Sunday 10 May 2015

SOME THOUGHTS ON KINDNESS, BY THE WAY

As a teacher in a high school, I know how complicated is the job of education and what a responsibility it is. I try to uphold the virtues of honesty and fairness in everything that I do – modeling by example. Sometime the pupils get it and that’s a real lift. And I also try to exhibit kindness and thoughtfulness. 

So, when I read of other ‘teachers’ doing the same and trying to inspire the next generation to be better than the last and to be better in character as much as in achievement, it is bound to make me sit up and pay attention. A few weeks back I stumbled upon a commencement speech made by George Saunders – I confess that I did not know what a commencement speech was and although I knew the name of George Saunders he was not someone I had read.

A commencement speech is a speech delivered at a ceremony to graduating students of a university. It is meant to be all inspirational and to send the students out into the world with an understanding and appreciation of their achievements and perhaps a shared wisdom from some established academic luminary. There’s a great speech by David Foster Wallace and you should check it out – witty and clever and life-affirming, just what the Dean/Principal ordered.

But it was the speech by George Saunders that caught my attention three weeks or so back because it is published in bookform as  ‘Congratulations By The Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness.’ It was the ‘kindness’ bit that I was interested in.

In his speech he talks about the big regrets of his life looking back – try and stop him. There’s a funny story about swimming in a river of monkey ‘poop’ and there’s a small wisdom in what he has to say about that. But he has a bigger and more important message to impart.

Saunders says his big regrets are his ‘failures of kindness’. Essentially he is talking about those times in his life when he could have been kind or kinder and for whatever reason he was not. That's what he regrets most of all. And he urges the young graduates before him to go out into the world and to be all they should be: ambitious and to achieve and to aim higher still, though to what end he is not so sure; but above all, he says to his assembled academic bright successes, be kinder and less selfish because in the final analysis nothing else matters as much as this.


It’s a good speech – witty and clever and life-affirming in just the expected measure, everything a good commencement speech should be. I urge you to look it up. I urge you to take it to heart. I urge you to pay attention to the lesson. Here's the link:



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