Leonard Pitts

Keynote Address

St. Frances Academy graduation, class of 2008

St. Matthew's Catholic Church, Baltimore MD

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

I remember when I sat where you’re sitting right now.  It’s been awhile.  In fact, it was back in 1974 that I was graduated from John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles. 

Since you are under 20 years of age, let me translate that.  Back in the days when there were only three television networks and one black and white video game, back when people wore long hair and powder blue suits with collars out to here, back when you knew a computer was powerful because it took up two or three rooms, back when rap was something you did to a Christmas gift…back, in other words, when the Earth was still cooling and the dinosaurs roamed, somebody stuck a diploma in my hand which certificated that I, according to the county of Los Angeles and the state of California was officially a high school graduate.

Now you guys have fooled around and let the same thing happen to you.  I’m here to explain to you what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Because if you’re like I was, you probably don’t truly realize.  I’m reminded of something that happened right after my graduation ceremony ended.  I was leaving the football field where the ceremony had been held, when ran into my Spanish teacher, Manuel Tapanez, leaning against the fence.  “Well, Senor Tapanez,” I said, “I’m finally finished.”

And Senor Tapanez got this look on his face.  He said, “No, Senor Pitts.  You’ve only just begun.”

I did not understand what he meant then.  But after college and career and marriage and mortgage and fatherhood and grandfatherhood and whatever it is that comes next, I think I’m beginning to.  Think I am finally coming to understand that life is a series of stages and as soon as you feel like you’re getting the hang of one, getting comfortable with one, the calendar turns and it’s time to move on to another.  Life, you will find, is a constant process of opening one door and closing another, of saying goodbye and hello.

There is, after all, a reason they call this a commencement ceremony.  To commence is to start something.  It is to begin.  So, while a lot of things are ending for you today, take my word for it: many more are just now getting started.

You know, it’s funny how fast the future comes.  It always seems like it’s just hanging out there forever, a horizon that keeps receding.  And then one day, bang.  You’re right up on it.

I’d be willing to wager that most of you have clear memories of being 10, 11 or 12.  I’d bet you it feels like yesterday, like you just went to sleep one night and you woke up to find yourself a high school senior.  It happened so fast.  Well, 30 is coming just as fast.  You’re going to wake up and find yourself to be someone different from who you are now: a 30 year old whose life has been shaped, limited, or enlarged by the decisions made right now by someone who is 17 or 18 years of age. 

If that person has done right by you, you’re going to have options you cannot begin to guess, going to go places and do things you cannot even imagine.  But if that person has done you wrong, if that person has made decisions for short term satisfaction and never even thought about the long term ramifications, if that person has stuck you in a deadend job, a deadend relationship or a deadend life, I promise you: you are going to want to come back to this moment right here in 2008 and kick that person’s natural behind.

So I advise you to take good care of the person you’re going to be.  Look out for him or her.  Be good to him or her.  And make good decisions on his or her behalf.  Don’t burden him with work he doesn’t love.  Don’t weigh him down with relationships that bring him more heartache than joy.  Make decisions that person is going to be able to live with.  Because life choices, you see, are like a line of dominoes.  Each one impacts all the others all the way down the line.  Because you did this, you can’t do that.  If you choose to do that, it gives you the opportunity to also do this.

Like I said, you’ve gotten yourselves into something here.  By your willingness to work hard and be excellent, you have given yourselves the right to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime.  The adventure of your lifetime, to be exact.

It’s not going to be easy.  Mom and dad won’t be there to tell you what to do.  They’ve spent almost 20 years giving you the tools to figure that out for yourself.  Teachers won’t be there to force you to crack a book.  They’ve spent 12 years trying to help you learn how to learn.

Now it’s up to you.  Now we turn you loose into a world we could scarcely have imagined back in the days when the Earth was still cooling.  I remember reading in TV Guide in about 1980 an article that predicted there would come a day when people would pay to watch television.  I thought whoever wrote that article was about one drumstick short of a picnic, if you catch my drift.  But 28 years later, I pay over $100 a month for DirecTV.

A world we could scarcely have imagined.  When I travel, I walk through the airport with a computer on my shoulder and a telephone clipped to my belt.  If you had told me when I was your age that this would be the case, I would have laughed at you.  A computer?  Why those things take up an entire room.  How can you put one on your shoulder?  And how can you clip a telephone to your belt?  What do you do with the cord?

Twenty-eight years ago, we lacked the vocabulary to even discuss these things.  Then 28 years later, you wake up and boom, there it is.

Ten, 20, 28 years from now you are going to wake up in a world none of us can yet imagine.  But that world will be different not just because of the technology that will exist then, but also because of the cultural evolutions and revolutions that will take place between now and then.  The world is full of people who are poor and angry and well armed, people who see human life – yours, mine, theirs – as readily-available currency to be spent toward what they consider a greater good.  We caught a glimpse of that kind of thinking on September 11th  of 2001, a watershed morning when a nation was shaken and the whole world was changed.

Every class faces challenges unique to its generation.  I came out of high school in a cynical era scarred by the most devastating political scandal of the 20th century.  In fact, two months after I graduated, the president of the United States was forced to resign his office. You graduate in a world in which American soldiers are at war in the Middle East and the country is divided as it has seldom been divided before.

Right now, it’s your parents who grapple with the hard questions of how to live in a world that is constantly being torn and changed by new technology, cultural evolution, and the threat of violence.  Today we begin the long process of handing those hard questions over to you.  Not all at once, no.  But today it begins.  And we admonish you that just as your decisions shape the person you will become, they will eventually shape the world in which we will all live.

Class of 2008, be excited by what begins here today.  Be challenged and intrigued by it.  Be present in this moment, be fully invested in this ceremony, this occasion, this milestone right here and now.  Because out of this flow the roads that lead to the rest of your life.

I hope and trust that most of you will leave here going to college.  Use those years wisely.  Understand that it’s no one’s job to motivate you there.  Your professors will expect that you have enough of an investment in yourself that no more motivation is necessary.  Otherwise, what are you doing there?  Try to understand what it is they have to teach you and how you can use to improve your fortunes in the world that awaits.

But understand, too, that learning requires listening.  It takes some time to learn how to listen.  Takes some time before you realize that it’s okay to admit to what you don’t understand.  Indeed, it’s crucial in life to have the ability to know what you don’t know.  Because, just as you can’t pour water into a vase that’s already full, you can’t learn until you acknowledge a need to be taught.  The confession of ignorance is the birthplace of wisdom.  And learning is not just what has taken place for you between the walls of a classroom over the last 12 years.  It’s what takes place between your ears – and in your heart – for the rest of your life.

And, Class of 2008, when you’re trying to figure out what it is you want to do with the rest of your life don’t judge your options solely by their earning power.  Don’t say, I think I’ll be a businessman because there’s good money in it.  Instead, find the thing you have a passion for, the thing that brings you satisfaction, and invest yourself in that.

I’m a firm believer that God gives everyone at least one gift, one thing they love, one thing they do better than the average person.  From the time I was five years old, for instance, I’ve loved the rhythm of words and the music of language.  I’ve always felt as if I was supposed to be a writer.  I could have ignored that, could have gone where the money was.  I could have been a frustrated doctor or a grumpy lawyer.  Instead, I became a reasonably contented writer.  And I can testify that life is a lot easier when work is something you love.  So find the thing you love and build your life around that.

Finally, Class of 2008, have fun.  Remember to laugh.  Remember to be smart and brave, excellent and strong.  Remember not to settle for less than the best.  Remember to take care of yourself in a world that is sometimes dangerous, frequently confusing, often challenging and sometimes, when you least expect it, filled with rewards.  I’m reminded of a TV program some of you may have heard of, though it was popular before you were born.  It was a cop show called “Hill Street Blues” and every episode began with the roll call, after which, the desk sergeant, Sgt. Esterhaus, would always send his troops out to the streets with the same admonition: “Let’s be careful out there.”

I feel a little like Sgt. Esterhaus right now.  I’m sure your parents do, too. 

We know what you see when you look at us.  You see old.  You see Jurassic Park, man.  You see clueless, sometimes embarrassing, worry-too-much old folks who don’t get it and wouldn’t know how to handle it if they did. 

Well you know what we see when we look at you?  We see ourselves, 20, 30 years ago.  We see promise, we see hope, we see a bright beginning.

I’ll tell you a secret, Class of 2008, something you probably aren’t ready to accept.  It’s that there’s not a whole lot of distance between us.  Now you hear that, and you’re thinking that I’m the one whose one drumstick short of a picnic, but hear me out.  Yes, there are years between us.  We don’t listen to the same music, go to the same movies, wear the same clothes, surf the same websites.

But those things are fad and fashion.  Here today, gone later today.  But the things that matter, the things you can build a life around, those things don’t change so quickly.

It took me awhile to understand this.  Both my parents were born in the middle 1920's.  And when they tried to talk to me about what I would do in life, the choices I would make, I remember wondering how any advice they gave me could possibly be relevant.  They had never worn a polyester jump suit or platform shoes.  My father never wore gold chains dangling in an open collared shirt and my mother never had an Afro a day in her life.  How could their words mean anything to me?

Years later, I understand.  Yes, some things change.  Trends sweep us to and fro like tropical winds.  Pinball machines turn into video arcades turn into video consoles you plug into your television at home.  Ragtime becomes swing becomes pop becomes rock becomes rap.  Certain things are of the moment.

But the things that are important, the things that are fundamental, the things by which reputation is made and character molded, those things are less susceptible to fad and trend.  Some things are always.  Some truths are evergreen.

So as you embark upon this beginning, I advise you to make choices that are not tethered in the exigencies, emergencies and expediencies of the moment but rather, choices that are rooted and grounded in things you know will always be right, always be true, no matter what.

Things like do unto others.

Things like, nothing beats a failure but a try.

Things like, I struggle to succeed and I succeed because I struggle.

As you know, I visited your school last year to profile it for “What Works.”  That’s my series of columns on programs that have shown success in turning around the lives of at-risk young people.  “At-risk” being the approved euphemism we use these days for kids who come from neighborhoods infested with drugs, for kids whose fathers are in lock up, for kids who know what it’s like to see friends and loved ones gunned down in front of you, for kids who don’t have a home, who sleep from place to place because they have no permanent home, for kids who live in homes where mama has to struggle to figure out which bill she can afford to pay this week and which one is just going to have to wait till she gets some more money, for kids, in other words, who have been dealt a bad hand in this life, who go through their days with the odds stacked against them.

I took a number of important things away from my visit to your school.  I was impressed by and your classmates, first of all, by your poise, your intelligent demeanor, your determination to succeed.  I was impressed by your teachers, too, by the obvious love and concern they had for you.  But you know what else stuck with me?  The physical location of your school: right across the street, literally sitting in the shadow of the Baltimore City Detention Center, the city jail.  To me, it was the like the city was laying your choices out for you in a graphic way, telling you, you can this or you can do that.

You deserve to be proud of yourselves that you chose to do this.

According to a study released two years ago, the graduation rate in the city of Baltimore stands at 38 percent.  Think about that for a minute.  Out of 10 kids who started school when you did 12 years ago, six are not here.  Six did not make it.  We don’t know what happened to them.  Maybe some of them had babies and never came back to school, maybe they had family drama and couldn’t finish, maybe they got in trouble with the law and wound up across the street in the city jail.  All we know is that six out of the 10 were lost.

But you are here.

So yes, you have a right today to act like you are all that, and you have a duty today to be thankful to all those mothers and fathers and like-a- mothers and like-a-fathers, and best friends and teachers and preachers who stuck it out with you, who wouldn’t let you give up even when you wanted to.  If nobody else tells you this today, I’m here to tell you that I am proud of you.

But I’m also here to tell you what Senor Tapanez told me: if you think this is the end, you are wrong.  This is just the beginning.  You need to enjoy this triumph, but also, you need to gear up for the next.

You had to fight to get here, but you can’t stop now.

You are somebody’s hero.  You can’t stop now.

That career you want is out there.  You can’t stop now.

That dream you dreamt is real.  You can’t stop now.

Yes, you’re uncertain and a little unsure.  You can’t stop now.

College classes begin in the fall.  You can’t stop now.

Twenty-eight years from how is waiting for you.  You cannot stop now.

The person you are going to become will look back on this as a turning point moment.  The future is born right here and now.  And it is yours to make of it what you will.

As I told you a moment ago, life is a constant process of opening one door and closing another, of saying goodbye and hello.  Today closes a door for you.  Behind it, you leave high school and favorite teachers, and least favorite teachers and best friends you may not see so much anymore.  You leave the routine you knew so well, the hallways you could walk with your eyes closed.  All of that, you close behind a door and if that makes you sad, well, that’s all right.  If the feeling is a little bittersweet, that’s understandable.  Transitions usually are. 

I would just remind you that as this door closes, another door opens.  Step through it boldly and take charge.

This is your commencement.  To commence is to start something.  It is to begin. 

I am proud to be here with you on this day in spring on the occasion of your beginning.  Thank you and congratulations to the St. Frances Academy Class of 2008.

Leonard Pitts

Keynote Address

St. Frances Academy graduation

June 1st, 2008