Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, who has taught English and history for 30 years and writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
Owing to the pandemic, many American schools and colleges modified their 2020 graduation ceremonies. Administrators have frequently opted, for instance, to stage this year’s commencements online with speakers and students participating from remote locations.
President Donald Trump, in contrast, announced in April that he’d be addressing the graduating class of cadets in person at West Point. This necessitated some unanticipated scrambling as Army officials had already canceled classes and sent the cadets home in March as a pandemic precaution.
Never mind that those homes are scattered from coast to coast, and that summoning graduates back to West Point required quarantining them for two weeks just up the river from Covid hotspot New York City. Never mind that the cadets took their oaths as second lieutenants remotely on their originally scheduled graduation day. And never mind that their families and friends weren’t invited to the campus ceremony and therefore couldn’t share the occasion with their graduates. Last Saturday it was just 1,100 cadets, the president, his craving for the spotlight, and “the entire nation” via “quality livestream.”
Poor Elijah has neither the Article Two authority nor the inclination to require our attendance at his annual commencement address on my porch. If you’ve got a few minutes, though, we’ve got plenty of socially-distanced wicker chairs and the usual pitcher of iced coffee. Feel free to make yourself comfortable.
I graduated at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, at least according to the song. I didn’t give this a moment’s thought at the time, and haven’t given it any thought since, but I decided it might be nice if I did a little research to find out what astrological age you were graduating in so I could tell you in case you’re more interested than I was.
It turns out it’s a lot more complicated than I expected. It has to do with gyroscopic precession, the way the Earth wobbles, and where the sun is in the zodiac on the first day of spring. Astrological ages are either all 2,150 years long, or they’re not. The Aquarian Age has either begun, or it hasn’t. Popular start dates include somewhere in the 20th century, the 24th century, 1844, 3573, or Feb. 4, 1962, which means that some of us, all of us, or none of us are Aquarians.
Oh, well.
Happy graduation.
Whatever our signs, both our classes can lay claim, by accident of our births, to tumultuous graduation years. Mine saw the pivotal Vietnam Tet offensive, the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy, protests, riots, and a consequential presidential election. By its December yours will have given us no less than a pandemic, the resulting almost-depression, the signal murder of George Floyd, protests, riots, and an even more consequential presidential election.
Incidentally, people are consoling and cheering you for “graduating into a pandemic.” Don’t expect that to govern your life in the long term or feel sorry for yourself. My grandparents came of age in 1918. Of all the stories they told me, they never once thought to mention their pandemic.
Anyway, as a result of our places in time, both our classes graduated when history’s cameras were rolling, and we became thinkers of big thoughts and doers of big public deeds. Our parents had helped prepare us for our headline moments.
My generation’s mothers and fathers, having survived the actual Depression and the Second World War, placed all their hopes and great expectations on their golden children. We grew up a curious amalgam of character traits, self-confident in our abilities and self-indulgent in our appetites and the demands we placed on ourselves.
Our parents did what looked good, and we called them superficial. We did what felt good and judged ourselves morally superior.
You are our grandchildren, the product of good intentions and a train of adult abdications dressed up as child-centered empowerment and student-centered education. We’ve left you bearing burdens and responsibilities you shouldn’t, and thinking more highly of your knowledge and judgment than you should.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating a reign of antique, unchallengeable experts. I’m certainly not claiming to be one.
I do want to caution you. Young doesn’t mean wrong. I was, and still am, sometimes right, and so are you. But young almost always means inexperienced. Before you change the world, you need to know the way the world really is and how it got that way. That takes time and thought and humility.
Mr. Lincoln said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first four sharpening his axe. This is your time to prepare. Sharpen your understanding.
Take time to observe. I can’t tell you how many of my once bright ideas now embarrass me. It’s not the awkward shame that troubles me most. It’s the hurt and damage my ill-conceived certainty caused others.
Be careful who you listen to and what you believe. From the days of Jefferson and Hamilton, what we call the media has never been wholly accurate or unbiased. But wisdom rarely fits in a tweet. Sharing Facebook posts isn’t friendship. Slogans and hashtags aren’t evidence. Internet apostles tout the social network and its vaunted free exchange of information. The intimacy is counterfeit, most of what we hear isn’t worth the listening, and the anonymous voices that speak are commonly never called to answer for their words.
Don’t restrict yourself to a closed circle of like minds. There’s a difference between tolerating evil and tolerating contrary opinions. No one should want to be wrong. Give your ideas a chance to mingle and compete with the sincere, supported views of others.
Remember this: If someone else can be sincere and wrong, so can you.
Question yourself as unrelentingly and as fairly as you question others.
Don’t take pictures of yourself. Free yourself from the sweet, contagious death grip of narcissism.
Be mindful of your public responsibilities, but don’t be consumed by them. Life’s peerless, precious moments are more often quiet, private, and personal.
Guard against self-righteousness – especially when you’ve been right.
Godspeed.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Peter Berger: To the Class of 2020.