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Of Trapezes and Tea Cups
Skidmore College Commencement
22 May 2004
Philip A. Glotzbach
President
Members of the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, parents, families
and friends of the graduates, and most of all the Skidmore College
graduating class of 2004, greetings on this day of celebration and
triumph. And a special greeting to the graduates of our Master's of
Liberal Studies Program and our University Without Walls—a number of
whom have traveled some distance to participate in today's Commencement
Exercises.
Each of you graduates has indeed earned this moment through the
persistent application of your talents and energy, through the toils of
many a long day and late night. To the gifts and good wishes others no
doubt have bestowed upon you, I would like to add three of my own: one
wish, one hope, and one suggestion.
First the wish: To borrow a metaphor from author Gail Blanke, many of
you soon-to-be-graduates now find yourselves "between trapezes"—or you
are about to be. That is, you are preparing to release your hold on the
College that has been your home for these past four years, a place that
has provided at least a measure of structure to your life and, I trust,
guidance in your journey from callow but eager first-year student to
more worldly senior. But now, like a circus performer, you have to let
go of what has become familiar and comfortable in order to grasp the
next stage in your life. Between those two points—the letting go and
the taking hold again—is a moment of free flight. My wish for you
today is that you choose to define your flight not as a time of anxiety
but rather as a time of exhilaration. As Blanke puts it, this is
precisely the moment to
give ... yourself permission to let go, ... [to] embrace uncertainty, ...
relish the struggle, ... let go of the need to know, ... allow... yourself to
float in the mind-expanding space and improvise. [This is a time to]
discover... the thrill and the joy of reinventing yourself, reinventing
your life.1
It is most important that you learn to experience uncertainty in terms
of the possibilities it presents to you—as opposed to the peril it
might represent—because, for better or worse, this is hardly the last
time that you will encounter it in your life.
The good news is that you are not alone. Scarcely anyone's trajectory
through life is predictable any more, so you will have lots of company
as you sail through the air. More importantly, as I sincerely hope you
never forget, you are able to fly at all only because so many people
have devoted themselves to helping you get this far, and they are not
about to abandon you now. First among these are your parents and family
members and friends who have gathered here to share this day with you.
In fact, I ask that you take a moment right now to stand, turn, and let
them know with a round of applause just how much their support has meant
to you.
Next, my graduation hope for you is that you always will carry with you
from Skidmore the centerpiece of liberal education: the realization that
it is possible to appraise the worth of an idea, a belief, a political
proposition, a work of art, anything in fact, independently of the
identity of its author. This seems like such a simple idea, but its
implications are profound and far-reaching. The fact that an idea comes
from your boss, or your parent, or your teacher, or your president—either
of your college or your country—does not make it worthy. Its
authorship might make it worth considering, but the more important the
topic, the more important it is for you to interrogate and evaluate the
idea yourself.
The Skidmore faculty members who have worked with you during your time
here have labored mightily to provide you the tools and the habits of
mind necessary to do just that: to test the worth of things yourself. In
fact, the great paradox of education is that your teachers succeed just
to the extent that they make themselves unnecessary to you. For they
have been successful in sharing their disciplines with you only if you
now can employ the critical apparatus of those disciplines—their
specific ways of asking and answering questions—on your own. Of
course, your mastery of any area of knowledge remains incomplete. Having
satisfied the requirements of the Skidmore curriculum, you are truly
just beginning the far more important course of study that you now must
design for the rest of your life. You honor your teachers here to the
extent that you continue to learn. You will honor them most of all when
you surpass them in your own knowledge and accomplishments.
Finally, I would leave you with a suggestion, one that is prompted by a
story from the tradition of Zen Buddhism. It is entitled "A Cup of Tea,"
and it goes like this:
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868–1912), received a
university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on
pouring.
The professor watched ... until he no longer could restrain himself. "It
is overfull. No more will go in!" [He exclaimed.]
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and
speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"2
Although the visitor here is a professor, this story is intended to
speak to all of us. A moment ago I expressed the hope that you take away
from Skidmore the ability to challenge the ideas of others and the habit
of mind to do so. However, that capacity is founded on the more basic
ability to challenge one's own ideas. So my suggestion to you is that
you take this simple Zen story, as a parting gift from your alma mater.
Let it remind you that you cannot continue to learn throughout your life
until you have mastered the ability to empty your own cup—to un-learn
tomorrow something that you believe is true today. The moment when we
think we've figured it all out is precisely the moment when we are most
at risk of getting it all wrong, which is yet another reason to cherish
those times of chaos and uncertainty when we find ourselves between
trapezes. For those are the times that force us to reconsider our
preconceptions of what is real and, more importantly, of what is
possible. Those times are most likely to inspire in us a moment of truly
creative thought that turns an impending disaster into a triumph.
Many of you are too young to have seen this incident play out unless via
the Tom Hanks' film, but in 1970 three NASA astronauts were on board
Apollo 13 headed for a landing on the moon. Suddenly, James Lovell, John
Swigert, and Fred Haise found themselves in a situation no one ever had
imagined when an explosion in one of their spacecraft's oxygen tanks
reduced its electrical power virtually to zero. Initial evaluations of
their situation gave them little chance of returning to earth alive.
However, the crew was able to survive by converting their moon-lander
into a cosmic lifeboat (a task for which it most certainly had not been
designed), supported by NASA engineers and other ground personnel who
worked brilliantly around the clock to jury-rig countless solutions to
problems standing in the way of a safe return. In doing so, they
reconfigured literally hundreds of procedures, and tested their proposed
solutions in a simulator. Talk about being between trapezes and making
creative thought matter!
Let me leave with you with a final example from Gail Blanke, whom I
referenced before. (By the way, 'Gail Blanke' is her professional name.
In her personal life, Gail goes by another name: Abigail Cusick's mom—Abigail
is a member of the Class of 2004, and of course her very proud
mother and father—Gail and Jim Cusick, and Abigail's sister, Kate—are
here with us today.) In her book, Gail describes a performance of a
concerto by the violinist Itzhak Perlman at Lincoln Center in 1985. As
Perlman began to play, one of his violin strings snapped with a sound
that reverberated throughout the concert hall. And of course, everyone
there knew what that meant: Perlman simply had to halt the performance
and replace the string.
But here is what actually happened:
[Perlman] waited a moment, closed his eyes, and signaled to the
conductor to strike up the music again. Without missing a beat, he
picked up precisely from where he had left off. That night, even for
Itzhak Perlman, was not like other nights. That night he played with
such extraordinary passion and power and purity that he transported us
all to a place where it is actually possible to play a major symphonic
work for violin with just three working strings. Such a place, of
course, does not exist in reality. But that night, Perlman made a
conscious decision not to know that, or pay attention to it. That night,
he decided not to behave in accordance with the observable facts. You
could actually see him modulating, changing, and recomposing the piece
in his mind so that it could be played with three strings. ...
When he finished ... a split second of silence filled the hall before
people spontaneously rose and applauded and laughed, some cheering, some
screaming, some weeping. In response, Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat
from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience and softly said to
the now quiet room, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find
out how much music you can still make with what you have left."3
That magical evening in Lincoln Center, Itzhak Perlman certainly found
himself between trapezes. But because he had spent a lifetime mastering
his craft, he had given himself the freedom to empty his own cup—to
open himself to previously unimagined possibilities that were presented
by a problem. In refusing to accept an ordinary view of reality, he was
able to make a most unordinary choice. The result was an extraordinary
experience for his audience—and, no doubt, for himself. In as powerful
and compelling a manner as one could imagine, he made creative thought
matter.
Now it's time for you, the members of the Skidmore College Class of
2004, to test your own capacity for creative thought throughout your
post-Skidmore lives, to find out just how much music you can make over
the coming years. Personally, I can't wait to hear it!
Good luck, and God speed!
1Gail Blanke, Between Trapezes: Flying into a New Life
with the Greatest of Ease (New York: Rodale Press, 2004), p. 5. 2Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-
Zen Writings (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books), p. 5. 3Blanke, pp. 15–15.
Creative Thought Matters.
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