Alan R. Rodrigues
Pause
People who know me know that I have opinions on just about anything, and with the slighted provocation, will spew them without hesitation. And so it seems that a venue like commencement would be just my scene. A captive audience of 5000 for 5 minutes, which if my math is correct, is equivalent to 25,000 person-minutes, or if you want to get metric, 416 person-hours. To put that in perspective, assume that people are willing to put up with me for a total of 60 minutes per day, 416 person-hours is well over a year’s worth of face time. Now that’s efficiency if I’ve ever heard of it. But I think that it’ll come as a surprise to those who have been unassuming victims to my verbal tirades that I really struggled to find words for this speech. Perhaps the best course of action would be to pay homage to the composer John Cage and stay silent for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Although I say this in jest, I really do think that that in some ways, Cage had it right, especially in the context of commencement. And although I won’t remain silent for the remainder of this speech, I would like to take a few moments to explain myself, and what it would mean to pause at a time like commencement.
Last week, driving back from Hilton Head, I realized that it would be my last trip back to Williamstown as a student, the end of my ritual of driving up the Taconic. In more immediate terms, after we graduate we will no longer be, for instance, art history majors, varsity athletes, or writers for the Record. Whether I like it or not, graduation will intrude and fracture the everyday continuum of Williams life that I have become accustomed to.
Commencement’s dual definition as a beginning and as a ceremony that commemorates the years past, would suggest that today would serve as a bridge across the disjuncture brought about by graduation. A bridge that transports us from the Purple Bubble to the quote Real Word. And although it is a wonderful experience to see friends and family and celebrate our successes today, to think of commencement as a bridge would mask the emotional ambivalence tied to this event. A bridge implies a firm and secure path from two tangible locations. Yet, no words today, no matter how witty or humorous, could encapsulate the variety and vastness of our experience at Williams, nor could they securely transport us to our next destination, which despite our greatest attempts at planning, remain to a large extent uncertain. And so to me, Commencement isn’t a bridge but rather a colorful band-aid, that on the one hand conceals, and on the other hand, through its failure to do so completely, reveals the ineffable fissure that warps us as we each walk across this stage.
So, I think that there is an inescapable incompleteness to commencement, suggested by the fact that it was so difficult for me to find the proper words for this occasion, because none seemed to do it justice. Whether or not I liked it, I had to pause. And in pausing, I came to realize that this notion of incompleteness was not just limited to commencement. I realize this as I enviously flip through next year’s course catalogue to glance at studio art classes I never had a chance to take, or as I look at this crowd and see many students whom I never had the chance to meet. My four years at Williams have been wonderful, but they are inescapably incomplete. As I leave Williams, I will leave with an inseparable sense of fulfillment and regret.
For someone who came to college expecting that he would leave knowing everything that mattered, this isn’t a trivial point. Over the last four years, I’ve given up hope that I, or anyone, could decipher a hidden secret language or Platonic form that could crack a code that would explain our existence, whether this be genomic or philosophical. Over time however, I’ve realized that the loss of one hope is renewed by the emergence of another. I feel this hope when I think of the relationships I’ve had with a number of people I’ve known since my days as an underclassman. With each continuing year, each and every one of them has surprised me, for better or for worse, in ways that I could have never anticipated. These surprises could only be made possible by the fact that I didn’t, and still don’t, completely know them. I will never figure them out, and it is this very fact that makes each of our relationships so nuanced and enriching.
It seems silly for me to have to bring up the point of uncertainty and lack of total knowledge until I realize how easily I myself (and I think we all) tend to forget it. To forget that theories aren’t really truth. I think that this is largely due to the fact that we are predisposed towards forgetting. Approximate frameworks that organize our experience, that attempt to make sense of ourselves and others, are essential in order to make everyday decisions. And over time, as we habituate, these frameworks tend to become less and less malleable, because, to put it simply, they tend to work most of the time. But as our world, due to its unfathomable complexity, continually shifts in unforeseeable ways, all of these naturalized frameworks need honest consideration. Williams, when at its best, has pushed me, and all of us, to develop this sort of re-thinking. And this is why, despite the fact that the pace of our lives will inevitably ramp up once we leave the Purple Bubble (as if we weren’t busy enough), that we have to remember to pause – to question what has become natural or second nature.
I can’t promise that the task of pausing will be easy. In fact, I think it has the potential to be deeply unnerving, especially when it impinges on our most cherished traditions. But in a world that paradoxically yearns for the freedom that acceptance provides while, at the same, is so firmly entrenched in identity politics, I think that the work of pausing, of acknowledging the other in what appears to be familiar, can be not only deeply enriching, but also profoundly therapeutic.
June 3, 2007