Caitie Whelan’s (Brown ‘07.5) Midyear Completion Speech
December 2nd, 2007 by webmasterThe following entry is Caitie Whelan’s (Brown ‘07.5) speech given at Brown University’s Midyear Completion Ceremony. It is published with the permission of the author.
Hello, my friends! This is a downright remarkable day, for many reasons. One is that I am passionately in love with the sound of my own voice and for the next 15 minutes, that’s all anybody in this auditorium is going to hear. For your benefit, I’ve taken the liberty of videotaping the unabridged 90-minute version of this speech and posting it on YouTube under ‘Great Mid-Year Completion Ceremony Speeches of the 21st Century.’ But, another, dare I say more inclusive reason for today’s significance is that it celebrates one of the most beautiful human experiences: connection. And it’s a rare form of connection. I believe that a Brown education is rooted in connecting what does exist with what could and must exist. We are not simply loading our minds with the thoughts of others; we are actively, if not aggressively, encouraged to build our own bodies of knowledge. And there is a high and immediate demand for this form of connection.
The world is bursting at the seams with need: for food and shelter, education and environmental protection, equality and justice. In the face of all these deficits, common practice has spiraled into a knee-jerk response mode that reactively tries to fill gaps using an old, faded repertoire of solutions. The focus tends towards pulling individuals, groups, and even countries out of need. But pulling out is a reactive measure to an existing problem. You pull out painful wisdom teeth to stop the ache, you pull out weeds to let the lilies grow. Pulling out is, by definition, a responsive undertaking. All it does is reshuffle and subtract from the existing materials. It is less than the sum of its parts. And that kind of math doesn’t value human existence nearly enough.
I believe that we have got to stop pulling people out of need and start lifting each other into prosperity. Not the gaudy prosperity that’s splashed all over tabloids, but a fundamental prosperity of choice and opportunity.
You know, the word ‘prosperity’ derives from the Latin ’spes’ meaning ‘hope’ and ‘pro’ meaning ‘on behalf of?’ Put it together and ‘prosperity’ actually means ‘on behalf of hope.’ Now, that’s significant for two reasons. One, it expands my Latin lexicon beyond the great moral axiom, ‘Semper ubi sub ubi’ meaning, of course, always wear your underwear. And two, it suggests that in its original form, prosperity means to take action on behalf of hope.
As I see it, hope is this outlandish x-factor that is one-part what is and two-parts what could be. We’ve spent a few gloriously non-consecutive years here at Brown, deconstructing worlds of poverty and prejudice and reconstructing landscapes of justice and equity. These connecting conversations run like electrical currents out into the hallways and greens, growing into new curricula that revalue the role of the learner in education and landmark non-profits that fight human trafficking. In this process, we are immersed in and develop patterns of thought that take the raw materials of the present and shape them into the expansive fibers of the future. In that regard, I think Brown’s education is a prosperous one.
Now, how do we graduates make the orientation shift away from pulling ourselves out of the seeming deficits of joblessness or haplessness and towards lifting each other into prosperity? For starters, do not look at yourself from a framework of deficits. The ability to act on behalf of hope, to really lift comes from what we have, not what we don’t have. And if you’re wondering, ‘What exactly do I have?’ Let me tell you one thing you’ve got in spades: the power to form connection. I am quite confident that most anyone in the class of 2007.5 could connect Steve Perry, the lead singer of Journey, to Canadian badminton legend Judy Devlin-Hashman, in less than six degrees. You’re trying, aren’t you? You little connecting rascals, you. But there are other, perhaps more substantive connections to be made out there. Here’s one that’s been particularly meaningful to me.
For the past three years, as Dean Bergeron mentioned, I’ve worked with the Merasi, a community of marginalized lower caste musicians who live on the geographical and social periphery of northwestern India. Because of their outcast status, the Merasi are born without birth certificates, denied access to education and political representation, and live on less than a $1 a day. With modernization blazing across India, traditional music, the Merasi’s one acknowledged form of social worth, is on the brink of complete eradication. On the surface, it’s an existence of tremendous deficits.
But that reactive orientation only tells you what isn’t there, not what is. The Merasi are the gatekeepers of a musical legacy that has spanned no fewer than 37 generations. This sweeping artistic heritage is the single most constant expression of hope in a community history narrated by crippling oppression. And it’s incredible to think, but we could miss it all if we were being reactive and only looking at what was lacking. Bill Clinton says that he approaches crosswords and problems in the same way: start with what you know, what you have, and lift from there. What the Merasi know, what they have is their music. So that’s where we started and out of a few isolated musical preservation projects, we made the connection that musical preservation and social empowerment could work hand-in-hand. So we started to lift change with The Merasi School.
Now, there’s a methodological piece to this business of lifted change that I think is particularly key. Not too long ago, Cornel West stood on this stage and said that indifference is the one trait that makes even the angels shudder. And I think this sentiment necessitates those kinds of grand stakes: in this total privilege of existence, there is absolutely no room for indifference, apathy or dismissiveness towards the human condition. If you’re restless and discontent, Brown encourages us to be accountable to our education, our relationships, and, ultimately, ourselves. So, now, let’s take that accountability and map it out onto the terrain beyond this campus. Because, as many of you know from experience, the stakes get a little bit higher, don’t they? We are not just accountable for ourselves, but we are part of a rapidly interconnected world in which we play a pivotal role in the human experience across the globe. I came across this fantastic Yiddish idiom the other day that says: to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. This is some absolutely exquisite horseradish we’re in here on College Hill! But embedded in our education are the core skills to see, think, and act outside the horseradish, to value and connect to horseradishes far beyond our own.
I want to end by telling you a story about a missed connection. I am a huge Neil Diamond fan. Two years ago, I had the privilege of seeing the great man in concert. During the show, Neil said, “Turn to the person on your right and say, ‘I love you.’” Under any other circumstance, I would have feigned a coughing attack or vocal spasm to merit exemption. But with ‘Sweet Caroline’ fading into ‘Kentucky Woman’ and Neil engaged in an explosive jam session with the trumpet section, what can I say? I got swept up in the moment. So I turned to my right and came eager face to cold shoulder with a burly man staring straight ahead. “Excuse me, sir?” I said. He didn’t move a muscle and I felt the potential for connection draining from the moment. “I, ah, hmm, well, I don’t know if you heard, but Neil Diamond just said that we should say…” He wasn’t listening to a word I said. So I let it go, thinking, “It’s not important.” And to this day, I wish that I hadn’t let his indifference deflate me so easily. Because human connection is the most lifted action we can take. It is the movement that takes us from what is to what can be. So as you march out into this tender world of ours, I encourage you to take a page from Neil Diamond’s book. Connect expansively. Contribute generously. And with the birth of each new day, make a conscious and fierce commitment to act on behalf of hope.
Thank you.