You've Graduated! Now Enjoy Pouring Coffees.

Michelle Ma on Finding Meaning Even When Reading Dostoevsky in Gas Stations

Dear Republic,

We continue our Commencement Address series.

-ROL

YOU’VE GRADUATED! NOW ENJOY POURING COFFEES.

When you're young, you're told to be perfect as best as you can. If you're evangelical you're told to improve constantly, to be more devout in your practices, to love Jesus more, to read the Bible with greater adherence. It's a tough world. It feels like we're all running on hamster wheels and even the best self we can wrestle out of human clay is “never enough.”

The truth is, you accomplished something great today. After 4 years, for some even more, you're walking into a brave new world after having loved, sacrificed, and suffered under the constraints of work and school, of chasing the dream under the torment of internal fallibility. You're only here because you tried really hard. Maybe you were working harder on learning Quantum Physics when you were supposed to study Shakespeare. Or maybe you're supposed to work on your Java Skills but were stealing glances at lines from T. S. Eliot. There are so many mysteries in the universe and beyond to just focus on your major. This is why some people have up to three majors, this is why some people take many years to graduate.

You have spent years engulfed in the pursuit of knowledge. It's easy to forget that the even more important motive is the pursuit of happiness. Not just your happiness but ensuring that we're living in a country, even a world, where the pursuit of happiness is not just an opiate dream. Something where you get a few buzzes, highs even, only to be sent down to loser hell. Hey, maybe after graduation you will be unemployed during stretches of your life. You might be working at some gas station reading your beloved Dostoevsky and thinking, “I got absolutely no material benefit from going to college.”

For a lot of you, you won't get much material benefit from going to college. In fact, your friend who skipped college and went to work at Walmart after high school might make more than you do as you navigate the real world after completing college. They put in the hours, they got promoted at their supposedly dead end job. They might even get paid over $500,000 a year as a store manager of a Walmart store.

Law school is no Garden of Eden. Computer science hiring is falling. There are no safe professions. We live in a world with a lot of uncertainty. Don't get mad now, even if this does make you consciously aggravated or, at a baseline, “anxious.”

You may not achieve your main dreams. You may not even achieve your minor dreams. You may experience homelessness, joblessness, and overall intense poverty. You may say, “all my best laid plans have gone awry.” Yet someday, you might be sitting in a jail cell, wrongly accused of course and thinking, "I'll remember the Anton Chekhov stories I read in comparative literature and think about the wonderful story I'll write about this insane experience."

We're living post-Fordism, the center cannot hold, and, out of shelter, sometimes we want to scream. So learn how to scream for the ages, write down your rants, even publish them, write non-feeble poetry, write rocking songs for coffee shop performances. Do what makes you feel happy, even if you can't sustain it. Even if times get bad, don't give up, put on music, talk to a friend, be open to meeting new friends.

The world may not be an oyster but it's not a prison either. At least not really. Also, if you watch Orange is the New Black, prison life can even be fun. Nothing is as bad as it first seems and nothing is as good as it first seems. The world is complicated, and college I believe, helps you handle the complexities.

So who cares if you're going to take ages to pay off your student debt. Focus on the friendships you made, on learning about Flaubert and reading a Tolstoy book that made you cry. Think about taking that class on Heidegger and silently laughing at his critique of intellectualism. Maybe you're even an intellectual now, good luck being happy! Maybe you can at least afford to keep up your reading by haunting libraries and used book stores. By making pottery and selling it at artisan fairs. You can do a lot of things, you just have to try.

Maybe you won't get your dream job at Goldman Sachs, like ever. Maybe you'll get knocked up and have to put your professional job on hold. Maybe having your child will be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Right now, you honestly may not know what will make you enduringly happy. What you do know is this, that your education has shaped you to adapt. There was a woman who went to college in China and studied English. After college the only job she could find was in a fish factory. She went insane. Don't go insane if you can help it, greater problems await, but don't just live for sanity either. A lot of great writers and thinkers wrote on the borderlines of insanity, some lived in insanity.

Artaud lived in insanity, he spoke it, he even honored its horrors and rot. Adapt! If one door closes, crawl, until you find light. I promise you, even if horrible things happen, you will find light...at least eventually. But keep on staying yourself beyond this day you graduate, keep that hopefulness, keep that longing, keep that ability to love.

You must stay human, you must remember you at your best as suburban life trudges on your soul and makes you merely a cog in a big machine. You can still be an interesting cog in that machine, even a chirpy, tweet-loving cog. You can still exercise your American freedom of speech and write a blog, start a website, and of course...write for Substack.

Success isn't defined by others. For someone who can barely walk, even taking one unassisted step is a big achievement. You, who are already so successful, may forget that. You may forget your good fortune and focus on what you do not have.

For eons, people never received a higher education, now we live in an age when a lot of people can. You can and you did. Even if your major was partying, you'll never quite be that person again. You'll never be that person again that classmates tell funny stories about, because hey, you peed on a bonsai tree while drunk. Or you threw up because it was your first time drinking whiskey and your girlfriend helped you wipe off the vomit from your face.

I'm sure we've all had embarrassing moments in college, but also tender, loving moments. Maybe you finally dated someone once you reached college, maybe you can point to a park bench and say, “this is where I got my first kiss.” Special things happened here, and on this campus.

Years later, after even being very successful, you'll come back. Maybe you'll celebrate the years on campus, maybe you'll have outgrown your college self. Some people in college are terribly insecure and vulnerable, you might come back emancipated and strong. Perhaps college is where you start your path to self actualization.

There is an utter myth that we all believe in. Especially if you're in a professional major. You want to enter that profession. You may want to be an engineer, programmer, doctor, etc. You may want to make big bucks and guarantee a good life for your children. But life is meandering like a river. The crooked timber of humanity is not straight. Life is not straight. You may feel like a clown at your job and hate it. You may start over and try something else.

Please, please understand it's absolutely OK to start over and try something else. Even if you are condemned to be a dilettante — and that can even be seen as an achievement. Stay curious, stay powerful, stay strong. No one can truly keep you down unless you accept their mean definitions. Know you are worthy, of all you truly want.

Know that the world can be grossly unfair, that college may have prepared you for life only indirectly. Perhaps that great night at a poetry slam means more to you than your diploma ever will. But you're here, you're getting your diploma. It'll look great framed.

You did not quit, when there are so many factors that make it easy to quit. You stuck it out, you have incredible grit. For many of you, college may have been marked by thick spreads of loneliness. You may have called home to your parents crying about “adjustment.” You may miss your old, tidy room. Maybe your college dorm was messy and hollow when your home was warm and loving and just…comfortable.

It's ok, you don't even have to like your whole experience in college, or much of it. That's not the point really. We're not graduating college. We're graduating you. So move on with your life, kiss the stars in the sky, feel the dewdrops on your feet as you walk on the grass after it has rained. Drink some really good coffee at some beatnik coffee shop and argue Chomsky with a guy who has definitely tried pot.

You can do it, you're educated, you studied hard even if you puked a lot and drank your nights away. You couldn't have graduated if you didn't study at all so congratulations on all the hard work you put in. This is only the beginning. Don't pursue life like a list. Pursue it as a journey, and for some, it will even feel like a pilgrimage.

In fact, you've already been on a pilgrimage--------to college. You chose it, you strove for it, you made it in, and now you're finishing it. High school was probably tedious, between being captain of a sports team and challenging academics, you worked super hard and long. Somehow you kept yourself in good enough soul shape to make it through college. That's not an easy task.

A lot of people don't want to commit to college, even the college of their dreams. But you made it, you're here, and now as you say your goodbye, you must congratulate yourself and all your many achievements.

You will have so many more achievements in life no matter what. Even if you live in a tiny sublease and work for minimum wage at a coffee shop. So what? You make great lattes. Congratulate yourself. Celebrate all your victories. Your parents and friends may be making fun of you, “you spent all that time and money in college and now you're working at a job you could have gotten in high school?” Well, in high school I could never understand one page of Dostoevsky. College prepared me to read and understand Dostoevsky. I couldn't be as literate as I am now without college. Sure, it may not pay off too well materially, but it brings my life structure, promise, pleasure, and even....meaning.

Also, maybe I'm being way too pessimistic. You could go on to win prizes as a novelist, to make that standout film of the year, to record a hit song. Maybe you all will do something great in your own time and in your own way. You all fully can achieve greatness, even immortality. No one here is mediocre. Everyone here has some element of a true special aptitude that you and the world get to discover. When you feel down....remind yourself of the people who care, they will pull you up until you can glide in the high-hued sky.

You are smart, you are kind, and you can totally be a wonderful person for the rest of your life. Keep your youthful spirit going, never give up fully, you might have to swerve, but never lose sight of beauty and joy. They'll warm up your life, and you'll be a person who can look back on their life and say, “I lived a good life.” Try to be that person, don't get too alienated, or even if you do, find refreshment in alienation, read existentialism, read about anomie. Find meaning!

Years later you'll think back to this commencement speech and think, “it actually didn't totally suck.” You might think, “I really wanted to hear I was going to be a great politician and win the Grammys. Why was she talking about working for little money at a coffee shop?” I don't want to hold you back, I never would want that, but I don't want you to feel bad if forces beyond your control make it hard to be the next president of the United States and win 5 Grammys. You can do a lot, I know you can, but it can also get really tough and even if your life doesn't sound so good, you're not a true failure.

You're standing here today, happy, proud, eager for the wide sargasso future. There are no true boundaries in anything. Explore, cry, laugh, smile, love, live! You can totally do many good and even great things and I can't wait to read about you guys in the NY Times, in a good way. Every person here can make an honest and potent contribution to the world. Believe in yourself, we all believe in you. Thank you.

Michelle Ma studied Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Chicago. She was a Mellon-Mays Fellow. She's worked in book PR for a branch of Ruder Finn in New York City. She wrote the book, Spirit of Art, and its sequel, The Return of the Lover: Thomas Levin and his Story. Both are available on Amazon. She loves exploring art fairs and paints, herself, with acrylics and pastels. Michelle lives in Minneapolis and loves exploring the cultural institutions in the area, taking walks, having long conversations and exploring the vibrant food scene.