A Splendid Torch

Kutztown University Commencement Address                           Home
December 18, 1999
William F. Towne

Good morning everyone. It’s really a pleasure and an honor for me to be here. Thanks for having me.

Graduates, for me, the ten years after I graduated were hard ones. I worried a lot during those years about whether or not my life was going to turn out—you know, turn out, like it’s supposed to, someday. And I don’t think I believed that I or what I did really mattered. Now I don’t hope that your next decade is like that, and I’m sure it’s avoidable. So today I want to share with you something I now believe about life that I wish I'd believed then. It would have made all the difference. It’s something that I hope my children are learning even now, and I would have you believe it, too. So my plan is to share this conviction of mine with you, elaborate a little bit, give an example or two, and then summarize and get out of your way here.

So, I come fairly quickly to my point, which is this: I believe that the things in life that have us love living—things like inspiration, courage, compassion, love itself, integrity, excellence, generosity—show up in our lives only when we are acting on behalf of something outside ourselves that we value greatly, in other words, when we are living committed lives.

Now the automatic, natural course of things is quite different from this. The natural thing is that each of our lives is about us—yours about you and mine about me. My own spontaneous thoughts, for example, are mostly about what I like, what I don’t like; what I want, what I don’t want; what I wish. Here’s me walking through the parking lot: “Hmmm, nice car, but not the color. I like mine better….Oh man. Look at that, a new BMW! Who’s that with a new BMW! I don't have one! Jeez!” I did similar things in graduate school about my research project: “This is a hard project! So much work, so little payoff! Other students have better projects. Jeez!” Same stuff with my girlfriend at the time, my parents—oh boy, my parents!—you name it. My life.

I think we should have a word for these mental goings-on other than thought. They are thoughtless thoughts. We don’t create them; they’re just sort of always rattling on inside our skulls: "yakety yak." By the way, you’re doing it yourself right now: “What is he talking about?… I hope this speech isn’t too long…yakety yakety…” The thing is: we too often get our experience of life and our actions out of this stuff! And what shows up is fear, scarcity, struggle, competition, envy, complaint. No wonder life can be miserable! It’s what an uncommitted life looks like—automatically.

Now, every commencement speech should show a little erudition, so I shall now quote from William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw—in consecutive paragraphs no less!

Shakespeare, especially in his tragedies, portrayed the human condition as I've described it with uncanny apprehension and eloquence. Here’s a great example: In Macbeth, you may recall, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth conspire to kill the king, Macbeth’s cousin, so that Macbeth himself can take the crown. They carry out the murder, and Macbeth is indeed crowned king, but the two murderers’ lives soon fall apart. Finally, Lady Macbeth loses her mind altogether and kills herself. Macbeth, upon learning of this, is too far gone himself to really experience the loss. Instead, he can only lament the brevity and futility of life. He says:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Now George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright, wrote a lot about Shakespeare, and he said of these characters (my words, Shaw’s thought): “The problem with these people is that they’re committed to nothing outside themselves and their own ambitions, and their lives are indeed tragic and pathetic.” The way out of this mess, says Shaw, is to live a committed life. Shaw himself put it most eloquently: "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;…the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Now Shaw said that the true joy in life is “the being used for a purpose,” that is, your life totally committed to and given over to some worthy purpose outside yourself. Shaw was right about this, and this is what I so wish I’d understood 20 years ago.

Let me give you an example of the sort of thing I mean. One of our own students fits the description well. His name is Josh Wesner, and his mother, Betty, happens to be the Field Hockey coach here. Josh originally came to Kutztown in Fall 1994 (before many of you) mainly to play baseball—very excited about that. But during fall tryouts, he was cut from the roster—didn’t make the team!—and, angry, upset, and his purpose gone, he floundered. He became a poor student, a self-described partier, kind of wild and misbehaved. After three years of this—and little to show for it—Josh was driving home recklessly one Saturday night at 1 a.m., lost control of his car, and ended up very badly injured in a ditch, where he lay for 4 hours until he was discovered at 5 a.m. He spent the next 3 months in the hospital—including his 21st birthday—and was left with brain injuries that noticeably affected his movement and speech.

Now I myself met Josh in September 1998, somewhat over a year ago, which was somewhat over a year after his accident, in Biology 104. Josh tried hard that semester and spoke to me of his desire to be a neurologist because of the contributions that the doctors had made to him during his recovery. The accident had changed him and his whole outlook somehow, and he said so.

During that same semester, however, a little over a year ago now, Josh was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a serious but very treatable form of cancer, so he had to leave Bio 104 and intended to finish it when his treatments were over. This he did. His treatments lasted 6 months, during which he experienced all of the symptoms patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer do—awful sickness, hair loss, and such. Finally, though, he seemed to recover and finished Bio 104 and the rest of his courses during the summer. And with pretty good grades.

Now here’s the part of the story I have left out so far: During the whole time that I’ve known him, Josh has been a person of his word: If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. And when he does something, his heart is in it. Moreover, Josh doesn’t complain—about anything as far as I can tell. And though he has much more reason than most of us to be bitter about life, he is not. On the contrary, he seeks out opportunities to be involved and to contribute. He’s co-founded, for example, the Phoenix Organization, an organization on campus that supports students with all sorts of disabilities. And he participates actively in Student Government. Finally, and for me this distinguishes him best, Josh is always a pleasure to be around and always leaves you feeling valued, acknowledged, appreciated, and, indeed, more alive somehow than you were before. The guy’s amazing. My colleague Anne Zayaitz, once said to him, “Josh, you’re my hero!” Indeed, the guy’s the definition of hero.

So why and how does Josh do this? I think it’s not because of what he’s been through—although that’s certainly affected him. He’s a hero because of what he chooses to do with the life that he has. He is unwilling not to make a positive difference. He’s committed to contributing, and he lets that run his life. I think this is exactly what Shaw was talking about—“the being used for a purpose”—and, in any case, I know it’s what I’m talking about. It’s the way to be, and I aspire to be like him.

Now there’s an epilog to this story. I’m sorry to say that Josh just learned within the past two weeks that his Hodgkin’s is back, and he is even now undergoing another round of even more aggressive treatments. He’s in for a hard time, but he’s such a winner that I’m sure he’ll be fine in the end. Actually, he told me that himself. Knowing Josh, he’ll find some way to contribute to others out of this. He couldn’t be here today because of his treatments, but his father, Doug Wesner, is here. Doug, would you stand up for a second so that we could acknowledge you in Josh’s place? …applause… Please see that Josh gets that acknowledgement. And, Doug, tell Josh I said, “Thanks for showing us how it’s done. And good luck!”

Let me tell you one more story. This one’s about one of the best things I myself have ever done, for myself or for anyone else. And this, as much as anything, I think, ended those ten hard years I spoke about earlier. When I saw, a little over ten years ago now, how my life up until then had been so much about, well, my life and what might make me happy, and that I had hardly thought to appreciate those who had contributed to me, I committed myself to expressing that appreciation.

So, for starters, I marched myself to my parents house, and I said, “Mom and Dad, let’s sit down, I want to talk.”

At this, they glanced at each other as if to say, “Uh Oh, what’s this about?”

We sat, and I said, “Mom and Dad, I want you to know that I think I’ve have been an incredibly stingy son. Like when I was in graduate school and came home to visit, and you would slip me a 20, and I would say, ‘I don’t really need that, but OK, I'll take it.’ The truth was that I really needed the money and kept very good track of that bill. The thing is, I wish I’d just said then—and in a thousand other cases like it—‘Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad. That will make a difference for me, and I appreciate it.’ Well, I want you to know that I now see and appreciate the thousands of things you have done for me over the years. Thanks. Also, I want you to know that the things I like most about myself... I got them from you. Also, I now understand that all you have ever wanted with respect to me was for me to be happy and for my life to turn out. Thank you for that. And listen: it turned out. What happens from here on out is up to me, and I promise I’ll handle it. You got the job done! Thanks! I love you.”

Then I gave them both a big hug. Mom was crying, tears were running down my own cheeks, and Dad was going “uh, uh, uh….” It was great.

The epilog to this story is that my Dad died last year—he wasn’t old, just 68. But, you know, we are at peace, he and I. And life goes on. And life is great while we’ve got it.

There’s a message in this story for you, graduates: acknowledge your parents (or whoever played that role in your life). They haven’t been perfect—mere fallible human beings—but they’ve been committed to you. And acknowledging them will be your first big step toward taking responsibility for your own life and the difference that you intend to make with it.

And parents—and I’m addressing also those of you who played that role in any way for these young people—I know that this day is, for many of you, the fulfillment of a dream and a commitment of your own. Well, you got the job done! Thanks and congratulations to you!

I believe I’ll let George Bernard Shaw summarize (though I’ll save the final word for myself). In the following passage, which Shaw himself delivered in a public speech about 100 years ago, Shaw alludes to Shakespeare’s famous metaphor of life as a “brief candle”. Shaw said:
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Finally, I’ll take the last word myself: Graduates—and I’m speaking to each and every one of you, and I'd like you to take this personally—on behalf of myself, the rest of the faculty, and indeed the rest of the University community, I thank you for the privilege it has been to work with you these past few years. The courage you have shown in expanding yourself under our guidance has contributed to us immeasurably. For that, you take with you today our heartfelt thanks, our congratulations, and our warmest best wishes. Thank you.