March When It's Time to March

Why do people come back for their reunions, in some cases from around the country, in some cases from around the globe? Not because they’re looking that great or setting the world on fire usually. I think they come for those late-night conversations.At my Smith reunion this past weekend we had all the human drama you’ll find among people anywhere: cancers conquered and cancers fought to a standstill; pain on rising and pain on going to bed, no matter HOW many time a week we go to the Y. We had here and there a ripening cataract; here and there a worn-out hip. But our hip replacement girl is back dancing  and our future cataract patient will still be running a whole corner of her state.  One of us hoisted a bike out of her car single-handedly and rode all over campus, just like she did at 19. And this one with the long hair above left is a golf pro at 61.We were college kids in a time of war and assassination, and last winter when ten of us  got on the phone to dream up slogans for our class signs we thought a lot about that: the pain our country was in back then what with deaths from war and protest and assassination. But we thought too about what rose up in so many young people as as a result, which I would call a readiness to stand with the excluded and help make a place for them. Yesterday at the Alumnae Parade someone from a younger class saw us approaching with our signs and our outfits and called to her pals, “Here come the hippies!”Hippies? Aren’t we  doctors and lawyers, artists and actors and scientists, designers of laws and landscapes and buildings? Parents, some of us, and even grandparents? Hippies, never. No Hippie ever studied the way a Smith girl studies.Now if you have the time watch Rachel Maddow talking last Sunday to our newest graduates; then, for a real nice chill up the backbone read this real short excerpt from her speech that day. I believe I'll sit down then and memorize it.

In the big picture, standing at the age you are now at graduation, looking for your own deep-water horizon, consider the possibility that you might very well get old - everybody hopes you do. Be part of good decisions because the stuff you do now you will want to be bragging about when you become 90.How do you become part of good decisions in the absence of a crystal ball? The best way is to get smart and get smart fast, to take the opportunities you've got very seriously, to continue your education not necessarily in a grad school way, but in a lifelong way, be intellectually and morally rigorous in your own decision-making and expect that the important people in your life do the same if they want to stay important to you.Gunning not just for personal triumph for yourself, but for durable achievement to be proud of for life is the difference between winning things and leadership; it's the difference between nationalism and patriotism; it's the difference between running for office and devoting yourself to public service; it's agreeing that you're part of something; taking as your baseline that you will not seek to reach your own goals by stepping on your community; it means coming to terms that your country needs you…”

So I say: march when it's time to march.....

and dance when it's time to dance.