Anna Quindlen (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Villanova Commencement Address

 It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive
 an honorary doctorate from this great university.
 
 It's an honor to follow my great-Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician,
 and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could
 have told you something important about their professions, about medicine
 or commerce. I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which
 puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today.
 
 I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't
 ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of
 the first.
 
 Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the
 senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with
 cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in
 the office."
 
 Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If
 you win the rat race, you're still a rat." 

 Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the
 Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
 
 You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else
 has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same
 degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a
 living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your
 life.
 
 Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or
 your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of
 your minds, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but
 your soul.
 
 People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to
 write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a
 winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
 gotten back the test results and they're not so good.
 
 Here is my resume. I am a good mother to three children. I have tried
 never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no
 longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I
 try to laugh.
 
 I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean
 what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
 
 I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there
 would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard
 cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show
 up. I listen. I try to laugh.
 
 I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things
 were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work
 is all you are.
 
 So here is what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a
 manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger
 house.
 
 Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an
 aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
 
 Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a
 breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a
 red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with
 concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first
 finger.
 
 Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love
 you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.
 
 Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student,
 still learning how to best treasure your connection to others.
 
 Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your
 Dad. Get a life in which you are generous. 
 Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up;
 look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night.
 
 Realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business
 taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that give it to
 charity.
 
 Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do
 well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be
 enough.
 
 It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is
 so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the
 limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid's eyes, the way the melody
 in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.
 
 I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to
 me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it
 would never have been changed at all.
 
 And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson
 of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination.
 
 I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only
 guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to
 try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and
 utterly.
 
 And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By
 telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a
 baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face.
 
 Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you
 do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
 
 Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a life, a full
 life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and
 laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and
 ears open.
 
 Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. 
 The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed "I wish I
 had spent more time at the office."
 
 I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15
 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless
 survive in the winter months.
 
 He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over
 the side, and he told me about his schedule, panhandling the boulevard
 when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the
 temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a
 Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides.

 But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing
 the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he
 had to wear his newspapers after he read them.
 
 And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't
 he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at
 the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."
 
 And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look
 at the view. 

 And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a
 man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at
 the view. You'll never be disappointed.