie, for sleep, for quiet, and that the price does not go up. 

A few more hopes:

I hope you have time to keep opening out to the world  – as you’ve been able to do here at St. Lawrence.  I hope, in your futures,  there is time for diplomacy before war.  I hope there is time for the kind of thought and patience that is not born from arrogance and blind faith; I hope there is time and strength and intelligence to work toward peace with mercy and forgiveness.  I hope there is time and freedom for the story tellers among you to craft your stories, and I hope there is time for the rest of us to listen.

And, to close, here’s a verse that Mary Ela, a relative of mine, wrote near the end of her life – a wish that she sent out to her friends.  I think it includes nearly everything:

I wish you

Star and seed and song
Time spun short
Time spun long

Sail and anchor
Roots and wings
Enough but not too many things
           
Air and water
Earth and Sky           
As changes change and multiply.

Here’s to beautiful, wonderful time, and here’s to you, and all of your seasons to come.