Remarks
47th Commencement
Interlochen Arts Academy
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Jeffrey S. Kimpton
President
Dream No Small Dreams
Honored graduates, trustees, distinguished faculty and staff, Academy alumni, family and friends, it is a privilege to speak to you today at these 47th commencement ceremonies of Interlochen Arts Academy. And as is my custom, because this is a personal statement to the graduates, I will ask the audience for your indulgence as I turn and speak for the last time to the great class of 2009.
Good morning, graduates, on this very special day. I hope you can feel the spirit of today in this auditorium, a fulcrum of energy as all those people out there focus their best wishes and greatest hopes for the future on you up here. It is a day of boundless expectations.
As we continue to seek spring in the clouds of this morning, I want to first commend you on the resilience and passion you have shown during this very long, very cold, very snowy, very long winter that we all endured together. Few other than Interlochen students would have consistently worn flip flops in subzero temperatures and feet of snow in the dark to breakfast and classes. If we had MADE you wear flipflops we would have had a revolt, but no, you did this willingly! I am quite sure that John Steinbeck was probably a writer in residence at Interlochen one winter when he wrote the novel The Winter of our Discontent.
That resilience and passion that you exhibited in the past year are traits that will be useful in the days ahead, for today starts the process of life after graduation, the process of deciding what you will do with the rest of your life. How many of you have been talking in the last few weeks about your future? As you walk to Ric's, share a coffee with friends in the Café, or talk with your roommate, how many of you have thought out loud about your dreams or uncertainties of your future? How many of you are quite certain you know what you want to do? How many of you don't really know yet?
It's a natural thing, not being certain about what you want to do in life. It's OK. I'd like to tell you and your parents that your pathway to the future is straight and predetermined. But it is not. Note to parents: there is more tuition in your future, and don't clean out their bedrooms.
Along the way are bumps and jogs, falls and twists and turns that we will watch you take and celebrate with you when you find the real pathway in life. I know what you will go through. Although deeply immersed in music in high school, in my first six years after graduation I spent my two years in political science and pre-law, thinking I wanted to be a lawyer, then shifted to trumpet performance, then music education and teaching, and then my mother suggested I'd better get a degree in administration and arts management because it could be useful in the future!
But each of those changes following my graduation came with a set of dreams and ideas of what I wanted to do, what I hoped to do. They followed natural passions for me. Reaching that real pathway in life, whether the career you create or a passionate avocation you follow, requires a substantial amount of dreaming, and it is the process of taking dreams to reality, of filling the time that lies ahead, that I want to share with you this morning.
The genesis of my topic today came from a dear friend of Interlochen, Bill Boyd, who died this past October after serving Interlochen Arts Camp for 50 summers. After Bill's death, his wife Emily and I corresponded and she sent the program used at Bill's services at Penn State University, where he taught. At the bottom of the program was one of Bills' favorite quotes, from the German poet and philosopher Johan Wolfgang von Goethe.
"Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
What is a dream? Freud would tell us that dreams are actually sub-conscious brain activity spurred by associative thoughts from previous experience.
But Webster's Collegiate Dictionary takes a more wholistic view, providing multiple definitions to the meaning of the word dream, first describing the nocturnal kind, those thoughts, images or emotions during sleep that create a strong sensory image. There are also dreams that are a 'visionary creation of the imagination," "a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality", to "something notable for its beauty, excellence or enjoyable quality" to "a strongly desired goal or purpose" or "something that fully satisfies a wish."
All of these different descriptions point to the functioning of the human brain, a part of both subconscious analysis of the past, and future thinking that makes homo sapiens different than other species on earth. A dream is not about reality. It is about the pathway that reality or life might take if you could choose its course.
As you sit here on stage today, I know that your heads are full of dreams, dreams of fancy, dreams tempered by the reality of life, thoughts of what can be, what could be, and what might be in the future.
Earlier this week I emailed the class of 2009 to do a little anecdotal research about what your dreams and hopes were for the future. It was a fascinating little exercise. Some of you know precisely what you hope to do, but the vast majority of you are not really sure what you want to do with your lives.
As a class you are quite modest about your abilities. Many of you recognize that something is "inside" of you waiting to bloom, and most of you are both nervous and eager to see what it might be. Virtually all of you said something about the role that Interlochen has and will play in shaping your future, at some time in your life.
Once you get past the uncertainty, and describe what you want to do, we then see that there are great stairs you want to climb, vexing societal issues you want to solve or contribute to, and great art that you want to make.
What was so very evident in these heartfelt emails was the passion that you carry for life and making a difference. But the process of taking dreams to reality requires more than the dream itself. It requires passion, it demands energy to fuel these hopes and dreams for the future that you have.
One of my favorite stories about passion and fire comes from my days in graduate school at the University of Illinois. Lillian Katz, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and one of the architects of the Federal Head Start program, led a series of seminars for those wanting to be teachers, and this was one passionate woman about teaching. Once, during a discussion period a student indicated that she had burned out in student teaching after just eight weeks, and asked Professor Katz how to avoid burnout. Katz, who was very tall and imposing and from England, turned to the class and said in her wonderful British accent, "my dears, one cannot burn out if one never had a fire."
Passion is the fire of life, the energy of experience that brings your dreams to reality. Passion and fire can wax and wane, but you must keep the coals of passion for life hot and smoldering, ready to burst into fire when the right experience comes along that will fulfill your dreams.
Last year you will remember that alumnus Aaron Dworkin, the founder of Sphinx and a McArthur Fellow, shared a wonderful quote by the British philosopher Ashley Montagu that is appropriate for today.
"The deepest defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become."
And that is what this morning is all about. You sit at this extraordinary time in your lives, on the edge of deciding how you will fill that gap between what you are capable of becoming, and what you in fact become. It's a huge span of time. Think of the time between this morning and forty years down the road as a huge space bordered by capacity and talent on one side, and the desire for fulfillment on the other, where dreams and passion come together and are the ingredients for a life well lived. It is a space of no short duration that is full of risk and challenge, fear and confidence, mistakes and triumphs, joy and sorrow, frustration and adulation. It is life.
Graduation ceremonies are a great way to assign guilt and responsibility to the next generation, and I now do so to you. Thirty years from now, when you are at the other end of this spectrum of life, remember that the difference between what you were capable of becoming and what you in fact became will be defined by the dreams you chose to follow with passion. And so, "dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
And so my friends, it is time to go. Travel safely. Make wise choices. Do the right thing. Keep in touch. Visit often. Remember Interlochen. Learn, love, and lead. It is your destiny.
