Dear Locke, Parker, Haven, Quinn, Berkeley, Grayson, Serena, Zoe and Rowan.
You were born into an age of miracles, significantly a world of technological wonders: cell phones, the internet, search engines, social media, video games, streaming movies, artificial intelligence, virtual reality – soon to become the metaverse. All this would have been indistinguishable from magic when I was growing up.
And yet the world is failing you in many ways: global warming, decaying democracy, social upheaval, tribal hatreds – a short list of today’s horrors. I don’t have the space or the smarts to address all these issues. Plus, I’d rather this missive not sound like a third-rate commencement speech. So I’ll address this one concern (and hope) I have for you.
Basically, I want you to strive to be creators, not just consumers. Today’s technological wonders offer many wonderful benefits, but they also have their dark sides. One dark side is that with the digital world at your fingertips it is exceedingly easy to “[reduce] human striving to material production and consumption,” as the writer Joan Didion observed.
To balance your life, and to find personal satisfaction and perhaps even happiness, you must find ways to be creative. Whatever you create – a new business; a novel; an emotionally honest journal; a better mousetrap; a stable, loving family – is less important than the commitment, effort and satisfaction of being a creative person. It’s too easy to be lulled by what you’ve been given rather than pursue what you must work for.
It starts with observation. When I was a volunteer educator at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, I had a mantra for the school-age kids I supervised there: “When walking in nature, don’t look down (at your feet or at your cell phone). Look up! And then look around.” I prodded these often-distracted young explorers to experience the natural world around them, to engage their human senses, not just their digital senses: See the towering trees and the cloudless sky, hear the bird calls and the rustling leaves, smell the sweetness of wildflowers and the rankness of low tide, touch a prickly pinecone and stroke a smooth beaver pelt. Close observation is the first requirement of creativity.
Anyone can consume, and that’s fine to a degree. Many of life’s pleasures come from streaming movies, playing video games, surfing the web. But there’s so much more to life.
Rereading this letter, I fear I do sound like a third-rate commencement speaker – something you will likely experience. Forgive me for not being as creative as I’d like to be. But at least I’m trying! And that is all I ask of you. I know you can be creative, because I’ve seen inventiveness and originality in your fashion sense, culinary skills, athleticism, letter writing, artwork, musicality, horsemanship, and science projects – to name a few of your interests.
The novelist E.M. Forster famously wrote: “Only connect!” I say, connect to your creativity! You and the world will both be better for it.
— Special to the Telegram
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