August 5, 2005 - Volume 2 Issue 10
Marge Piercy to Graduates: Don’t Listen to “Bogus” Advice; Pay Attention to the Human Parts of Your Life
Marge Piercy, best selling novelist and award-winning poet, told Eastern’s 1,074 undergraduate and graduate students that “bogus” advice, rampant commercialism, and political cynicism were influencing the behavior of far too many people. It is her hope that her listeners would nurture core human values – the welfare of family, loved ones, friends, and neighbors.
“We chase fashion endlessly.” She admonished graduates, especially young women, not to be obsessed with being “too rich or too thin.” The audience roared with laughter when she offered similar advice to young men. “A few years after college, almost any heterosexual woman would prefer a man who can fix a broken toilet to a man who looks like an underwear model. If you spent more of your time educating your mind, developing your interests as opposed to acquiring someone else’s body, the country would be a far different place. Love someone who really cares about you. Pay attention to the human parts of your life. They last the best.”
Prior to Piercy’s speech, Eastern bestowed honorary degrees on her and Hartford Attorney James P. Sandler, who has almost single handedly helped raise more than $1 million for the University.
Following the keynote address, Eastern President David G. Carter shared these memorable words written in 1968 by a 19-year-old Harvard freshman Ken Keith:
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it's between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.“Try to heed these words, and I guarantee that you will be all you ever dreamed of becoming,” said Carter. “Take the tools you have been given, the tools you have sharpened here at Eastern, and go fulfill your dreams. We’ve given you our best. Go give the world your best. Be the very best person you can be.”
