George Saunders to the Class of 2013: “Err in the Direction of Kindness”

If you haven’t already read George Saunders’ address to the Syracuse graduating class of 2013, reprinted yesterday by the New York Times, read it now; it’s a wonder. In his work as a fiction writer, Saunders deploys social consciousness and love to greater effect than any other author of the last few decades that I can think of, but it’s usually couched in the extremity of his characters’ situations or in the caustic whips of humor that characterize his style. In this speech, though, he speaks very simply: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness,” he says. “Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.”

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

…There are ways. You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter.

How old-fashioned, and now the cry of our beloved country: “But, George Saunders, I’ve been told I have to build a personal brand!” He replies.

This is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves. Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

But what if sometimes you feel like your once-tender heart is so far up your butt that you’re never going to be as kind and as loving as you once hoped you were going to be?

One thing in our favor: some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish — how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”

[NYT]