Virtual
[Remarks as Prepared]
Good afternoon, to President Casey, faculty, trustees, alumni—families and friends who are actually in the audience with you!
And of course the Colgate class of 2021! Congratulations Raiders!
I have to start by expressing my sorrow that I cannot be with you all in Hamilton. I can’t grab a pastry at Flour and Salt. I can’t throw back a pint of Annie at Good Nature. I don’t even get to pet Emrys like President Biden did when he visited.
No, instead, I have to follow his Instagram account, and beam these words to you from afar. But in my disappointment that I cannot be with you all, let me offer you this modest consolation: I believe this will be your last virtual interaction with a college professor for the foreseeable future.
I am especially sorry not to be with you given all the sacrifices you have made in order to come back to campus for your senior year. Colgate has become a model in creating an almost NBA-like bubble for students. But I know that has come with real costs. Quarantines upon arrival. Time away from family. Nasal swabs left and right. A sense, that even with all the effort, this pandemic has deprived you of the senior year you deserve.
If I were you, I’d feel not only a little cheated, but also as though I didn’t have full control over my own life.
That’s something the whole world got a lesson in: Control. For all the structure we try to build into our lives, this pandemic has had a way of tearing up all our best laid plans.
In my case, that happened early. In March of last year, 2020, I woke up one day to find myself fatigued, winded, and as sick as I could remember being. And the next day when I woke up, things got worse. This time, it was my husband Cass who had fallen ill.
And not just take-the-day-off-work sick; ghastly sick.
It was so early in the pandemic that we couldn’t get tested. The hospitals we called asked, “Have you been to Wuhan? Milan? Iran? No? Stay home. Drink plenty of fluids.”
It was a terrifying, unmooring experience to feel so powerless, and out of control. We ended up being among the very fortunate. I recovered quickly from COVID-19, and while Cass lost twenty pounds in just two weeks, he managed to get back on his feet in short order.
This allowed me to turn my sights to the biggest challenge of my teaching life: not being a Harvard professor, but homeschooling two young kids. Even with all my negotiating skills honed at the United Nations, every day was a war.
But even as we grappled with those early struggles and dramatic shifts to our routines, something unexpected happened. New rituals started to emerge.
We began what we called “Wood Street Cinema,” watching shows together as a family, every night, something we had never made time for in the past. The entire run of the Wonder Years. Friday Night Lights. Schitt’s Creek, which my children love to say out loud.
We took family walks with our dogs, what you call “outside time”—something the hustle and bustle of life before had crowded out.
And I even learned to cook. Yes, I melted a few plastic cutting boards when I accidentally set them on the stove. But I went from someone who could only make passable scrambled eggs, to someone who can now make a mediocre Aloo Gobi.
In short, we started to take back some of the control we had lost. We started caring less about our plans and more about the gift of each day together.
And all the things we never made space for in our lives, have now become the habits we desperately don’t want to lose.
Because, here’s the welcome reality: this pandemic will end.
Thanks to the tremendous progress we’ve made on vaccinations here in the United States, we can now picture a return to some semblance of normalcy.
Around the world, the horizon right now is more clouded. In my new role as Administrator for the US Agency for International Development, I’m seeing just how much fury the pandemic is unleashing in places like India and Brazil, and our teams are racing to ramp up global vaccination efforts so we can help tamp down outbreaks before variants emerge.
And we will win. Humanity will prevail. A brighter future is ahead.
But the key question for all of us, and on this day especially you, Colgate graduating class of 2021, is: what will you do with this reclaimed future? Will you rush back to life as you used to know it? Or will you hang on to the new habits and the deepened connections you made with loved ones and friends when you were stuck indoors?
Will you—will we—look past those who struggle around us? Or will we continue to show heightened appreciation for our shop-keepers and food-deliverers, workers who have ALWAYS been essential? Will we maintain the instinct to check on our neighbors? Will we travel that extra mile to support our local businesses?
Will we drop the baton that has been passed to us to fight for racial and social justice? Or will we carry it forward and build that freer, more equitable, more perfect union that America must be? Will we live, cocooned in the US? Or will we be alive to the plight of people around the world, knowing now if we didn’t before that foreign crises can rapidly become domestic emergencies?
What I’m asking is, will we simply go back to the way things were before, or will we make the choices we need to make to live fuller and more open-hearted lives? Because the idea that the pandemic is what took away control over our lives is false.
It was always within our power to decide who we made time for. It was always possible to try to do good rather than just earn well. Often, we just didn’t. On occasion, we allowed social media to influence what we chased or the marketplace to define our idea of success. We benchmarked against our peers instead of finding value within ourselves. At times, we let our concern for ourselves overwhelm our concern for others. This is control we ourselves relinquished.
But graduates of Colgate, we have the chance to make different choices. We can come out of this pandemic not just stronger than we were before, but more humane. More independent. More intentional about the direction we want to take our lives.
We can refuse to give in to an idea of false necessity. We can recognize that futures are not preordained; they are claimed. The world is not rigid; it is wild. Indeed, the only order in our lives is that which we provide.
So, as you sit there next to your classmates—the only people who truly understand what you’ve been through—try to commit to ensuring that the decisions you make in your life are your decisions.
Try not to pursue the things you are told will make you happy. And try to carry with you the empathy this past year has given us all—one of the few times in human history when everyone on the planet has had their life changed at the same time.
If you do, I promise you’ll discover a much more meaningful way of living—one in which you worry less about your plans, and more about the gift of each day. The gift of all there is to see and savor around you.
Thank you, and congratulations again, Colgate Class of 2021!