"Simply Beautiful"
- At the Desert Retreat House -
It’s “Graduation Season”
in America as students across the country assemble on football fields and
civic centers, don their caps and gowns and prepare to move on to the next
phase of their lives.
I just finished reading a newspaper article that featured excerpts
from various commencement addresses given by several prominent speakers over
the past few weeks. Interestingly enough,
for the most part, most of the speeches all contained the same basic message. The eager audience of college grads were told that
now it was their turn to go out and “make a big difference” in a world that was
waiting for them.
It strikes me that this may not be very helpful thing to
say, in fact, this may even be some dangerous advice to give to the Class of
2017.
While in school, many people have grandiose visions about
what they might do after they graduate - perhaps they will find a cure for
cancer or land the CEO job in the big corporation? But, of course, for the most part this isn’t what
happens. Regardless of how much education someone has, for most of us life is fairly
mundane and ordinary.
Unfortunately because we dream about making that “big
difference” in the world, the ordinariness of the everyday routine is often
quite disappointing and “boredom” can quickly take over; yet, it is precisely in
the living of our ordinary, everyday lives that each and every one of us can
indeed make a big difference in the world.
I am reminded of a New
York Times Op-ed piece written by the columnist, David Brooks, who reported
on a recent survey in which people were asked to describe how they found
meaning and purpose in their lives. Many said that after they finished school
and went about the everyday business of routine living, they discovered that it
was the “small stuff” in life that really made the big difference. Many said
that they they ultimately found meaning and purpose in life by pursuing “a
small, happy life.”
In his column, Mr. Brooks observed:
Everywhere
there are tiny, seemingly inconsequential
circumstances
that, if explored, provide
meaning in life –
everyday chances to be generous
and kind.
Spiritual and emotional growth
happens in microscopic increments.
The big decisions we make
turn out to have much less impact
on life as a whole
than the myriad of small,
seemingly insignificant ones.
My guess is that many of the graduating students in the Class
of 2017 may think that their lives will not matter all that much unless they can
find their way to the top of the ladder of success, perform open-heart surgery, sit in the corner executive
office or preside from the bench of the court. But as I see it, a mom who packs
her child’s lunch and sends him off with a smile or an employee who offers an encouraging
word to a fellow worker may be making a very big difference in a world that is
often loveless and unkind.
When we give up our need to be perfect and to be better than
others, when we surrender our need for greater power and more control, when we let
go of our grandiose ideas about what we will accomplish in the world and simply
make ourselves available to the experiences of life in service to one another, we
are then ready for tranquility to seep into our souls and here we find that
peace that surpasses all understanding.
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