The following is the text of The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson’s Convocation Address on Friday, June 12, 2009. This text should be checked against the actual delivery of her speech which is available at: http://www.carleton.ca/convocation/speakers/index.html
It’s wonderful to come back to Ottawa to receive an honorary degree from Carleton University. This university and I arrived in Ottawa at about the same time in 1942 and when I think of it, our development has probably gone on side by side without my being that aware of it until this moment. When I arrived with my family as a refugee in the summer of 1942, we fetched up on the shore of the Ottawa River on Sussex Street – my father, mother, brother and I – with one suitcase apiece. Carleton was starting in a few little buildings as an Association for the Advancement of Learning. We’ve both gone a long way since then!
But I think Carleton University has found its place in this city which happens to be the capital of Canada and has shown itself to be an important showcase for the kind of talents that came to bear on this city and on this country. The names of Norman Robertson, Norman Patterson, Gerhard Herzberg, Arthur Kroeger all reverberate with service to the public good and to the international world of excellence. It’s an honour for me to be in their company and among you today.
I grew up in Ottawa and it was certainly a very different place through the 40s and 50s than it is now. I look out among you and I see the faces of people whose roots are from all over the world and who have come to make Canada the kind of country which is unique in the world, a model of tolerance and understanding.
During my lifetime both here in Ottawa and later in Toronto, I have seen our country evolve in really that very short time so that we are very inclined to welcome diversity and to enjoy change.
About five years ago the Globe and Mail ran an article which reminded us that, “in 1946, almost half of all Canadians asked – that is, 46% – said that immigration policy should ensure that Jews do not come to Canada.” Remember now, that this was in the immediate post-war period just after the Jewish people had suffered so terribly, so unbelievably, in Europe.
In 1961, the year after I graduated from university, 40 percent of Canadians said that we should prevent the immigration of non-whites to Canada. Looking out at an audience like this one, or all the students I see at elementary and high schools even in Nunavut which I just returned from last week, in the Arctic, and in universities across Canada, I know that only a tiny minority of Canadians hold such views today.
What an astonishing development in just over a generation!
I founded the Institute for Canadian Citizenship when I left Rideau Hall in 2005 and I’m proud of the fact that we are able to help new Canadians integrate as quickly as possible into our mainstream social, political and cultural life. I want to help accelerate our desire for inclusiveness, for widening our door to the world because I know that it is central to the strength of our country and the most distinctive element that makes us Canadian.
As the first immigrant to become governor general, I feel a responsibility to help others know that all of Canada is what they can dream and help build it to be. I hope that you are already contributing to it. I know that opportunities for further contribution certainly await you.
I look out among you and I can see the pride in the faces of your parents and families. I know how many of you are children of people who have not gone to university. I was one of you nearly 50 years ago and I think I was in many ways one of the last years of graduation in 1960 where university was considered an incredible privilege. I know that many more of you feel that still today but our systems of education have so improved that many people are now able to say that they have children who have gone to university as they did.
For those of you who have come to this country because you know that it’s going to provide a better future for your children and that your children have done well and fulfilled the faith you had in them, I congratulate you. There is nothing more fulfilling than to see your child or grandchild live the dream that you have worked so hard to bring into place. I can tell you that these faces that I see are not the faces that I saw nearly 50 years ago at the University of Toronto, but that this is the way Canada has evolved and that we are very fortunate that it has done so in this way.
All of you are waiting now to be able to contribute to the world even if you don’t know that’s what you have to do. Because if you don’t do it, you’re going to short-change yourselves and you’re going to short-change the people who had belief in you to create a country like Canada, a province like Ontario that encourages you to higher education. This has been a privilege for you and the years have been given to you in which your primary job was to discover, to grow, to think, to organize your outlook.
I want to tell you that if you’re just graduating, it’s much too early to be cynical about the world and about people who do things in the world. There is always room for improvement and you can be part of that. You can be part of it by saying to yourself: “I lived today, and although tomorrow things may not be so great, nothing can undo or make worthless what efforts I have put into my life and to the life of others so far.” It’s never too early for you to say that.
I don’t know where this cynicism comes from but I certainly hope that some of it may be dispelled now that we are going through a rough economic period. When things are going extremely well and jobs are lying on the ground ready to be picked up and all you can think about is when you can get your first BMW or Blackberry, your mind does not tend to focus on what is true and good and real. None of us are entitled to a world of material goods and material goods are not what matters. I’d like to quote you something that Leonard Cohen said which I totally believe in: I’ve never worked just to earn money, but I like to be paid for what I do. Study that sentence and it will have great meaning for you. Never do anything just because there’s money in it. Do it because it has meaning and just make sure that you’re paid as well, if not slightly better than the other person who can do the same thing. But nobody has ever promised you that you will get everything without effort. And in a world which seems to value the utilitarian and the commercial and the material, you have a chance to make a difference in the way in which you look at your future.
For one thing, look into your own character and see if you can really continue or want to strive for excellence. If you don’t want to make that effort, consign yourself to a life of mediocrity and disappointment. I don’t mean that you should feel that you’ve failed if you don’t become Secretary General to the United Nations by the time you’re 40 or a billionaire. It simply means that you have to nourish your own enthusiasm, look at your own talents and what they can offer and that you can keep investing in your own capabilities. It also means looking at how you can contribute to your community of people.
The best definition of mediocrity lies in letters that Vincent Van Gogh, the great artist, wrote to his brother Theo. He was an artist who wanted to create works for the world and yet didn’t sell a single painting while he was alive. We all know what happened to the value and the acceptance and appreciation of his work now. He says, “How does one become mediocre? By compromising, by making concessions today in this matter, tomorrow in another, according to the dictates of the world, by never contradicting the world and by always swallowing public opinion.” I don’t think anyone has ever summed it up more succinctly.
Mediocrity is safe and easy and therefore should be avoided at all costs. Because the purpose of life is not to be safe and easy. I believe that the purpose of your own life is to leave no one and nothing indifferent. It means taking risks, often in small but very significant daily choices. It may not be universally approved; you may not be thought to be warm or cuddly or “just one of the guys”. Most importantly, it means not shrinking at the prospect that you might be isolated and lonely and not hesitating for fear of being misunderstood. If you are forging ahead in order to make a difference, to try and improve what you see as injustice or incompetence, then you may not be understood by those who are looking only for comfort or ease. You may not be listening to the same voice as everyone else seems to be listening to.
To achieve excellence, you must listen to the best that’s within you, the voice which will help you to live what Plato called “the examined life”, the one that is worth living. Life is not going to guarantee you an easy ride; you are not going to meet with approval with everything you do. Much that you do will cause you pain. To quote Leonard again, “there is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in”.
You’re at an age where you are deeply self-concerned, wondering where your life will go, wondering whom you will share it with. But besides finding your own path, you have to have a deep acknowledgment of the importance and the reality of other people. Letting the light get in means a willingness to accept that what you learn, painful though it may be, is not necessarily going to make your life easier in the short term. People who think that life can be reduced to “social transactions” as though life were just a series of economic exchanges or bartering do not understand that life at its fullest, at its most well-lived does not treat other people as commodities; it combines feeling, intuition, thinking and the ability to share these, our true treasures of humanity, with other people. It’s fine to learn to be an individual who can’t be fully developed or human without it but remember that the worst aspect of individualism is a fundamental inability to understand that other people feel things, and that in your dealings with everyone from your friends to those who are not your friends and never will be you must remember that they have a reality too.
We are all creating society together and society is not made up of only the people that you like, who like the same things as you do, and who appreciate and love you. Society is made up of people who have opinions that you do not approve of, dislike or even abhor. Society is made up of people with whom you don’t want to share a park bench with. But they are human beings too and we all live in this world together and we must listen to each other and argue and exchange on the same human level. There is such a thing as human society and we must all play our role in it with generosity, tact, and an ability to take a long view.
Jose Saramago, the Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1998 wrote the novel Blindness which was made into a film that appeared last year – a parable about an entire country in which everyone suddenly goes blind. He wrote it to, he said, “remind those who might read it that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truth, that man stops respecting himself when he loses the respect due to his fellow creatures.”
You have the chance now as you go out in the world armed with your degrees to learn that life doesn’t work out always the way you want. Or you’ll find that there are times that the easiest and most expedient ways are not the right ones to take. You must always hold to a stance which admires excellence, respects other human beings and their way of life and to continue to contribute to the kind of country which has given you the opportunity to have this education and to get this start in life.
For yourself, there are two things that you can do which I consider to be very important. One is to really know yourself and the other is to continue living your life with joy.
The Gnostic Gospel according to St. Thomas did not make it into the New Testament when the other gospels did; it’s part of the literature of all religion and I’m sorry that it hasn’t had a place in the Bible but it has lately had a big comeback because it’s a wonderful read. And I want to leave you with something that’s said in it. It’s the truest statement about human nature I’ve ever come across and I’ve already seen it happen to so many people in the 50 years since I graduated from university. I hope it will help you, maybe not now but in your future, if you remember it. You have started with a fine Canadian education. You have fulfilled a dream. You have a tremendous platform from which you can learn to do so many things, but I want you to remember these words of St. Thomas: “If you find out what is within you and you bring out what is within you, what is within you will save you; if you find out what is within you and you do not bring out what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”
Find out what is within. Bring out what is within. Make this the underlying purpose of your life. Thank you.
Friday, June 12, 2009 in Info Brief
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