Post by annabelleleigh on Nov 22, 2008 14:04:57 GMT -5
For those who wish to bypass the ceremony on video, here's the complete text of Dr. René Balcer's remarks.
While I enjoyed the speech entirely, I personally felt kinship with certain statements. Since I'm the one posting the text I'm going to take the liberty of bolding those phrases. ;-) So boldfaces very much mine.
Below is a link that will lead not only to the text but also to some additional information about René Balcer's interests, honors, and pursuits:
alumni.concordia.ca/news/notable/balcer_hondoc_speech.php
AL
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Concordia University
Commencement Address
November 17, 2008
René Balcer, BA 78, LL.D. 08
Thank you, Chancellor O'Brien. Thank you President Woodsorth for inviting me to be a part of your first convocation at Concordia. My thanks as well to Provost Graham, to Dean Locke, and to the members of the Faculty.
Thank you Dennis for reading the citation—you did a better job than the cop who read my last citation, for speeding.
My thanks to my beautiful and endlessly inspiring wife Carolyn, to my family and friends who've joined me today.And thanks to you graduates and your proud families. Merci à tous.
I am humbled by this Doctorate of Laws. And the fact that this is an honorary Doctorate of Laws is entirely appropriate for someone who's not a lawyer but merely writes for actors who pretend to be lawyers on TV.
Hollywood, as some of you might have heard, is the capital of schadenfreude, where people take pleasure in the misfortunes of other people, usually their best friends. But I admit that my Hollywood friends were genuinely happy for me when I told them I was getting a doctorate. Well, imagine their disappointment when I told them this doctorate wouldn't actually allow me to write prescriptions for pain-killers.
I'd like to offer my congratulations to you the graduates. Look at you, with your bright shining faces. I'm honored to be sharing this proud day with you, a day that no doubt comes as a great relief to you—and as a great surprise to your parents. That's an old joke, you hear it in every commencement address, but I used it because I didn't want you to feel deprived.
Thirty years ago, I was sitting where you're sitting—actually, I was sitting in a field over at the Loyola campus—enduring my own graduation ceremony.
Other than a faint memory of someone calling out my name, I don't remember what was said in the commencement address or even who said it.
And as I sat in that field thirty years ago, staring into my future like some deer in the headlights, I was cotton-headed with vague plans. I knew I wanted to be in the world and of the world, that I wanted not just to witness my times but to bear witness to them in some way.
Now as you sit here, at the edge of your history, some of you might think the future looks a little thin. The last two months have seen a massive financial correction, a correction of expectations and entitlement. But there's been another more historic course correction.
Two weeks ago, in my second home south of the border, there was an election. Let me restate that—there was an amazing election. Out of the wreckage of the eight years of pestilence that was the Bush Administration came this transcendent moment, a moment that defies the odds and breaks all the rules, a moment whose global impact has yet to be grasped, a moment that owes much to the fact that your generation came out to vote in unprecedented numbers. It is history that needed to be made. In the most profound sense, the ground is shifting under us.
I bring this up, because at a time when the old rules have been tossed out and the new rules aren't written yet, there is opportunity. Opportunity for great creative leaps, for entrepreneurship, for service, for community service; an opportunity for you to be engaged and deploy your compassion, that great innate quality of youth, that endlessly renewable resource, your compassion—Don't hoard it, use it.
Now as you get on your life—and believe me, you will have many different lives before your day is done—better you don't take the path of least resistance. Instead, seek out adversity. Allez à la recherche de l'adversité. You're young enough to survive it, and more importantly, you're smart enough to learn from it. Adversity challenges your creativity and plumbs the depth of your commitment. Every big good thing that's ever happened to me was the result of my trying to outwit some obstacle.
I'd also advocate that you adopt a willful blindness to the folly of your ambitions. Whenever people have told me I'm crazy, I've taken it as an encouragement.
And finally, I offer you this: It comes from an email I got recently from a Chinese painter, Zheng Ziyang.
She was part of a group of young underground artists in China during the Cultural Revolution whose work was considered subversive because they used painting as a means of self- expression. In talking about those times, Zheng Ziyang wrote me, "As I was creating art, art was creating me."
I thought about this in terms of my own work, and I have to say, she was pretty bang on. As you create your work, your work creates you, it shapes and transforms you. That being true, it compels you to think about the kind of person you want to be, and to choose your work, or more precisely, to choose the way you do your work accordingly.
And that's it. Now go on, graduate and be good people.
Montreal, 11/17/08
###
While I enjoyed the speech entirely, I personally felt kinship with certain statements. Since I'm the one posting the text I'm going to take the liberty of bolding those phrases. ;-) So boldfaces very much mine.
Below is a link that will lead not only to the text but also to some additional information about René Balcer's interests, honors, and pursuits:
alumni.concordia.ca/news/notable/balcer_hondoc_speech.php
AL
--------------------------
Concordia University
Commencement Address
November 17, 2008
René Balcer, BA 78, LL.D. 08
Thank you, Chancellor O'Brien. Thank you President Woodsorth for inviting me to be a part of your first convocation at Concordia. My thanks as well to Provost Graham, to Dean Locke, and to the members of the Faculty.
Thank you Dennis for reading the citation—you did a better job than the cop who read my last citation, for speeding.
My thanks to my beautiful and endlessly inspiring wife Carolyn, to my family and friends who've joined me today.And thanks to you graduates and your proud families. Merci à tous.
I am humbled by this Doctorate of Laws. And the fact that this is an honorary Doctorate of Laws is entirely appropriate for someone who's not a lawyer but merely writes for actors who pretend to be lawyers on TV.
Hollywood, as some of you might have heard, is the capital of schadenfreude, where people take pleasure in the misfortunes of other people, usually their best friends. But I admit that my Hollywood friends were genuinely happy for me when I told them I was getting a doctorate. Well, imagine their disappointment when I told them this doctorate wouldn't actually allow me to write prescriptions for pain-killers.
I'd like to offer my congratulations to you the graduates. Look at you, with your bright shining faces. I'm honored to be sharing this proud day with you, a day that no doubt comes as a great relief to you—and as a great surprise to your parents. That's an old joke, you hear it in every commencement address, but I used it because I didn't want you to feel deprived.
Thirty years ago, I was sitting where you're sitting—actually, I was sitting in a field over at the Loyola campus—enduring my own graduation ceremony.
Other than a faint memory of someone calling out my name, I don't remember what was said in the commencement address or even who said it.
And as I sat in that field thirty years ago, staring into my future like some deer in the headlights, I was cotton-headed with vague plans. I knew I wanted to be in the world and of the world, that I wanted not just to witness my times but to bear witness to them in some way.
Now as you sit here, at the edge of your history, some of you might think the future looks a little thin. The last two months have seen a massive financial correction, a correction of expectations and entitlement. But there's been another more historic course correction.
Two weeks ago, in my second home south of the border, there was an election. Let me restate that—there was an amazing election. Out of the wreckage of the eight years of pestilence that was the Bush Administration came this transcendent moment, a moment that defies the odds and breaks all the rules, a moment whose global impact has yet to be grasped, a moment that owes much to the fact that your generation came out to vote in unprecedented numbers. It is history that needed to be made. In the most profound sense, the ground is shifting under us.
I bring this up, because at a time when the old rules have been tossed out and the new rules aren't written yet, there is opportunity. Opportunity for great creative leaps, for entrepreneurship, for service, for community service; an opportunity for you to be engaged and deploy your compassion, that great innate quality of youth, that endlessly renewable resource, your compassion—Don't hoard it, use it.
Now as you get on your life—and believe me, you will have many different lives before your day is done—better you don't take the path of least resistance. Instead, seek out adversity. Allez à la recherche de l'adversité. You're young enough to survive it, and more importantly, you're smart enough to learn from it. Adversity challenges your creativity and plumbs the depth of your commitment. Every big good thing that's ever happened to me was the result of my trying to outwit some obstacle.
I'd also advocate that you adopt a willful blindness to the folly of your ambitions. Whenever people have told me I'm crazy, I've taken it as an encouragement.
And finally, I offer you this: It comes from an email I got recently from a Chinese painter, Zheng Ziyang.
She was part of a group of young underground artists in China during the Cultural Revolution whose work was considered subversive because they used painting as a means of self- expression. In talking about those times, Zheng Ziyang wrote me, "As I was creating art, art was creating me."
I thought about this in terms of my own work, and I have to say, she was pretty bang on. As you create your work, your work creates you, it shapes and transforms you. That being true, it compels you to think about the kind of person you want to be, and to choose your work, or more precisely, to choose the way you do your work accordingly.
And that's it. Now go on, graduate and be good people.
Montreal, 11/17/08
###