Author: brianagrzy2014

The Declaration of Independence states that we have 3 basic “unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness.” The ancient Greeks had a word eudaimonia, which in modern terms is loosely translated as “happiness,’’ but which originally referred to the good or virtuous life. The pre-modern man and the authors of this Declaration realized that genuine happiness and freedom depended upon virtue.

Dr. Mark Anderson of Belmont University’s philosophy department writes, “The irony here is that the core of what we moderns mean by “happiness” is directly opposed to what the ancients meant by “eudaimonia.” In contemporary usage “happiness” is synonymous with “contentment,” “joy,” “a good mood;” it is the opposite of “sadness,” and like “sadness” it designates a feeling, a subjective state of mind. If asked whether we are happy, we have only to introspect and evaluate our emotional or psychological condition… Eudaimonia is altogether different. It designates, not a subjective state of mind, but an objective condition of being; it signifies, not how one feels, but how or what one is.”

Using this definition, how would one describe a citizenry in pursuit of the objective state of happiness, which is not conditioned by personal or cultural preference, and for whom morality is not a word that can be thrown around to suit the individual’s whims and fancies? After all, happiness doesn’t last long when one is in pursuit of vice. Eventually vice creates a void that only the genuinely good life can fill. How would a virtuous American citizenry behave?

If one is to make the case that there is such a thing as an objective goodness, it naturally follows that this goodness is applicable to the lives of all humankind. That is, there is such a thing as a common good. This common good is rooted in goodwill towards one’s fellow man and is not overly interested in politics. The virtuous citizen recalls these words from George Washington’s Farewell Address: “… you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

If the pursuit of the common good is his foremost priority, the virtuous citizen also takes to heart former President John Kennedy’s words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He doesn’t feel that the state owes him anything, aside from the rights listed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. However, he realizes that those rights are not meant to be abused. He understands that with them comes the responsibility to give his nation a good name, so that he, his neighbors, and future generations may take pride in calling it their home.

He is willing to serve his country, although not strictly in a militaristic sense. He is willing to defend his nation, his family, and his property should the legitimate need for it arise, but his main concern is to make America worth defending. He seeks justice for and cares for the poor and others who have been oppressed and marginalized. He respects the dignity of every human life, from the unborn to the dying.

His main concerns are not with fulfilling his short term appetites for wealth, power, fame, lust, etc. but with keeping his own and his country’s long term interests at heart. As the Greek philosopher Plato said, “If someone says that there are some pleasures belonging to fine and good desires and some belonging to bad desires, and that the fine and good ones should be practiced and honored, and the bad ones checked and chained, the democratic man shakes his head at all this and says that all are alike and must be honored on an equal basis.”

Above all, his understanding of patriotism comes from a genuine understanding of freedom: it is not undisciplined individual autonomy, but consists in the ability to prudently choose and act upon what is just, right, and true with regards to himself and his fellow countrymen. This is the paradox of patriotism: Liberty comes from slavery to virtue or else it is not liberty at all. Freedom from vice brings with it the flourishing of greatness; while freedom from virtue spawns decadence and ruin. My wish is that we may live accordingly.

Two summers ago, I went to my high school reunion. It was at Corner Pub in downtown Nashville. It was almost like a joke that no one wanted to tell out loud: 60 Catholic school alumni walk into a bar, and the bartender says, “Welcome home.”

I was sitting at a table with my friends Maria and Jenny, and some other people we knew. Our other classmates gradually walked in as the night went on. At one point, a handful of people we knew came in. Jenny looked up, saw them, and said, “Here come some more old friends I haven’t talked to in five years.” And then she got up and reintroduced herself to people she had already known for a long time.

As I watched her do that, I felt the loss of so many friends who had become strangers to me. I was in a place surrounded by people whose presence felt so familiar and yet so strange all at once. I had made promises with some of them to keep in touch after graduation. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers. We connected with each other on Facebook and other social media outlets. And, for awhile, we kept our promises.

But after the first 2-3 years of college, we drifted away from each other. Phone calls and emails went unmade and unsent. We became preoccupied with school work and other personal matters. Some people who left town to go to school stayed away from Nashville during holidays and breaks. And, before any of us ever knew it, it was as if we never knew each other at all. All those memories of spending time together in middle school cross country practice, chatting by each other’s lockers during high school morning breaks, encouraging each other during hard times, and attending each other’s extracurricular events ultimately meant nothing. We had become just another face in each other’s yearbooks.

Time is a fickle and capricious being. It can bring great people into our lives who love us unconditionally, who cheer for our successes, who hold us up during the hardest parts of our lives, and who actively seek our good, even if it means sacrificing for our sakes.

But it can also separate us from those we’ve grown to love. The same forces that turn acquaintances into best buddies can also do the reverse. This happens a lot during young adulthood. As people grow older, time and distance can take them apart. They leave town to go to college or grad school, or head out after graduation to pursue the jobs they’ve been preparing for. They get married and have kids of their own to care for. Those new responsibilities keep them preoccupied, and rightfully so.

And people try to be understanding with each other, and give each other space to do what they need to do to care for their families and attend to the responsibilities of daily life. Sometimes they give each other space to the point where they’re no longer a part of each other’s lives. But still an unspoken pain exists; a yearning to return to the days when they were a tangible presence in each other’s lives, and not a mere phantom. “Liking” each other’s Facebook posts and sending texts and emails can only do so much to ease the pain.

For me personally, I’ve always struggled to build friendships with others. I’ve been very quiet and shy my whole life, so working up the courage to reach out to people and get to know them is very hard for me. And I know I’ve lost touch with so many great people who have been a part of my life. And it hurts to think about it. I see people all around me who have friends they’ve known since childhood, and I wonder if I could ever form a life-long bond like that with someone else. I wonder if adulthood will separate me from those friends who loved me when I was young and foolish.

To those who are my friends now, please don’t be a stranger. Your presence in my life is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I’m eternally grateful for your love throughout the years, and I never want it to end. To those who have lost touch with me: I haven’t forgotten you, and I’m sorry if I did anything that caused us to drift apart. You’ve always had a special place in my heart, and are more than welcome to come back into my life if you ever need me. I’m always here for you no matter what. To all of you: you’ve become a part of me, and of my life, whether you acknowledge it or not. It is as the poet John Donne once wrote: “No man is an island.” Please don’t let us become islands. I love and miss all of you.

I detest clichés. As someone who studied English in college, it bothers me when I see the latest catchphrase creep into so many aspects of our cultural dialogue. Over the past several decades, this problem has afflicted America’s political debates. Rick Perry sneers that Social Security is “a Ponzi scheme.” Democrats wield their belief in “social justice” like a club to bash their right-leaning opponents over the head and accuse them of being uncaring. (Notice they never define this phrase or describe what it entails). Leftists like to “tax and spend” to solve the country’s problems. Right-wing folk “cling to their guns and religion.” I’ve been tired of it all for awhile now, and I’m sure many of my readers agree with me.

Any form of conversation stagnates if it is laden with the same trite mantras. When bread sits out for more than a day, it grows stale. But shibboleths seem to sit on the shelf forever, even if they have been rotten for awhile. Most Americans know that Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy motto was “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” But I’ll ask you readers to guess the author of the following quotation without looking it up: “The life of a nation is secure only when the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.” This saying is very wise, and the person who said it is well-known. (Hint: Go back about 150 years in American history).

With next year being a federal election year, we’ll be forced to sit through the same cycle again. One or more of the candidates will say something either incredibly stupid or newsworthy, but nothing particularly intelligent or noteworthy. And it’ll seep into our national vocabulary the same way Ebola spread around the world last year.

But that’s not the worst of it. Wait until the candidates disagree with each other on an important issue. That’s when the real stupidity begins. It’s like Oprah is back on TV, and she’s giving away cows to the studio audience. *Oprah points to different people* “You have a cow, you have a cow, you have a cow, you have a cow! And let’s all have a cow because we disagree over our political viewpoints!” For crying out loud, let’s not put on our big boy and big girl pants and talk to each other like mature human beings! Let’s not try to connect with each other on an intellectual level! That’s too hard. Instead, let’s throw around the words bigotry, hatred, and discrimination the same way a sailor cusses. It’s too hard for us to make reasoned arguments. So we’ll go with ad-hominem attacks instead. It’s easier to do that.

And people wonder why the US has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the world. Perhaps this could be one of the reasons. Even though I rarely watch TV, I especially have no desire to do so during election season. Because it always seems like the person with the popular catchphrase wins the White House, or the person who can make the most voters believe that their opponent is stupid and evil.

The quote I mentioned above was from Frederick Douglass. Even though the political process was messy back in his day (like it is in ours), he and his contemporaries could at least make it seem like a politician’s job had some class and dignity. To give another example, Daniel Webster once said this: “Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.” I don’t think any politicians could write a sentence like that today. Our vocabulary is too small to make it happen. As a concerned citizen, I wish we demanded more from our political candidates and campaigns. And so I have a few requests to make of my readers.

Conservatives and libertarians: don’t blather on about “freedom” and “rights.” Tell people what they are, what they’re good for, if there are any legitimate reasons to restrict people’s actions, and what role your definition of freedom plays in making our country better than the one we have now. Liberals: It bugs me to hear your talk about “change” and “progress” without knowing what goal you have for it, how you intend to get there, and why we should want to go to some of these places you’re taking us to. If any of you, you matter what political persuasion you are, want to act like a parrot, do your fellow citizens a favor and go hang out at the zoo. If you’re repeating what someone else has already said, it’s not cool anymore. It’s old.

But if you don’t want to do that, then do something more productive. Research the issues our country is facing from a variety of angles, take some time to reflect upon what you’ve discovered, come up with your own opinions, and say something original about what’s going on. Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow don’t have your voice. You do. Use it, say something intelligent, and hope to God that no one else steals your idea, unless you want to be the inventor of the next big thing that grows fungus within a week.

These past two months or so, there’s been a trend happening on Facebook where people post a list of their top 10 favorite/most recommended books and then send a challenge to other friends to compile their own list. I was not challenged to do it; just did it for the heck of it. This post is a slightly modified version of that list. I am not challenging anyone to make their own book list, although you can if you want. And I’m throwing in a few extra books for good measure. 🙂  So here we go.

1. Neither Wolf Nor Dog. Kent Nerburn. In which the author (a white oral historian) and a Native American elder build a friendship while sharing their insights into the culture clash between Native Americans and non-Natives. Out of all the books on this list, this one was the most eye-opening for me. For that reason, it is also my most highly recommended one. It’s long, at around 330 pages, but very powerful and compelling. Pick it up if you can. You won’t regret it at all.
2. Left to Tell. Immaculee Ilibagiza. The incredible memoir of a Rwandan woman who survived the Genocide of 1994 and forgave the man who killed most of her family. Mind blown.
3. Led By Faith. Immaculee Ilibagiza:. This is a follow up to Left to Tell and describes how Immaculee came to terms with the destruction of her homeland and the slaughter of her family which occurred during the bloodshed. It also tells of her work with the UN, her coming to America, and how she wrote Left to Tell.
4. Everlasting Man. GK Chesterton. Just read it this past year for the first time. Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, especially in the last chapter. OH MY GOODNESS IT’S SO GOOD.
5. Les Miserables. Victor Hugo. Time-consuming but worth it. An amazing tale of love, heroism and sacrifice. Just make sure you read the full version because the abridged version leaves out important parts. I learned this the hard way. 🙂
6. Invisible Man. Ralph Ellison. Also in my list of books with the best prose. Read it for the first time my senior year of high school and loved it.
7. The Things They Carried. Tim O’Brien. The author’s semi-autobiographical account of his journey into the Vietnam War and back. Also read this senior year in the same class that I read Invisible Man for.
8. Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One. Mark Anderson. The author is a philosophy professor who taught me at Belmont. An interesting reflection on the purpose of philosophy and why we should study it.
9. Seven Storey Mountain. Thomas Merton. Merton’s spiritual autobiography. This book was recommended to me by a friend as she was converting to Catholicism, but it still gave a cradle Catholic like me a lot to consider. And if you know anything about the early Church Fathers, you’ll notice that the parallels between Thomas Merton’s life and St. Augustine’s life are eerily similar. They both grew up spiritually restless until they found a home in Catholicism, both dedicated their lives to the Church once they became Catholics, and both were hedonistic playboys in their younger years. Thomas Merton is pretty much a modern-day version of St. Augustine. Unbelievable.
10. Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen Prejean. Good reasons to be against capital punishment, told in story form. Since the early 1980s, Sister Helen Prejean has become well-known for her work in prison ministry, fighting against the death penalty, and ministering to murder victims’ families. Dead Man Walking is the story of how it all began.
11. The 5 People you Meet in Heaven. Mitch Albom. This book introduced me to Mitch Albom’s writing. It came out when I was in 8th grade, and I bought a copy that year on a class trip to Washington, D.C. I read it in just a few sittings and was amazed at the author’s imagination. I have since become a big fan of Mitch Albom’s work.
12. Flags of Our Fathers. James Bradley. The author’s dad was one of the men who became famous for raising the American flag over Iwo Jima. This is his story, as well as the stories of the 5 other men captured in that famous picture and statue. It’s another long book, at about 535 pages. But, once again, it’s worth it and very readable. It’s an interesting look at hero worship in America: considering who is truly worthy of being admired as a hero and why we should look up to those people.
13. The Soloist. Steve Lopez. This is the story of the author’s friendship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a schizophrenic homeless musician living in Skid Row in LA. Ayers was once a promising student at the prestigious Julliard Music Conservatory until he had his nervous breakdown. Lopez, a columnist for the LA Times, starts out their relationship interviewing Ayers for his weekly column, but eventually does everything he can to help him begin to put his life back together. I am reminded of life’s fragility, that someone who’s on top of the world one day could have everything fall apart the next.
14. Rocket Men. Craig Nelson. This came out the week of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. It details all the hard work NASA put into our first trips into space and what the lunar landing meant for America and the rest of the world. It’s weird about me: I hate studying science. My mind is definitely geared towards literature and the arts. But I am such a dork about stargazing and things like that. There’s just something about the mystery and beauty of space that I find fascinating. Anyways, that’s why I enjoyed this book and I hope you will read it.
15. Have A Little Faith. Mitch Albom. This book debuted in 2009. It is Mitch Albom’s first non-fiction book since Tuesdays with Morrie, which was released in 1997. In this book, his elderly rabbi asks him to give the eulogy at his funeral. Since Mr. Albom has no clue how much time Rabbi Albert Lewis has left, he spends time getting to know him so he will be prepared for the speech and ends up re-connecting with the Jewish faith of his youth. In the midst of all this, Mitch also volunteers at an inner city church in Detroit and befriends its pastor Henry Covington. Through his relationships with these two men, Mitch discovers that religion doesn’t have to be such a divisive issue; that people of all faith and non-religious backgrounds can peacefully co-exist with each other and learn valuable things from one another.

These are my top 15 favorites in no particular order. They are probably the ones I would recommend the most to anyone, although that changes often because I read a lot. But these are a few to get you started if you ever needed reading recommendations. If you ever have a look at any of these, let me know what you thought. 🙂

A few weeks ago, the British scientist Richard Dawkins sparked quite the controversy when he was asked how he would react if it was found out that he was to have a child with Down Syndrome. His response? “I would abort the baby and start over.” I, like many others, was very upset to hear those words. Of course, many of those angered by Dawkins’ remarks are people who know someone with Down Syndrome. And that includes me. But that’s a conversation to have another day.

When I heard about this story, I was reminded of the most important reason that I am pro-life. It’s all quite simple. Either every human life has equal dignity and worth and should be protected from the moment of conception to the time of natural death, or else no one should be protected at all. Because if there is such a thing as an in-between, anyone becomes an arbitrary target for death.

Dawkins says we shouldn’t frame the question of whether an unborn child is human or not, but rather if it could potentially suffer or not. But any of us could potentially suffer. Consider veterans coming home from war missing limbs or having PTSD. Should they die just because they’re suffering? What about quadriplegics or paraplegics? Did Christopher Reeves’ life have less value when he became paralyzed after a horseback riding accident? What about people with cerebral palsy? My brother and I have both gone to school with people who have that condition, and they’ve both been inspirations to the people they know. Should they die too?

In order to be in favor of abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, or what have you; you have to make the case that some lives have more value and worth than others. But think of the people who are hurt the most by these things, and the message it must send to them. You’re poor? You shouldn’t be here. You were conceived in rape? You didn’t deserve to have a chance at life. You’re elderly, terminally ill, or have special needs? You’d definitely be better off dead. You’re a vegetable. So one day a person like that is your grandma, and the next day she magically becomes a piece of cauliflower to stuff down the garbage disposal as you see fit. This is another problem that the most vulnerable among us have to face. And it’s an affront to their dignity.

But how should we treat the most vulnerable and weakest among us? For those of us who are Christians, let us consider the Stations of the Cross; particularly when Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross. As we think of this, we must remember that Jesus was near death at that point. In His journey, He was moving closer to Calvary, where He would be crucified. Physically, He was exhausted, having been awake for more than 24 hours. He had been scourged until He was almost dead. He had been paraded in front of the Roman guard, the Pharisees, and a crowd who wanted Him dead, just so they could all make a mockery of Him. A crown of thorns is drawing blood from His head. And now He’s staggering along a dusty, crowded public road while carrying the instrument of His death.

And what does Simon do? He helps Jesus carry the cross. If Simon believed in euthanasia, he might have asked to stop the whole procession so he could throw the cross down and nail Jesus to it himself to end His suffering. But he helps Him carry His burden instead. And that’s what Christians are called to do. We help carry each other’s crosses when times are tough instead of nailing people to their crosses and leaving them to die.

But even if you’re not Christian or religious at all, why would you not want to treat all of your fellow human beings with equal dignity and respect, from the point of conception to the time of natural death? What standards do you use to measure the value or worth of a human life? That’s someone’s son or daughter in the womb. That’s someone’s grandma or grandpa battling cancer in the hospital. That person with special needs is someone’s brother or sister. I find it interesting that in this day and age, when so many emphasize loving and accepting everyone, no matter what, that many of those same people think some of their fellow humans are fit to live and others aren’t. Wishing death upon someone is the ultimate rejection notice. You would think that part of loving someone is rejoicing in that person’s very existence. But apparently, to some, it’s not. And I don’t know why.

To be fair, there is more that can be done to make life easier and better for those who are struggling. We need health care reform where the greatest number of people can benefit; particularly mothers, their children, and the poor. We need an economy that enables people to support themselves and their families financially. We need to make greater strides to integrate those with special needs into mainstream society. We need to ensure that the poor have access to secure food and housing. We need to create better palliative treatment for those who are near death. And so on and so forth. I just wish that all of our efforts to help the marginalized would go towards these things, as opposed to making some steps towards caring for them while simultaneously offering death as a solution to their problems.

This is not a condemnation of people who are pro-choice. Instead it’s a calling for all of us to love all of our fellow human beings as they ought to be loved. Because people’s lives depend on it.

Any discussion of what makes for a virtuous citizenry, and thus the well-being, of a country necessarily entails a conversation on the purpose and function of freedom. The word “freedom” and its companion term “civil liberties” are bandied about in America as often as the sailor blasphemes. People talk all the time about “the freedoms granted to us in the Constitution” and “the civil liberties our soldiers have fought and died for.” But no one ever says what freedom is good for. Anything can be used for either good or evil means, depending on what the person who possesses something chooses to do with it.

The overarching concept of ordered liberty contains the ideas that true freedom adheres to an agreed upon moral order; that freedom combined with relativism is a deadly combination for any society, and that the mark of a virtuous citizen consists in his ability to freely and prudently choose and act upon what is good. The person who believes in ordered liberty does not think that freedom and absolute personal autonomy are one and the same. Rather, he knows that the liberty to do what is wrong is not liberty at all; but that freedom has dissolved into license. He understands that he is born into a community and that what he does affects those around him, both for the better and for the worse. If the culture critics among us wish to speak of a moral collapse in contemporary America, I’m sure some might say that much of it can be attributed to a lack of a proper understanding of freedom’s purpose.

Consider what happened with the sexual revolution. I don’t know who started that debacle, but it was a disaster from the get-go. Less than 100 years ago, it was common sense that the well-being of families and communities depends largely on the strength of the relationships between men and women; and it’s not a good thing that this has been forgotten. In fact, I would invite any of you to tell me how our civilization has benefited from the lie that what two people do to each other in private has no repercussions in the larger realm of society. Feel free to contact me at brianagrzy@comcast.net or leaving me a comment below. I look forward to reading your remarks.

No one would say that it’s a good thing for roughly 40% of children to be born out of wedlock, for more than 54 million lives to be taken through abortion in less than 40 years (most often because a man’s and woman’s sexual license take precedence over a baby’s chance to live), for the countless lives damaged by STDs and broken hearts, or from the definition of love changing from “willing the good of the beloved” to it all being about lust and sex.

Or think about how the right to bear arms has been perverted. It’s one thing for someone to want to use a gun for hunting purposes, or to protect himself, his family, and his property from intruders. But news stories come up all the time about shootings on school campuses and fights that went overboard and became deadly. Or look at what happens when “free speech” includes the right to say whatever foul thing that comes to one’s mind. Or consider all the regulations the EPA has had to set in place to keep people from littering and polluting the water and air.

You will first notice that in all of these cases the state necessarily has to intervene to keep chaos from breaking loose. The implication of this is that a nation cannot be free and wicked at once. True communities are built upon a shared expectation of virtue. A society where every person fends for himself is no society at all. A narcissistic people loses its political freedoms because they are too concerned with satiating their every desire to be expected to care for the people among whom they live or to put the long-term interests of their fellow human beings above their own selfish whims.

Furthermore, a wicked nation will not just have lost its political freedoms. The people are not free in another sense: they are bound to their vices. To put it simply, a wicked nation is a nation that has lost its conscience. Its citizens don’t answer to the calls of what is objectively good, what is just, or what is true; but to whatever appetite they want to indulge at the moment. They fall into, I daresay, animalistic behavior, with their bellies serving as their masters. Such a chain of command is not a good one, as it inevitably leads to self-destruction. In Greek mythology, the story goes that Narcissus died because he could not pull himself from his reflection to pursue his love, the nymph Echo. My wish is that this is not our fate.

As a part of one of the English classes I took in college at Belmont, my classmates and I were given an assignment where we had to pretend that we were the chosen commencement speakers on our graduation day. We had to write the speech towards the middle of the semester, and deliver it on the day of our final exam. One of the guys in class gave a great speech about the paradox of change being the only constant and consistent thing that happens in people’s lives. His words are coming to life all around me as I type this.

Just in 2014 alone, 6 people I know have gotten engaged, 3 people have had kids, and another 7 have gotten married. In addition to that, many adults I know are growing older. In between the place where I attended middle school and the place where I went to high school, 6 teachers and staff members have retired. All 6 had been at their respective schools for more or less their entire careers.

I went to the retirement party for one of these aforementioned teachers a few weeks ago at Christ the King, my middle school. Many of this teacher’s former students were there. Several of them were little kids when I was at CKS, just kindergartners and first graders. They’re teenagers now. I can’t believe all of this is happening.

Young adulthood is an interesting phrase marking a rather interesting part of life. My peers and I are adults now. We are at the point where we’re expected to take on the responsibilities of fully grown people. We’re done with college. Some of us are done with grad school or in it right now. Many people I’ve known have gotten engaged, married and/or started families of their own. (Which means that their parents have become grandparents! Holy cow!). People are joining the workforce and pursuing the jobs they’ve studied and prepared for. Some of us have spread out across the country and around the world.

But, at the same time, we’re still young. We’re still looking to the older adults in our lives as mentors for their guidance and perspective on how to handle these new roles that we’ve taken on. We’re not expected to have too much wisdom about adulthood, or life, or how to be a successful human being because we’re beginning to navigate through all those things ourselves. We’ve heard commencement speeches not too long ago, but it’ll be awhile before anyone would want to call upon us to give one anywhere.

Speaking of commencement, was it really 6 years ago that my classmates and I graduated from high school? Was it really that long ago that we were at Project Graduation busting a gut at our friends’ terrible karaoke singing? Was it 6 years ago that I was walking across Belmont’s stage for the first time as a high school graduate, and 6 months ago I did the same thing the second time as a college graduate? Was it one year ago that we had our 5 year reunion, when people’s faces were familiar and strange all at once?

And now people are becoming husbands and wives, and moms and dads, and accountants, and teachers, and soldiers, and engineers, and musicians, and actresses, and spreading out across the country.

I don’t know if this applies to my readers, but it never seemed that time moved this fast when I was a kid. Now that I’m older, each year seems to go by faster and faster. Or maybe it always went by this fast and I never noticed it until now.

But is this all life is? Is it a roller coaster that gradually goes faster and faster until it flies off the tracks and the passengers crash and burn? Or does it just feel like that? I don’t know the answer. But however things go, we should enjoy the ride. Because it goes by way too fast.

This is the transcript of a speech I gave in an English class I took as a student at Belmont University. My classmates and I were given an assignment where we had to pretend that we were the chosen commencement speakers on our graduation day. We wrote our speeches towards the middle of the semester and delivered them on the day of our final exam. I’ve posted mine here to share it with the graduates in my life, and you can do likewise if you wish. You can adapt it to your own situation as you see fit. Enjoy. 🙂

Nascantur in Admiratione: Let Them Be Born in Wonder

Distinguished guests, faculty and staff, family and friends, and my fellow classmates: If you will, let me begin by promising that the speech I’m giving is brief. Or, as the late actress Elizabeth Taylor said to her eight husbands, “Don’t worry, I’m not keeping you long.” Truth be told, I made this up. But we’ll just go with it for yuks and giggles. 🙂

Two months after their voyage to the moon, the Apollo 11 space crew addressed a joint session of Congress to discuss the significance of what they had accomplished. Commander Neil Armstrong was the last of the three men to speak. During the course of his short speech, he said that, “Mystery…is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand.”

Given the context in which he had spoken, any of us gathered here immediately would say that those words came from an American hero or a fearless explorer. But I would like to think that a younger Mr. Armstrong came back to speak on his behalf that night. For when Neil Armstrong was a teenager, he was so enraptured by flight and so consumed by imagining what lies beyond the clouds that he learned to fly a plane before he ever drove a car. I would like to think that perhaps that Ohio farm boy fell madly in love with the heavens without looking back, and I hope similar things will be said about those of you who are leaving. My wish for the graduates is that your time at Belmont has awakened that same sense of wonder in you and spurred you towards your own life-long pursuits of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

It could be said that wonder is a virtue. We all know that something wondrous is often attractive and aesthetically pleasing. But to focus solely on those aspects of such a thing is to lust after it. On the other hand, to be struck with awe involves self-forgetting. Wonder is the sense of humility and reverence that comes with beholding the goodness of something outside ourselves. It is what inspired Jules Verne’s readers to circumnavigate the world in 80 days, what drove Sir Edmund Hillary to the snow-capped peak of Mt. Everest, and what moved Katharine Lee Bates to pen the song “America the Beautiful.”

Now, many of you have come to Belmont probably because you’ve been told that going to college is your key to success; that it’s your ticket to the world; that college graduates earn more than their non college educated counterparts. It’s like what one of my professors told me when I was a student: When you’re in high school, you burn yourself out and go into debt to get good grades and get into the college of your choice. And as a young adult, you burn yourself out even more and go even further into debt to buy yourself a Ferrari, a penthouse apartment, an in home movie theater system with surround sound, and an extra fridge to hold your snacks and beer. And after that, you have a midlife crisis because you don’t know what else to do with yourself.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. There is nothing wrong in and of itself with having a college degree. I have one of those. And it’s always a good thing to at least be able to put food on the table. We all need to eat. We all need to support ourselves financially. We all need to survive.

But there has to be so much more to life than just that. Deep down, if we’re honest with ourselves, I don’t think any of us want to live just for the sake of surviving day to day. I think it’s the other way around. We aim to survive in order to truly live: to fully live life in all its glory and its pain; to experience love and joy and happiness and share it with others; to suffer and mourn when it’s needed; to build families and friendships that last a lifetime; to discover the purpose and meaning of our existence; to grow in wisdom and understanding; and, as the prophet Micah said: “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.” In short, we aim to take in all the truth, beauty, and goodness that life has to offer. It’s what we’ve been made to do.

The ancient Greeks understood this well. Aristotle said that “The search for wisdom begins in wonder.” Furthermore, he observed that man is the only rational animal on Earth and the only creature built to stand upright. We’ve been made, along with Walt Whitman’s astronomy student, to “look up in perfect silence at the stars.” We’ve been called, as Pope John Paul II put it, to “direct our steps towards a truth that transcends ourselves.” It is as the esteemed author G.K. Chesterton once wrote, that in order to imagine man as the type of being who appreciates beauty, we must treat him as something separate from nature. We must describe him as standing absolute and alone from all other creatures.

There is a reason why billboards are eyesores, why the inanities droning from the radio and the TV and the internet are white noise, and why clichés are stupid. It is because they provide absolutely nothing that is valuable for the soul. You’ll never see anyone become awestruck by the doggerel spewing from Lena Dunham’s mouth. No one does that, ok?! The only exception is wondering if she ate paint chips when she was little.

But so much of what we see and hear today is idiocy and distraction. It seems odd to me, then, that so much time is spent teaching young people to produce more of the same. For there are things that are far more valuable to learn than how to cultivate an ever-shortening attention span or how to create the newest device that allows the masses to do just that. The human mind was meant to pursue truth. The human heart was made to seek what is good and aches to be overwhelmed by goodness.

Any effort you’ve spent pursuing an education here, then, has been a waste of time and of an intellect if it has not directed towards a search for that trinity of truth, goodness, and beauty. A genuine education is not utilitarian, where knowledge is used to help students exercise power over someone or something else for money or for pleasure. It does not teach the young their functions as gears and pulleys in the great political-economic machine of society. And it needn’t necessarily be marked by earning various credentials or degrees.

Instead, it is unqualifiedly and thoroughly democratic. It requires no age limits, and anyone can partake in it, regardless of his I.Q. There are no prerequisites, besides a willingness to learn. It is elementary in that it seeks to reintroduce its pupils to the world, as if it were brand new. And its ultimate aim, to borrow a phrase attributed to Cardinal John Henry Newman, is “a true enlargement of mind: the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values; and determine their mutual dependence.”

It follows, then, that a lack of such an education is unnatural; which is to say that it violates the very nature of who mankind is, and what we’ve been made to do. A student whose erudition has not been rooted in wonder may have taken a few courses here and there to learn a trade with which he can support himself and his family. He might walk away with a calligraphy-engraved piece of paper that represents his ability to show up to work on time and complete his assigned tasks. But he is not capable of much else, nor does his schedule dominated by the punch-clock’s daily grinding allow him to tinker with a car’s innards or be transported to the spirit-infested forest of William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His schooling in matters of love might have been flattened into blathering about condoms and diaphragms, and that was likely mowed down even further into discussions of health and hygiene, leaving him unable to explain why the poet Dante once said of his beloved Beatrice that every man who beholds her either turns into a noble creature or he dies. If there’s a motivation for such a person to learn anything, it is not born from curiosity, but from a heart hardened by cynicism and skepticism.

I hope you have not been students like that. I hope that you are not the type of people who think that enlightenment and being jaded are one and the same. I hope that you have not traded a hard-fought search for truth for the ease, comfort, and false humility of relativism. I hope you know that there is no joy in only living hand-to-mouth, or in that endlessly frantic struggle to “make something of yourself.” I hope that you don’t develop the soul-crushing habit of defining yourself entirely by what’s listed on your résumé. Personally, I think you all have infinitely more dignity and worth than that.

I hope instead that from time to time that you won’t be afraid to step off that stationary bike of your daily drudgery of eking out a living to see what marvelous things are happening in the world around you. I hope you understand that your feelings about reality don’t change reality itself. I hope you realize the irony in being absolutely certain that there are no such things as absolutes. I hope you don’t mind trading the lights of your TV screen and the mind-numbing chatter of the overrated stars who appear on it for the lights of the moon and the real stars every once in a while. But perhaps my greatest wish for all of you is that when the time comes for you to cross the great divide between life and death, you can say along with the poet T.S. Eliot that “we shall not cease from exploration/ and the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

This is your chance to make it happen, and I know that you can do it. I wish each of you the very best for your futures, and may you all have a wonderful and wonder-filled life!

Congratulations and best of luck to you all. 🙂