Upper School

June 2008

Posted 6.16.08

Parents, faculty, friends and the Class of 2008,

You have heard many wise words today, from your peers and Mr. Safran Foer. You will remember some and let go of others. The point is not to remember them all—but to hold tight to the intention behind them----all that has been offered to you today comes from the speakers’ personal perceptions and experience.

Experiences. We all have them; some we share, some are private and some we would rather forget. But if we are awake and aware and we take the time to pause and reflect on how we are living our lives, we learn from our experiences, both the positive and the negative.

So, allow me the liberty of taking you back to the words of the French Renaissance philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, a man who devoted many years to recording his experiences and using them as a compass for navigating his life.

I particularly love Montaigne, not just because he was wise, but because he was wonderfully honest about all his experiences from the lofty to the mundane. He writes as fluidly and perceptively about his gall bladder stones as he does about what it means to recover from a loved one’s death.

This brief excerpt I am going to share with you comes from his final and most famous essay “Of Experience”:

To compose our character is our duty,
not to compose books,
and not to win battles and provinces,
but order and tranquility in our conduct.
Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

Despite Montaigne’s many accomplishments, and they were many, including being a two-time Mayor of Bordeaux and a trusted and respected advisor to French kings, he understood through his life experiences that deep character and true leadership, are not loud and glamorous or about winning external approval and success.

So, what does Montaigne mean when he says “Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately?”

What I take it to mean, as this quote lines the inside of every journal I have ever owned, is that our work, our journey, our art, is to study ourselves and to refine the way we speak, act and think.

You are a class that has earned its share of composing books and winning battles and provinces, which is reflected in your academic, athletic and artistic achievements. And you should be proud. There will be more accolades to come.

However, I also believe that you are a class that does not need to wear the mantle of success broadly and ostentatiously on your shoulders to be content with who you are. I think that you know that character, true character, is not about external achievement. Character is to be quietly self-possessed.

This is one reason why the Berkeley Carroll faculty has so enjoyed working with you. You are generous with your opinions and you appreciate what it means to listen.

Your examination of questions like Who gets a Voice? and How do you use your Voice? are the stepping stones to building your character. Yes, be sure to inhale your success, as you are a very intelligent and talented group. But know when to let go of this measure of success and come quietly back to yourself.

Montaigne addresses this tug-of-war between external approval and internal awareness in a charmingly blunt way:

It is absolute perfection and virtually divine
to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
We seek other conditions because we do not understand
the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves
Because we do not know what it is like inside.
Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts,
for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs.
And on the loftiest throne in the world
We are still sitting only on our own rump.

So, be sure to ask yourself how your experiences are influencing and shaping who you are.

Do you trust yourself even in the face of adversity?

Can you celebrate the accomplishments of others without feeling diminished by their success?

Do you continue to take healthy risks even after you fail once, twice or many times?

And finally, can you say that you know yourself better than anyone in this room?

You may not always say a confident yes to all of these questions, but if you keep asking them, keep working towards them, then you are learning from your experiences.

As a class, you have brought your teachers, parents and your school much joy. Continue to spread this enthusiasm for learning and living because we need you.

We need you to be globally thinking citizens who lead in and out of the spotlight.

We need you to be trustworthy leaders---and trust comes from living by your own standards, by your own values and by your own practice of composing your character.

Right now, revel in your achievements. Graduating from Berkeley Carroll is a very big one.

We wish you the very best. Congratulations Class of 2008.


(excerpts from Donald Frame's translation of The Complete Essays of Montaigne, 1958)