Commencement Speech Revisited: You Don't Find Purpose, You Create Purpose

Five years ago, I delivered the commencement speech at my undergraduate business school graduation. It was a speech filled with reflective anecdotes, 21-year-old-liberal-arts-school optimism and a bit of theatrical audacity (I presented a speech that was different from the one approved by the graduation committee). Though it felt like quite the personal achievement at the time, I had not listened to it much until last week when I read a friend’s Facebook post asking for tips on “how to find your passion at work”. In reading the transcript of this speech, I realized that unlike some other aspects of my college self; including long shaggy hair and suspenders+t-shirt combos, the sentiment of this speech was worth revisiting. And so, five years later, here it is: (Video Version Here)

I was selected two weeks ago to deliver a speech. This speech was about changing the world. It was about how well equipped we are as Brandeis students to combine our liberal arts education with our business know-how. Last night, I decided that this is not the speech I will deliver. While editing and re-editing that speech, I was inspired by the work of David Foster Wallace. Instead, today, I will share with you my biggest fear for all of us in our lives after college.

Had I decided to deliver my first speech, I would certainly not have been first person to ever give a graduation speech about graduates going out and changing the world, choosing between right and wrong. In fact, I think there are approximately seventeen of these speeches at each graduation. So what truly bothered me yesterday was that if this is a recurring theme in graduation speeches, why does it so rarely happen? Why do people so quickly lose inspiration after college? What is it about work that extinguishes the flame inside of us? 

It is this apathy, this detachment, this monotony that I fear most about life for us after college. 

This detachment has serious consequences. Not just for our personal happiness and for the decisions we will make in life but also for the wellbeing of society. We started our journey here at Brandeis in September 2009, just one year after Lehman Brothers and much of the rest of the financial world crashed. If you take a close look at the roots of the recent financial crisis, it is clear that it was not simply a number problem; this was not merely due to the fact that bankers had not taken Professor Weih’s Financial Accounting course. Rather, when dissecting the investments strategies used and abused, mortgage-backed-securities to name one, it is clear that it was a people problem. It was a problem of shortsightedness, recklessness, and greed. It was a problem of how we view work. 

Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash

The good news is that this problem is diagnosable and reparable. The solution to this problem is in our control. We may not always be able to control which jobs we get or lose, fluctuations in financial markets that cost us large sums of money, but the one area of life that will always be in our control is how we view it all.  

Society teaches us to separate our lives between hours of work and play, between employment and vacation, and between suffering and enjoyment. For most of us here, we will end up working eight to ten hour days or closer to 15 for the bankers in the room just to enjoy the gourmet dinners we can afford at night or the yearly vacations to the Bahamas. I’m not arguing that we should not work. Nor am I even arguing that you need to find that one dream job that everyone talks about, which will bring your worlds together and create this plethora of happiness and success. Chances are that for most of us in this room, that dream job does not even exist.  

Instead, all I am saying is we have the control over how we experience our lives.

 We have the choice to go on living the rest of our lives resenting rush hour traffic, long board room meetings and waking up on Monday mornings. We could become a slave to the 40-hour workweek just to enjoy the few hours we have off, -- or we can choose to experience our working life in a different light. We can enjoy it all—enjoy the challenges of the job search. Create excitement in the seemingly dreary confines of our office, greet every project, and every day with passion, and integrity and every person with a smile. 

There need not be this difference between work and play, as Alan Watts (the great English philosopher) said, we can view work as play. Every day is as happy and full of life as we choose to make it—whether we are on vacation or at the office till midnight. There does not exist a work version of ourselves that is different than the “real version”. The greed, the recklessness that caused the 2008 crisis is from this separation of work and other. The cut-throat, gluttonous, ravenous behavior stemmed from viewing work as nothing but a means to an end goal of accumulating wealth. We are going to be spending much of our lives working—why not choose to enjoy it for what it is, not just for what it allows. 

I want to close with a story I heard from Allan Hassenfeld, a chairman of the board at Brandeis International Business School. Once upon a time, in a small village, there lived a wise old teacher who was greatly respected by the townspeople. One day, two of his students began to question his wisdom. Thinking themselves more clever than their teacher - (as we all have been guilty of at some point), these self-assured students decided to “outsmart” him. They captured a bird from the nearby forest and devised a sure-fire way to trick their teacher. They were going to hold the live bird in their hands behind their back and ask the elder if the bird was dead or alive. If he said dead, they would release the bird and happily watch it fly away. If he said the bird was alive, they could quickly crush the bird and the elder would be proved wrong. These students, giddy as ever, went to the elder eager to ridicule his wisdom. They approached him and in a mocking voice, said “oh master, we have a riddle for you: is the bird in our hands dead or alive?” The wise man turned to them and said “ Students, the bird is in your hands. Whatever you decide to do with it, will determine its fate.”  

Photo by Jeremiah Reyes on Unsplash

Friends and Colleagues, after our time at Brandeis, we have the knowledge, creativity and resources to determine the fate of our lives. Our success, our enjoyment, and the future of society is in our hands. What we decide to do with it, that will determine its fate. Let's make bold, ethical and compassionate decisions. Let's keep the bird---this world---alive and vibrant. And let’s enjoy the ride.