Random Thoughts
Here is the graduation commencement speech I gave yesterday...
First, class of 2024, congratulations. You made it.
Secondly, I’m flattered that you allowed me to speak today, this last occasion when you are a captive audience to anyone in the Anchorage School District. And it was a brave choice to choose an English teacher to give this speech, especially one so notorious for his tangents. You willingly signed yourself up for a speech likely to contain big words and obscure poetic references. That’s brave.
You know what else is brave? Those of you wearing high heels today. Have you seen the gauntlet that is this graduation stage? That is brave.
But here’s the thing: You are a brave class. Because you had to be.
In seventh grade, many of you watched as your middle school started to shake and crumble around you. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
A few weeks later, as terrified 12-year-olds without your own school building, many of you entered the halls of Chugiak High School to continue your education, gripping your chairs at every aftershock and sharing a building with bearded 18-year-old seniors driving big, loud pickup trucks. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
A year and a half later, you were told you couldn’t come back to school. You spent a portion of the most formative years of your life hunkered down, watching as disease and civic strife spread around you. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
Then came your first day of high school. At 7:30am on August 20th, 2020, you opened your Chromebooks. You logged into your Zoom link, found yourself in the waiting room, muted your mics, turned on your video, and took a nervous breath as your 1st-hour teacher admitted you to your first day at Eagle River High School.
A brief tangent: You guys were so cute! After all, how do you look and act like a brand-new, sophisticated high school student when high school is online?
Some of you logged in to your first day of high school looking like an aspiring Twitch streamer. You had fancy headphones, multiple monitors, mood lighting, and impressive webcams. Some of you showed up trying to look like sophisticated high schoolers with your perfect “fit” –your hair and makeup were perfect, your clothes were carefully chosen, your room was clean – only to find that your “perfect fit” only occupied a tiny square on a screen where no one could really appreciate it. Some of you logged in from an executive-looking desk in a home office looking like important 14-year-old real estate brokers. And some of you entered your first day of high school by peering bleary-eyed from beneath a cavern of blankets like some sort of scraggly, pubescent troll. You were all, kinda adorable.
…
Brief tangent on a tangent: Ya’ll own a surprising number of cats. And a surprising number of those cats like to walk across your keyboard and into the view of your webcam in the middle of class. It was actually super cool to meet your pets.
And while I’m trying to be amusing, I’m not trying to be flippant. You all walked hard miles those years. Some of you lost loved ones. Some of you struggled with the isolation of Covid, the dark depths of mental health struggles, difficult family dynamics, and a world that seemed off its axis. But you were brave. Because you had to be.
You continued to walk hard miles during your sophomore year as you desperately tried to catch up on your learning by intently listening to the muffled, masked voices of your teachers… You had to figure out how to be around people again. And again you were brave. Because you had to be.
Class of 2024, you’ve walked a lot of hard miles. And please forgive the “dad pun,” but despite all the hard miles you’ve walked, when I look out at you right now, I still see a lot of good souls…
…
At this point, you might be like “Ok Johnson, I get it. We were brave because we had to be. What’s the point? What are you really trying to say?”
Brief tangent: If you’re asking those questions, then on behalf of the Eagle River High School English Department, I’ll call that a win (or a “dub,” as you young people say.) If, at the end of your high school career, you’ve learned nothing else from your English classes, I hope it’s how to ask the deeper questions. Because life is deep, and life is complicated. Please never lose the curiosity and passion to ask yourself, and the people and the world around you, the deep and hard questions in life. Likewise, I hope you never lose the desire to listen deeply and to read deeply to find the answers.
But back to my main point about bravery, which is twofold:
First, I hope at this point in your life, and after all those English classes, you realize that life is full of competing narratives. And almost none of those narratives hold a monopoly on truth. ..For example, imagine you are ten, and you’re in trouble with your parents because you and your little brother got bored, decided it would be a good idea to toss a cantaloupe around, and broke a light fixture in the kitchen. (Sorry mom) It’s amazing how quickly two very different narratives emerge from two people who have each experienced the exact same event, especially when the threat of being grounded hangs in the air.
My point is this: Consider your own narrative. It’s easy to fall into the easy narrative that you are simply the powerless protagonist at the mercy of forces far, far bigger than you.
That narrative might make for a good story, but I’m not sure it makes for a good life.
I also think you’ll find that adult life is littered with the wreckage of people who have simply surrendered to that narrative, to the story that they are the helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control.
I would challenge you to consider a different narrative, a deeper narrative. I would challenge you to adopt the narrative that you are, in fact, brave, that you have walked a lot of hard miles while managing to maintain a good soul, and that you are capable of walking a few more.
My second and final point about this “bravery stuff” is this:
You were brave because you had to be.
But now, in just a few minutes, you get to be brave not because you have to be, but because you get to choose to be.
You get to choose to be brave in the face of injustice. You get to choose to be brave in the face of an uncertain future and an uncertain world. You get to choose to be brave in the way that you live and in the way that you love.
And class of 2024, here’s the really cool thing. You have so much practice at being brave... Because you had to be. I think that the class of 2024 has had more practice being brave than any other graduating class in recent memory. And I also think that everyone in this audience can agree that the world could use more people who live bravely and who love bravely.
And so, class of 2024, choose to be brave. Whether you become a plumber or a pilot, a soldier or a ski bum, a dental hygienist or a doordash driver, think bravely. Speak bravely. Live bravely. And please, please, please…love bravely.
Congratulations class of 2024, and as each of you bravely step off of this stage (especially those of you in heels), I hope you step into a remarkable future.
Here’s my confession: I (try to) fall asleep by writing graduation speeches in my head. I acknowledge that it’s a weird habit and rarely helps put me to sleep. But here we are.
The speech I’ve been constructing now for several weeks has this basic claim: Words matter. I was thinking, for instance, of the way we tend to decide that two words mean basically the same thing, even though they don’t. And I think the consequences of this intellectual laziness – where we decide that one word means exactly the same thing as another – can have profound consequences personally, socially, politically, etc.
For instance, I’ve discovered that there is a fundamental difference between the words “nice” and “kind,” but we often decide that they’re the same thing or that the differences don't matter. I think that’s a grave mistake.
For me, “niceness” is an action. Opening a door for someone in “nice.” Loaning someone a pencil or a jacket is “nice.” Giving money to charity is “nice.” And niceness often has very little to do with how we feel about the person we’re being nice to. I generally have no problem being nice to students, co-workers, strangers, or family members that I don't particularly like. Being nice is simply the action of following prescribed social rules or norms that are polite or civil. It’s not particularly hard, and it’s not particularly meaningful.
Oxford defines nice as “pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.” Most of us have no problem being pleasant or agreeable to people that we don't like, don't respect, or don’t ever want to see again. We simply put on our “nice” facade, smile politely, act appropriately, and move on with our day. That’s not to say that acting nice can't be a struggle. If you’ve ever had a teacher you didn't like, you know it can be a challenge to keep up the facade of niceness for nine months. It can be a struggle to be nice to irritating peers or rude strangers. But “nice” lives at the surface, and niceness can easily mask the hatred, resentment, disgust, or apathy that you really feel. While I think that we all should be nice to each other, if only to make everyone’s day a little more pleasant, I don't think niceness has a lot of intrinsic value. It’s a series of actions that anyone can take without a lot of thought and without a lot of heart. It is, at it’s best, “satisfactory.”
Kindness, on the other hand, is something far different for me. Kindness is a state of “being.” It’s primarily about the way you are, not the way you act. It’s a way of feeling, thinking, and living. I don’t think that there’s anything surface-level about kindness. Like a garden, developing kindness is something that takes time, effort, care, and nurturing. The roots of kindness must go deep.
I think kindness requires deep inner work, and I think the garden analogy is an apt one for describing this work. For instance, to plant a garden, the first thing you need to do is to ensure that you have good soil. At the core of kindness is the deep acknowledgment of someone else’s humanity. That’s the “soil” you need to cultivate. You have to see them as a person, as a soul. You have to see them as someone who is terribly flawed. They have weaknesses. They have insecurities. They have thoughts and regrets that keep them up at night. They don’t feel okay at times. They worry if they’re worthy of love. When we are able to see others as messy, imperfect, but ultimately good people, we have prepared a place for the roots of kindness to grow deep.
I think one of the best ways to acknowledge someone else’s humanity is to listen. Deeply. And if you listen long enough and deeply enough, you’ll see that this other person, whether you like them or not, is simply another messy human being just like you. When I say listen deeply, I mean to listen with an empathetic ear. Put yourself in their shoes. Feel their emotions alongside them. Listen for the hurt or doubt or sadness in their voice. Listen carefully to the ways their own narrative is hindering their perceptions and progress.
To use another analogy, when you listen, consider yourself to be a doctor. Your job is to diagnose the hurt, doubt, or sadness so that you can best treat it. It’s only once we know where the pain truly resides that we can treat someone’s deep inner pain with the medicine of kindness. For instance, if you were to go to a doctor with a knee injury, but he treats you for a cold, you’ll undoubtedly thank him for his care and for the medicine. But his treatment hasn’t helped your pain. Listen carefully so that you can treat the pain where it really lives.
Coming back to our garden analogy, once the soil is prepared, the next step is to plant the seeds of kindness that will eventually bear fruit. We’ve got to dig even deeper in the soil to make this happen. We all need a “why.” Why are you seeking to be kind? Why are you attempting to heal others’ hurt? Why do you or should you care?
Much like there are many different types of seeds to plant, there are many answers to these questions. You may cultivate kindness from a place of religious duty. You may cultivate kindness from some philosophical belief or personal sense of purpose. There are lots of seeds to choose from. Recently, I’ve found my “why,” and it’s the result of answering perhaps the biggest philosophical question of all: What does it mean to live a good life? The answer I have recently discovered for myself is simply this: “Give more than you take. Leave this world better than you found it.” For me, this answer to what it means to live a good life necessitates that I live a life of kindness.
Finally, I want to make one more observation on kindness. I think kindness grows best when we have an optimistic view of the world and other people. I think kindness grows best when we assume that everyone in this life is doing the best they can, even if their words, beliefs, or actions are misguided, hurtful, or selfish. For instance, if you go to the doctor’s for a broken leg, chances are you aren’t going to be your “best self” when you’re there. You’ll be in a lot of pain. You’ll walk funny or maybe you won’t be able to walk at all, but you’re still going to hobble around the best you can. You might be cranky. All those things are a natural response to the pain of a busted leg. After all, you’re human. And you hurt. When we can look at others’ at-times unimpressive actions, words, or beliefs as a symptom of pain, instead of fundamental flaws in their character, we learn to be compassionate with others even when it’s hard.
Being nice is…nice. It is, in fact, “satisfactory.” But being kind grows us as people. It’s the result of work and patience and nurturing. And maybe it leaves the world a little better place than we found it.
For the past three days, I have been participating in 8-hour classes preparing me to teach AP Language and Comp. There are only four students, including myself, and a teacher. After having been a student in a high school classroom for the last three days, I’ve got some thoughts:
- Teachers are terrible students. We have side conversations. We’re on our phones. We don't pay attention. I’ve made this observation ever since I became a teacher. It is some pretty hilarious and hypocritical situational irony.
- It’s hard warming a chair all day. After each day of training, I come home mentally exhausted. There is simply so much information to digest. The fact that many of you finish school, participate in sports practice for several hours, then do several hours of homework is impressive. While you all undoubtedly have much sharper, growing brains than I do, full-time school in a classroom, in addition to other responsibilities, is no joke. You ought to congratulate yourself for relentlessly grinding through 9 months of school
- Peers and teachers can be irritating. For instance, when a student only wants to talk about his/her personal experience instead of the topic at hand, it can derail the whole class and waste an hour. The same can happen with teachers. Our teacher is this sweet retired teacher/grandma lady from the Midwest. She’s lovely but often goes on tangents by sharing personal anecdotes. As the king of tangents and anecdotes, I’m sorry. I imagine many of you spent days in my class bored out of your mind desperately praying I'd stop talking about myself. I gotta trim down the stories and only share the really interesting ones. Also, people who interrupt are super, super irritating. If you are not given the time to fully develop your thought before someone jumps in with their own, it makes your ideas seem unimportant. That hurts. If I interrupted you this year, I’m sorry.
- Patience and compassion are valuable traits. I could tell by the end of today, when the rest of my peers had lost interest and started packing up their stuff before class was over, that the teacher was hurt. Even though I too was desperate to go home and totally burned out, the ability to sit quietly and give your attention to another person is a real gift, especially in a classroom setting. Likewise, when a teacher or peer is telling yet ANOTHER personal story that’s not at all related to the task at hand, by realizing that this person wants to be heard and by listening attentively, you demonstrate a silent, powerful form of compassion.
Anyhow, this is purely my ramblings. Hopefully, NONE of you are thinking about the dynamics of the classroom, but are busy having an epic summer instead. Freshmen Sophomores, thank you again for being so respectful in class this year.