The Speech By Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author - Anna Quindlen

Guy I came acrooss this speech and though i would share with u all.This was a speech made by Pulitzer  Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at
the graduation ceremony of an American  university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.


'I'm a novelist. My  work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your  life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing  that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same  degree: there will be
thousands of people doing what you want to do for a  living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.  Your
particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind,  but the life of your heart. Not just your bank
accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier  to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've
received  your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a  good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the  way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of
the  universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband.  I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my  friends and they to me.
Without them, there would be nothing to say to you  today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and  I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those  other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work  if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a  life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about

those  things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on  a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration
when  she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life  in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember  that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone.Send an email. Write a  letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best  thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply  about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have  spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother  or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing  well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days,  our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the
melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and  rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to  live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I  learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee  you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of  it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do  that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this. Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the  back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be  happy. And think of life as a  terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it  ought to be lived'.

Add a comment