Powerful words from Anna Quindlen

[deedee]

This is an excerpt from a commencement speech written by Anna Quindlen for Villanova:

"My work is human nature. Real life is all I know.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work.
The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget
what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the
senator decided not to run for re-election because he
had been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on
his deathbed, 'I wish I had spent more time at the
office.'"

I'll never forget the words my father sent me on a
postcard last year, "If you win the rat race, you're
still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he
was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota, "Life
is what happens while you are busy making other
plans."

You will walk out of here this afternoon with only
one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds
of people out there with your same degree; there will
be thousands of people doing what you want to do for
a living. But you will be the only person alive who has
sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your
entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life
on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the
life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just
your bank account but your soul. People don't talk about
the soul very much anymore.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a
spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night,
or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children.
I have tried never to let my profession stand in the
way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself
the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try
to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried
to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good
friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them,
there would be nothing to say to you today, because I
would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the
phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten,
or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things
were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your
work if your work is all you are.

So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a
life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next
promotion - the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Do you think you'd care so very much about those things
if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a
lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice
the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze
over seaside heights - a life in which you stop and
watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the
water or the way a baby scowls with concentration
when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb
and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people
you love, and who love you. And remember that love
is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an
e-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are
generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever,
and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to
spread it around. Take money you would have spent on
beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen.
Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well.
But if you do not do good too, then doing well will
never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our
hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted
the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a
song rises and falls and disappears and rises again.
It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. Something really,
really bad happened to me, something that changed my
life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would
never have been changed at all. And what I learned
from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lessons
of all:

I learned to love the journey, not the destination.
I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that
today is the only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world and
try to give some of it back because I believed in it,
completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part,
by telling others what I had learned.

Consider the lilies of the field.
Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear.
Read in the backyard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy."

Wow, this really hit home with me today.

hugs ~

deedee

[Ann]

That's a powerful message, Deedee, and one worth remembering. I'm saving this with my treasures.

Thanks for sharing it.

Hugs