David McCullough, Jr.'s 2012 Commencement Speech

(Full text of the speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/commencement-speaker-blasts-students/2012/06/08/gJQATvF1MV_blog.html)

I've always liked reading commencement speeches. There's something sweet in just the very fact of a commencement speech, don't you think? One generation passing on advice and wisdom to the next. Listening to them (at least the ones I've heard in person - I don't remember anything from a single one I've heard), not so much. So I've been reading some lately, and thought I'd post a few quotes I especially liked.

David McCullough, Jr.'s speech made me laugh. I found it funny and witty and true.

If you’ve learned anything in your years here I hope it’s that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning. You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream… just an fyi) I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.

I love how he mentions wisdom and ice cream in the same breath, pretty much. (Makes me want to go eat some ice cream and read Sophocles.) Plus, I agree whole-heartedly with what he says about what education is for. Honestly, a lot of the things I learned in school I have no idea if/when I'm ever going to need them...but I'm glad I know them. Well, some of them, at least.

And the thing about school and learning is that you keep learning after you're done with school. It's better in some ways, since you can decide to a much larger extent what you want to learn.

I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. 

I need to work on this one.

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it.

Yes, yes, yes.

Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.
Because everyone is.

Along with meaning, I've also been thinking about fulfillment lately. I'd like to figure out how to live a fulfilled life (along with everyone else). And of course it's paradoxical (at least according to McCullough, Jr.): "happens when you're thinking about more important things." It would be, wouldn't it?

I don't think there's any one recipe for living a fulfilled life. But I do think selflessness is (probably) a part of it.

So here's to finding (or at least embarking on a grand quest for) fulfillment and being selfless.