I could easily stand up here and dish out advice (stay in school, don’t do drugs, blah, blah, blah). But you’ve heard all of that before. I could preach to you about finding the internal motivation to shoot for the stars, about working hard and staying positive, about believing in yourself. All of that would’ve been well and good. As a matter of fact, I’m sure I could’ve dusted off an old speech and read it to you as if it was an original. No one would’ve known.
But me. I alone would’ve known that rather than struggle to actually share something I strongly feel ‘in the moment’, I chose to take the road of least resistance. Just me knowing was enough, though. I couldn’t do that. For me not to have looked within my soul for a unique message to share with you and you alone would have been insincere and contrary to everything this school has sought to instill in you. It would cheapen the work that all of you have done just to get to this point. It would diminish this celebration of your achievement. For all of you it’s a special day. For those of you who wondered whether you’d be sitting here at all it’s a remarkable day. How could I even think to take the easy way out?
Nevertheless, I was still struggling to come up with the right words even as late as yesterday afternoon. But then I got back home from an interview I had to do and found my mail waiting for me. Among the bills and the credit card offers I spotted a letter from my oldest friend in the world. I always know his letters because they come in the same envelope with the same return address affixed to them: United States Prison Big Sandy PO Box 2068, Inez, Kentucky. See, my buddy’s been in prison for the last three years. If you met him you’d never guess he was a convicted felon. He’s bright, articulate, funny. He’s the type of friend who always gets his best friend’s mother gifts at Christmas, always calls on Mother’s Day. We’ve been best friends since we were five or six years old. We grew up a few blocks from each other in Washington, D.C. We played basketball together everyday for almost a decade. Like me he went to private schools. Unlike me he was raised in home with both his parents. When we turned sixteen his father got him a pearl white Mercedes Benz. I was there the day he called us to the garage and handed him the keys. It was one of those moments when you know everything is about to change. The first drive we ever took it on was to my house. We must’ve sat out front for an hour making our plans for the upcoming weekend. The car might’ve been in his name, but it was understand that it belonged to both of us.
That’s how close we were at one point. Which makes it all the more mysterious why our lives have gone in such different directions since then. I’m an author. He’s a prisoner. I have my law degree. He’s yet to get his GED. While I was in college he was chasing fast money. He never learned a trade, never acquired a skill. He would talk about getting his real estate license or trading on the stock market, but when it came down to it he was too busy trying to get over to put in the time and effort to make something of himself. By dropping-out he limited his options from there on out. One choice begot another choice which begot another choice. Along the way his options became more and more limited, his status more stagnant, his situation more desperate. Pretty soon he was thirty and in jail. Like a lot of people you and I know, like a lot of you sitting here right now, he thought he’d be seventeen, eighteen, twenty-one forever. He thought he was immortal, invincible. He honestly believed he could outrun bullets, the law, his rivals on the street– fate itself.
This was his second letter in less than two weeks. The first was still sitting on my kitchen table, unopened. I added this latest one to the stack, it too unopened. Over the last three years we’ve exchanged dozens of letters, but of late I haven’t been able to open them. I love this cat, love him like a brother, but even thinking about his letters fills me with a sense of dread. I start to worry about what’s happening to him inside those walls. Then I start to worry about what’s going to happen when he gets out. Where’s he going to go? Who’s going to hire him? Who’s going to take care of him, help get him back on his feet? I worry about not being a good friend and visiting him this year. Since he’s been inside I’ve been the only person to visit him. Every summer I make the eleven hour drive across the Appalachians to see him on the top of a mountain along the West Virginia/Kentucy border just outside a hick town where the prison is the primary employer. When he’s needed money in the past I’ve sent it. When he’s needed to talk he’s always known he could call me. I’ve sent him books to read, pictures of my vacations— anything to remind of his humanity.
I didn’t have to open these letters to know he’s expecting my annual visit, counting on it. Seeing me once a year gives him a brief connection to his old life. We sit in the stale visiting room that reminds me of the Port Authority bus terminal and for three, four hours we talk as if we’re both on the outside.
A part of me doesn’t want to visit him this year even though I know I will. That part just wants to live my life without the burden of this friendship. Saying as much doesn’t make me feel good, neither am I proud of putting his unopened letters in a corner. It’s something I’ve struggled with the entire time he’s been in prison. Even before he went to jail I struggled to remain his friend as I watched him make one bad decision after another. But it was only when I started to write this speech that it occurred to me that I was angry with him. The fact is he was never really there for me. Hard as it was for me to admit it, I’d never been able to depend on him for anything. Whenever I was in a bind he was nowhere to be found. But whenever he was in one I was the first person whose number he dialed. Friendship is supposed to be a joint contract. Friends are supposed to inspire each other. Friends have a duty to look out for each other, help each other, grow alongside one another, pull one another along when someone slips up. Friends hold each other accountable. As much as I care about him, he’s never held up his end of the bargain.
So, I thought, why should I continue to extend myself for him?
If only the answer to that question was a simple one. Fact is, my boy’s troubles are the same troubles a lot of young men and women of color face in this society. When we were growing up, and even though we were the children of middle-class parents, we were guided by poor role models. We were middle-class kids desperate for an identity and the only accessible images being presented to us, besides ballplayers, were renegades, rebels, crooks, killers, crack dealers, corner dwellers, and womanizers. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we watched Menace to Society and Boyz n the Hood and Juice and New Jack City and South Central, not to mention Scarface, Goodfellas and the Godfather trilogy, always reveling in the violence and bloodshed. There was a time when I could recite whole scenes from these movies. We grew up on a steady diet of N.W.A., Dr. Dre, Dog Pound Gangstas, Too Short, Ice T, 2Live Crew, Compton’s Most Wanted, and Tupac. These were the images that were presented to us as normal and even admirable and while I managed to distinguish reality from fiction, my boy couldn’t. He couldn’t resist the easy slide into the ready-made male stereotype pop-culture was offering him. He wanted the quickest route to the girls, the money, the car–everything.
It wasn’t until he was locked up this last time that he started to reflect on the madness of our youth. In a letter he wrote to me early on in his prison term he said that he felt like he was waking up from a decade long fog. He’d been sleep walking through life, he said, operating on auto-pilot. But even as he began to study history and look back on his choices, he wondered if it was too late to turn his life around. It was a heartbreaking letter for a couple of reasons. First, that’s a legitimate question. He’s got a tall mountain to climb when he gets out in a couple of years. Secondly, very little has changed in America since we were teenagers. Society still encourages us to take the easy way out, to blend in, to follow others rather than lead ourselves. It offers miracle pills, get rich schemes, talk-show gurus, overnight success stories, lottery machines, liquor stores, a thousand television channels, music on demand, movies on demand—anything to quiet the voice inside that might be aching for something deeper and more lasting. In fact, if we choose to we can coast through life, skim along the surface, and make our exit without having learned much about why we were here in the first place. Why is that though? The short answer is that we live in a capitalistic society. Wherever there is a need an industry arises to fill it. But the more complex answer digs to the core of what’s missing in a lot of people’s lives, what was missing from my boy’s life: self-knowledge.
What exactly does it mean to know yourself? Exactly how does one go about doing such a thing? To be perfectly honest I’m still figuring that out myself But what I can tell you is that if you take a close look at the lives of exceptional people you will uncover some patterns. With my first book Beat of a Different Drum I did just that. I spent two and a half years traveling around the country and through parts of Europe interviewing African-Americans who had chosen unusual careers, whose lives had taken extraordinary and unexpected turns. They came from all walks of life and I met them all at different stages in their journeys but the common thread between them was an uncompromising passion to live according to their conception of life and not someone else’s. Not their friends’, their family’s, their social community’s. Many of them had paid a heavy price, had had to walk the road alone, had parted ways with loved ones who didn’t believe in them. There were those who’d been outcasts all of their lives and those who had left comfortable jobs in order to pursue their speculative dreams. These were inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, world travelers, scientists—fascinating people with so much to share —but people who you’ll probably never see on BET or MTV. I deliberately steered clear of the celebritism that dominates our culture because in my opinion, the extraordinary qualities of everyday people too often go unacknowledged, their stories untold. Instant Fame has become the new American addiction, the latest shallow trend, our modern preoccupation. It preys on people who are struggling with their identity, who are looking for a place to fit in. It provides a false reality, and then it takes no responsibility for the fall out. I personally reject the defense that pop culture is merely a reflection of the world we live in. If that was the case billions of dollars wouldn’t be dumped into marketing departments every year. Celebrities wouldn’t be enlisted to sell the latest pair of fly sneakers. Liquor companies wouldn’t be paying rappers to mention their product in their songs.
My beef is that pop-culture tells young men like my friend and even me that we should walk and talk a certain way to be authentically black or brown. It tells young women that they should look and dress a certain way in order to appeal to the opposite sex. My beef is that the industry is designed to and indeed depends for its very existence on people not knowing who they are and not struggling to find out, until it’s too late. I actually have to apologize for my generation. So far we’ve been so eager to get ahead ourselves that we haven’t always thought about what we’re producing, how it’s being perceived or what value it will have in someone else’s life. We haven’t taken responsibility for the next generation coming up. Your job is going to be to figure how to uplift our communities with something more substantive than another street anthem. You are going to have to make a conscious effort to swing the pendulum in a different direction.
Now my advice: Don’t wait to figure out who you are and what you’re about. Start now. Struggle with it and through that struggle you will begin to gain clarity and a higher level of awareness. When you’re in school take courses you might not otherwise take. Join organizations you might otherwise avoid. Go against the grain. Test the boundaries of experience. Invest time and energy into yourself, into being by yourself. Travel. Look into going abroad for a summer, a semester or a year. Even if you’re not heading to college right away there’s nothing stopping you from getting a passport and a plane ticket. Less than ten percent of the American populations owns a passport. Traveling will change your life. Take risks. Don’t shut things out because they are foreign or because you’re afraid of what others might think. That’s a problem that plagues too many of us. We get caught up worrying about what someone else is thinking when their opinions have absolutely no bearing on our life. Believe in yourself. Whatever your faith is put it into action in every aspect of your life. Be audacious. Know that you are worth it. Don’t sell yourself short in your relationships or in your dreams. Whatever it is, if you’re going to give it a chance give it a real chance. Ideas are the first stage of action and actions are the final stage of ideas. Too often we get caught in the idea stage. Follow through. Challenges are meant to test your will and desire, to refine your thinking and to prepare you for success. Redefine success. Consciously create a definition of success that works for you. Stay curious. Read. I’m not just saying that because I’m a writer and I depend on readers to make my living (although that’s true). I like movies. I watch a lot of movies. But books allow your mind to participate in ways movies can’t. A book allows you to reflect, it grows inside you and becomes a part of you over a period of time, it extends your vocabulary and hence the capacity to put your thoughts and feelings into words. So Read, but also read widely. Read African writers, European writers, Japanese writers, Carribean writers—I guarantee you’ll discover that all over the world people are people. Parents, siblings, friends—encourage exploration. We only discover through exploration. And we need the unequivocal support of those who love us.
Graduates, you’ve achieved something special today, something that shouldn’t be underestimated or quickly forgotten. Apart from the schooling, just growing up in this city you’ve faced challenges and temptations that kids your age in other parts of the country couldn’t even imagine. When you leave here today you have every right to do it up big time. But there’s a reason these things are called commencements. This is the starting point, not the ending. Tomorrow or the next day you’re going to wake up and the euphoria will have worn off, just as tomorrow or the next day I’ll realize it’s time to read those letters and write my replies. For better or for worse I accept the responsibility of our life-long friendship. Even as I sometimes long to wipe my hands of the situation, I know leaving a fellow traveler by the wayside would be yet another easy way out.. By the same token, when the graduation high wanes and you find yourself steeped in a brand new reality chocked full of choices and questions do yourself a favor. Don’t hide. Don’t suppress. Don’t just blend into to the faceless crowd for the sake of acceptance. Most of all, don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.
Lastly graduates, I sincerely hope that you find your joy and that when you do you share it with others even when it’s a struggle. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t just pull ourselves up by own bootstraps. No one makes it all on their own. When we aren’t strong we draw strength from others and we are we give it back it to others are in need. Ultimately, that’s the covenant we must keep with each other.
Thank you for allowing me to share these words with you on this special day. Good luck.
