We at the INOFBCI thought you may enjoy reading the commencement address that Gov. Daniels delivered to the graduating class of Indiana University this past Saturday, including his encouragement for graduates to engage in service and volunteerism.
In the comments section, feel free to leave your own stories of going beyond your comfort zone to give or serve the needs of others.
BLOOMINGTON (December 15, 2012) –
Governor Mitch Daniels today challenged the graduating class of Indiana
University to continually step out of their societal comfort zones to avoid
insulating themselves from the less fortunate.
“It’s at times of discomfort that
we encounter the new and are taught and challenged and stretched by it.
Each of your new commencements, and perhaps especially the toughest of them,
will be the times through which you grow the most,” Daniels said.
The governor also urged the
graduates that “when your success enables you to assist those less fortunate,
as I trust you will do, don’t stop at writing a check. Do it face to
face, for your own good as much as those you are helping. And if it’s a little
uncomfortable at first, well, that was the idea.”
The full text of the governor’s
speech is included below:
Indiana University Commencement
Remarks by Governor Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.
December 15, 2012
Assembly Hall, Bloomington, IN
The first thing you need to know
is, I gave President McRobbie a chance to get out of this. I mean, there
is no shortage of more interesting speakers he could have invited. Then I
went and took a next job at a different university, and not just any
university, and so, I thought it might be, well, as the Daniels girls would
say, “a bit awkward”.
But in a display of the personal
graciousness that is among his hallmarks, and, as I see it, a gesture of the
spirit of collaboration that is growing between this great school and its
northern cousin, Dr. McRobbie said, no, come on ahead. For his kindness
and yours, many thanks.
It’s worth noting on these
occasions that we label them “commencement” ceremonies. Not “completion”
or “culmination” or “climax” ceremonies, but commencements, and to commence, of
course, is not to finish but rather to begin. Today we do celebrate what
you outstanding students have completed, but much more so the new lives and
adventures you are about to begin.
If you’re a little scared, get
used to it, because this is not your last commencement. It’s the first of
a series that, for folks your age in this era of life science miracles, will
probably extend for six or eight or, who knows, ten decades. Why, even I,
at my near-geriatric stage of life, am about to commence to something entirely
new. I promise you I’m at least as scared as you are.
That’s only natural. Every
commencement means leaving behind the familiar and entering – it will often
feel like plunging – into the unknown. A new job, a new city, maybe a new
continent, parenthood for sure – each will take you from a comfort zone to a
zone of distinct discomfort. I’m here to argue that’s a good thing,
something not to dread but to look forward to.
It’s at times of discomfort that
we encounter the new and are taught and challenged and stretched by it.
Each of your new commencements, and perhaps especially the toughest of them,
will be the times through which you grow the most.
College is often the ultimate
comfort zone, and now you have to leave it for someplace strange and very
different. As you do, let me start you with a word of reassurance,
coupled with a caution.
When this event concludes, you
will commence membership in a highly important society, and I don’t mean the IU
Alumni Association. You are now members of the new American elite.
It’s a little bigger than the so-called 1%, but it’s a special, privileged
class by any definition.
Unlike elites of the past, it’s
not based on an aristocratic name, or inherited wealth, or membership in the
political party of a communist or otherwise totalitarian state. The elite
of our day is a knowledge elite, comprising those like you who have acquired
the skills, knowledge, or at least the credentials of what we call higher
education.
In all of history, the marketplace
has never conferred so high a premium on cognitive skills, that is, on brains
and smarts, as it does today. The data tell us that, on average, you will
earn more money, work in safer occupations, and live longer and healthier lives
than those without the kind of degrees you are about to receive.
Statistically, you are far more
likely to take the actions that produce success in modern life. For
instance, you are more likely to practice prudent preventive health. You
are far more likely to get married and stay that way, most of you to spouses of
similar academic background. That in turn means your children will have
greatly increased chances of success themselves.
That’s not to say that your
success will come easily. You are more likely to exhibit the qualities of
hard work and industriousness that correlate closely with prosperity and
leadership. Scholars have found that the factor most directly associated
with human fulfillment and happiness is not money or material things but rather
what they term “earned success”. That means tangible accomplishment based
on personal effort, the kind that generates genuine self-respect. As a
group, you are far more likely to achieve it than those outside the knowledge
elite.
All these facts are matters of
averages and probabilities, not sure things. Your diploma today will not come
with a warranty or money-back guarantee inside. (Will it, Michael?)
But, odds are, after the inevitable scariness of the first of your series of
new lives, you will find yourself in a place of relative security and comfort.
Relative, that is, to that large
number of our fellow citizens who will not be joining you in this new elite,
and it is about them that I ask you to think for a minute this morning.
Whatever career or geographic or
lifestyle changes lie ahead, life will invite you to stay nestled snugly inside
one ongoing comfort zone. Unless you take conscious steps to escape it,
you may spend your entire adulthood there. I’m talking about the
increasing tendency of our new knowledge elite to congregate together, cozily
insulated from contact with those less fortunate. Professionally,
socially, residentially, and most important attitudinally, today’s new upper
class is separating from those different from themselves.
In the most important book of your
graduation year, Charles Murray catalogs the ways in which this is
occurring. To avoid being misunderstood or misrepresented, his research
deals solely with white America. It presents a troubling picture of a
society that is, as the book’s title says, “coming apart”. As Murray puts
it, “We need to worry about what happens when exceptionally able students hang
out only with each other.” And, he goes on,
“It is
not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the problems of Yale
professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network
news programs, or CEOs of great corporations or presidential advisers cannot
empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.”
In this audience are many future
leaders of the sort he is describing. You are destined to take up
positions of influence in the America to come. What will you do to make
sure you are not mentally and emotionally distant from people who do not live
near you, work where you do, send their kids to the same schools, and
consequently do not look at life in the same way you do?
For the last decade, as a hired
hand of the people of this state, I have had literally tens of thousands of
personal encounters with Hoosiers of all kinds. The nature of the work
naturally brought on many of these experiences, but I also have made it my goal
to maximize them, any way I can. I have traveled constantly, to our inner
cities and most remote rural spaces and to all the small and mid-sized towns in
between, seeking out ordinary citizens and giving them a chance to speak
directly, through me, to their government. I’ve ridden motorcycles with a
lot of folks you won’t find on this campus or any other.
Most usefully, I have spent all my
travel nights not in motels but in Hoosier homes. A few days ago I did so
for the 125th and presumably final time, on a dairy farm near the
northeastern town of Stroh. You all know Stroh. It’s near
Valentine. Not far from Plato. OK, think Ft. Wayne.
Those 125 overnights have been
fun. I’ve slept in guest rooms, spare rooms, lots of kids rooms, and
sometimes just the living room couch. I’ve gotten lost on morning runs,
been bitten by the family dog, and taken a bath when I couldn’t figure out the
basement shower. I’ve made lots of new friends. But most of all
I’ve learned, in those last couple hours before lights out, about the dreams,
problems, and often the fears of folks very different from me and from each
other.
You won’t all be lucky enough to
be able to mooch on the hospitality of strangers the way a governor can.
But I hope you will remember to find some way, some new zone-- a bowling
league, an ethnic club, a church across town, something--to connect with people
unlike yourself and your fellow graduates. When your success enables you
to assist those less fortunate, as I trust you will do, don’t stop at writing a
check. Do it face to face, for your own good as much as those you are
helping.
And if it’s a little uncomfortable
at first, well, that was the idea.
The last and most dangerous
comfort zone to guard against is the one inside your head. It’s the zone
of certitude, the smug or maybe just unthinking confidence that you and those
around you have all the answers.
Here, too, today’s world will
invite you to isolate yourself, to stay in the zone. It’s never been
easier. You can watch only cable news channels that select the stories
that seem right to you. You can settle in to the chat rooms or internet
sites where everyone agrees with the obvious superiority of your point of
view.
Supposedly, college has taught you
to resist this temptation, to think critically and to stay open to opinions
contrary to your own. I hope that’s so. Did you learn to be suspicious
about things that “everyone agrees with?” Did you tune up your b.s.
detectors? (That stands for “bogus statistics” but they can help you
guard against indoctrination, too.) Did you learn that someone’s
disagreement with your ideas is not a character flaw or a cause for personal
animosity?
Most important, did you learn, as
Ben Franklin urged, “to doubt just a bit your own infallibility?” The
simple wisdom of Lord Keynes when he said “When I find I’m wrong, I change my
mind. What do you do?”
I have never found “oops” a hard
word to say. Someone who never finds an occasion to use it either never
tried anything bold or risky, and therefore never made a big mistake, or never
considered that someone else might have a better argument. I suggest
keeping “oops” in your vocabulary. Take it into that most important discomfort
zone, the one where you reexamine your own convictions regularly, in the light
of changing facts and new circumstances.
On behalf of the taxpayers of this
state, who have co-invested with you and your families in the excellent
education IU provides, thank you. Our nation, and this state in
particular, needs more college graduates and the abilities they contribute to
our collective betterment. So you have already performed a
first act of civic leadership by earning the degree you’ll collect in a few
minutes.
Now please earn it over and over,
in all the future commencements ahead, by seeking out and relishing new zones
of discomfort where the greatest satisfaction, achievement, and contributions
to the common good await you.
Congratulations and may God speed.
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