Get a Life

You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with the same degree as yours; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Not just the live at a desk or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account but your soul.

Get a life. A real life is not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find a people you love , and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an E-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And 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 you want to spread it around. Take the money you would have spent on beers and 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 well too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.