Dori's Commencement Address Swinburne FoD 24 March 2010
March 26, 2010
The graduation speech I gave Tuesday is getting rave reviews from parents, the graduating students, and my fellow colleagues. Thought I would share with you.
******************
When one hears graduation speeches, they are often full of lofty clichés
about paths, journeys, dreams, wishes, steps, achievement, bright futures, etc.
You will hear none of that from me.
But the question remains of what to say to all of you who graduate
tonight. What to say to your family and friends who celebrate with you? For the
past few months, I have been reading all of the famous authors to draw
inspiration: Shakespeare, Confucius, even Dr. Seuss. I knew I wanted to say something about how one designs not just
objects, communications, environments, or interactions, but how one designs a
life worth living. Finally, I came upon a meditation on youth in Deng Ming-Dao’s
365 Tao Daily Mediations.
His words expressed simply that which I wished people shared with me at my
university graduation. So here are his guidelines for young people. There are seven of them, which I will now
share with you.
Number 01: “Remember that you are always your own person.
Do not surrender your mind, heart, or body to any person.”
This one is very challenging to put into practice because we often want
to please other people: our family, our friends, our bosses and colleagues, our
lovers and spouses, and children. But if you are not your own person then there
is no YOU to like, love, respect, or honour. To be able to quote some
Shakespeare, “To thy own self be true.” Out of the seven, this one is the most
important because the design of a life worth living requires that the designer
understands and stays true to his or her intentions, although the form or
medium of expression changes.
Number 02:
“Maintain your health with sound diet, hygiene, exercise, and clean living.”
It is so easy to allow the stresses of the world or the ease of things
to stop us for doing the most basic thing in life: taking care of oneself. If
you are not healthy, then it becomes harder for you to help other people, to
give your gifts and talents to the world, because you have to focus all your
energy on just being well. Design
requires the connection of the mind to the hand. If your physical tools are not
in working, then it is more difficult to design a life worth living.
Number 03: “Money
is never more important than your body and mind, but you must work and support
yourself.”
There is a wonderful old song, sung by Billie Holiday that I grew up
listening to. Don’t worry I’m not going to sing it. “Mama may have. Papa may
have. But God bless the child that’s got his own. That’s got his own.” The
greatest security in the world is the knowledge that you can take care of
yourself in any situation. The fact that you decided to study design, a somewhat
practical field, means that you understand that to some extent. You want to be
able to take care of yourselves, even take care of your families. But that doesn’t
mean selling yourself out. Here you need to go back to number 01 again. But it
means that you should feel able to rely upon yourself to provide for your
needs, for this provides the materials for designing a life worth living.
Number 04: “Choose
your friends and living situations carefully, for they will influence you.”
A friend is someone whom you like because you like yourself when you are
with him or her. If some one makes you not like yourself, they are not your friends.
Get rid of them. Go back to number
01: be your own person. You now have the opportunity to develop new living
situations, make sure it is around people who are kind, active, happy, and
caring, so that you will remain kind, active, happy, and caring people that I
know you all are.
Number 05: “A good
education is always an asset.”
As an Associate Dean and an Associate Professor, let me repeat that, “A
good education is always an asset.” Your graduation here today means that you
already know that one, but remember your education does not stop tonight. You
must continue to educate yourself in order to be able to face new challenges
with new knowledge. Hmmm…that
sounded a bit like a cliché. Let
me keep going.
Number 06: “Everyday,
make your own decisions. Everything you do will have irrevocable effects upon
your life.”
Please, please. I say pretty pretty please, do not let other people make
decisions for you. You will always regret it—not because their decisions might
be bad, or that the outcomes will not be positive, but because to develop your
own sense of judgement you need the praise of a good decision and the wisdom of
a bad decision. You wouldn’t let
anyone else make a decision on your final design, so why would one do so with
the design of something as important as the final design of your life.
Number 07: “Know
evil, but do not do evil yourself. Remember, there is a way out the delusions
of life.”
Some people think it is best to go through life innocently shielded from
the bad in the world. But how can you protect others if you are not able to
recognize evil? How do you not do evil if you don’t know what it is? If you
remain true to yourself and your own purpose in life, you will avoid the
delusions of life, or at least won’t stay deluded for a long time.
So, you are now continuing the journey, on a path, of dreams, wishes,
and desire in order to create a bright future full of achievement. Oops… sorry,
it’s like the graduation speech virus that makes you say that. Swinburne has helped provide you with
some of the things necessary for you to design a life worth living. And
remember that it is YOUR LIFE that you are designing. It is you who has to find
meaning in the “worth” of it. You now face the greatest design challenge that
you will unfortunately continue to face for all of your life—that is designing
of a life worth living. If we at
Swinburne have done anything right of these past few years, we know that you
are up for the challenge. So go and design a life of stunning beauty for you to
enjoy and for others to be inspired.
Thank you.
Dori Tunstall
24 March 2010