Gee gives inaugural Commencement address

Chancellor Gordon Gee delivered his inaugural Commencement address May 11 to the Class of 2001 and the estimated 17,000 guests gathered on Alumni Lawn. The following is a transcript of his remarks:

Ladies and gentlemen, at Vanderbilt Commencements, we have no visiting speaker -- although you may be begging for one after suffering through my remarks -- because we want the focus of the day to be upon you, the men and women who are graduating. They are the stars of this day, as luminous as any celebrity. However, as Chancellor, I am given the privilege of saying some words of farewell to the departing graduates.

You have had to answer a lot of questions to get to this day: multiple choice, essay, existential.

Guess what? Today there will be more questions. You will hear: Have you found a job yet? Where are you supposed to put all that stuff? Do you have to take it all with you? Have you found a job yet? You're not moving back with us, are you? Although the individual question might change its form, at root, and over and over again, you are being asked, what about the future?

I am going to answer that question for you. But in my answer, I am going also to take comfort in the fact that few of you will remember anything I say today. I am going to derive a certain sense of liberty, and a pleasant sense of irresponsibility from the fact that a Commencement speaker's address has a certain, shall we say, ephemeral quality?

So, what about the future? You might be surprised at my answer. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no future. Now, before you think I have gone around the bend, let me clarify a bit. What I mean by that is that the future does not properly exist, yet. When it does, and it will, it will be made of moments as full as this one. Those moments of future will be here soon enough.

But for now, there is only this moment, rich and beautiful, full of awe and sadness. Be here. You can stretch a moment, if you attend to it enough. Be here on this lovely May morning. Be here in the warmth and in the sun.

Be here in the discomfort of your robes, on your hard wooden seats. Be here amidst the colors of the flags, of the regalia. Be here at exactly the age you are now, at exactly what you have now, at exactly where you are now, at exactly when you are now.

You are in a moment of transition that is a place in time of itself. For a moment, do not let sorrow overrun you for the identity you are leaving behind. Do not let anxiety overrun you about having to remove your things, about your parents' expectations for you, about your expectations for yourself. You will take care of those things in the moments that offer themselves for that care. But now is the time to think about who you are now, as you are poised to step off into the world.

Commencements are much like weddings in that so much planning goes into them that the weight of the past can easily overwhelm the present. You can spend your time evaluating how everything is "turning out," whether it is living up to the expectations of the past months, of many years of wishing and hoping.

Commencements are also much like weddings in that the expectations and anxieties of the future can easily overwhelm the present. You can spend your time wondering about the significance of each aspect of the day, how it serves as symbol and portent for the rest of your life, and how well you are merging into the roles of a changed identity -- as if you could do this in only a few hours!

Many people lose their great days in rush and bustle and insanity. They do not always pause to look around, and will often confess when asked about something they remember, that most of the day was a blur. I advise you not to let that inattention be a mistake you make today.

There is a way out from the penalties of such inattention. For just as many people, when asked what they remember about a great day, will indeed reply that, yes, most of it was a blur, but there will be some moment that stands out for them, a single moment burned into their memories, a memory that does not require a photograph or a trip through an album to jar it. That memory exists because, whatever that moment was, they had inhabited it fully.

I have a moment like that, from one of my great days. I remember that so much was riding on my wedding day; my wife, Constance, who is here today seated among her faculty colleagues, will confirm this: somehow, I had managed to convince a 40-year-old, confirmedly unmarried woman, a bright, capable faculty member, to marry me! This fact became the theme of the day, and all day, thinking about what was going to happen, I was dazed by it.

But one detail that stands out, one memory that will always be present for me, was that there had been an early snowstorm the autumn night before we were married, and when I walked out on my balcony that morning, everything was fresh, covered with white, and above it all was a brilliant blue sky.

Maybe I remember this because it was so early in the morning that I had not let my head fill with anything else, but just that moment, that apprehension, of the fresh cold white snow and the sky so blue that it made my eyes smart.

Try, for now, to imagine that this moment is the only moment ever, alone in solitary wonder. Look at who you are now, who you actually are, not who you wanted to be four years ago, not who you thought you would be, not who you think you are supposed to be, not who you think you can fool people into believing that you are.

Do not worry about what you have forgotten, but think about what you know. You are the sum of your acceptances, of your rejections. What kind of person are you right now, in this ever-instant, this expanding May moment?

Imagine your life as a line. A line is made up of an infinite number of points. A life is made up of an infinite number of moments, each precious, in that each is a beginning. Commencement does not mark an ending, but rather a beginning -- it is, after all, a commencement!

Our academic culture gives us this time, this ceremony, to reflect, to gather our resources, to center ourselves, but all of our moments should be like this.

Each moment we are new. Each moment of your life is a commencement, and is as loaded with possibility as any other moment. Every moment is a pivot between forking paths of action. Every moment is a crux, a crisis, endowed with richness of choice between the heavenly and the hellish.

Decisions are made of moments. Lives are made of moments. Lives are made extraordinary by the choices and the actions that take place within moments. Many in this class have made choices of service, scholarship and art. Their accomplishments represent accumulations of moments.

One member of the class graduating today realizes his art in moments. J. Riley Bryant, although carrying a triple major of classics, mathematics and computer science, stretched his time this year to accommodate five-hour-long rehearsals for University Theatre productions of Henry the Fourth, Part One and A Doll's House.

Riley stretched his time to do what he loves to do, which is act. In order to do that, he found purpose enough to stretch his time around studying to graduate with three majors, to ask of time that it carry more than anyone could reasonably think it would be able to bear. Riley holds that an actor's art is realized in a moment, the instant at which he knows that he has "hit it," that he has discovered what his character is really about, and that he has succeeded in making that character human, that he has hit his mark. Art, ladies and gentlemen, occurs in that moment of just knowing.

Not only art, but also service is realized in moments. Katherine Pettus Randall, who is graduating today with a degree in English, having distinguished herself scholastically with her honors thesis on the cult of domesticity in slave narratives, has managed, over and over and over again, to expand her moments so that she may serve others.

Kate has worked at a Center for Civic Initiative in Lithuania, helping the youth population there learn democratic principles, and form youth government programs. She has helped organize this campus's Grate American Sleepout, an annual activity that helps raise awareness of homelessness. She has worked with Vanderbilt Prison Project, and with Room in the Inn and has served as a site leader for Alternative Spring Break.

Kate has used the opportunity afforded her by being a student at Vanderbilt to help her community. She has expanded her moments into chances for realization of service and advocacy.

Riley's life and Kate's life are extraordinary, indeed, but they are only representative. Each of you leads -- and will lead -- an extraordinary life. Imagine the fullest potential of every moment of that life, its fullest potential as an opportunity for scholarship, for service, for art, for justice, for compassion, and for celebration.

Now, we have a lot of parents, family members and friends and they're out here: I want to admonish you, briefly. Today is a day on which so much can be loaded: so many hopes, so many expectations, even disappointments, even frustrations. Graduations, like many great days, bring our whole lives out before us -- they make us so vulnerable. We have to start getting used to one another, all over again.

Indeed, I thought what I would do today is share two letters from two fathers who have graduating seniors. One says, "Dear Dr. Gee, I am absolutely delighted with the remarkable education that my son received at Vanderbilt. It was a great experience for him and for our family. I only have one complaint. The whole educational system does seem unfair. You send your kids to college for four years and what happens? Not only does it cost you a $130,000, but you get the kid back as well."

And then this one. "Dear Chancellor Gee, we are so very grateful for graduation day and that it has finally arrived. My wife and I, though, want to be fair about this. Vanderbilt's tuition may be high, but I figure any institution willing to take my son for four years deserves every penny it can get."

So, then, ladies and gentlemen, be here for your graduates today, as you have been so many times in the past. Please do not let thoughts of what is not here, and what might never be, interfere with what is, what is actual, what is now, which is the person that your fierce love has brought you out to see, and all of that person's dearly purchased wisdom coming to a head and a recognition in this ancient ceremony.

Be here for your graduates in your fullness. Be present for them in their fullness, and in their flawed actuality. I ask you to remember that although their future is being shaped right now, neither they nor we can ever adequately predict the shape of that future. None of us ever knows to where we are being borne by the accumulation of our individual moments.

Four years ago -- or perhaps more -- many of you who are graduating thought your life would be different when you got to this day. You might have arrived at Vanderbilt with a very different idea of what your field of study would be, what your habits would be, who your friends would turn out to be.

How naïve you were, then. You thought you would be emerging into a bullish economy, instead of an insane economy. You looked forward to an enormous return on your Beanie Baby investment. You thought that Leonardo DiCaprio was headed for a really hot career, and that music could not possibly get any shinier or shallower than the Spice Girls or Hanson. You wondered how anyone ever could get tired of watching South Park. You never thought that instead of a Tamagotchi being dependent on you, you would become the organic pet of a cellular telephone. You may have argued, in a good-natured debate, that Tennessee would never embrace a professional football franchise.

I am sure that you have done some things in the moments of the last four years that never would have occurred to the person you were in 1997. That you have had some instances of "How did I get here?" And, "If my friends could see me now ..."

You have felt your own life sweeping you along in the current of its moments.

Four years ago, I was a trifle naïve myself. I had no idea that I would be meeting all of you. This day, here, in Nashville, had never occurred to me. I was at Ohio State; I was fretting about giving my commencement speech there. Soon I would be at Brown.

I never imagined this moment in its particularity, but Vanderbilt happened to me anyway, and I am so fortunate that events converged to bear me up, to carry me to this place.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not encouraging you to live your life without plan, to be passive. I ask you only to realize that there is a force in the accumulation of moments that is greater than you are, that bears you along. A full presence is required to your own life in each instant, for the scale of the instant is the only scale at which you have any control.

We are, today, anxiously aware of our responsibilities to the generations that preceded ours, and how we will carry on what they have created. We are sometimes resentfully aware of the insistent pressing of the generations to come after ours, of their über-hipness and their techno-savvy. In that misplaced concern, we lose the only power that we do have, the only real control that is ever ours, which is our full presence to the only moment in which we are sure we exist.

In moments for choice, you will make necessary choices. In moments for plan, you will construct plans. In moments for compassion, your hearts will flare with compassion. All I ask of you is that you allow moments of celebration to be what they are supposed to be, to be celebratory, festive, glorious. Celebrate this day. Celebrate who you are in this long moment, in this ever-instant.

I have known you only a year, but I cherish my experience of you: those whom I have been able to meet, as well as those whom I only know as members of this graduating class. I am grateful for every moment, every chance included in that experience.

I can only hope that I have been as present to you, as immediate, as real, as you have been to me. I thank you for the richness of this instant.

This is our first Commencement together at Vanderbilt. We will be certain to cherish this moment. Godspeed all of you on your remarkable journey. Thank you very much.