Congratulations to the Class of 2020.
Now, before I begin, I'd like to ask you to do one thing.
If you're watching this with your family and friends, please take a moment to thank them
for their support.
No one makes it to graduation alone, and I hope you'll take this opportunity to thank
those who helped you along the way.
And I'm serious-- I'm happy to wait a few seconds.
OK, now, if this were a normal year, and I were giving a traditional graduation speech,
I'd begin by recounting all that you've experienced during your time here, like electrifying national
championships, for example, or the terrifying Unite the Right rally, or the bewildering
exodus from Grounds this past March.
I'd rhapsodize about the Blue Ridge mountains and Bodo's Bagels, the faculty and friendships,
Madison House and Mad Ball, the Range, and the Rotunda.
We probably share our laugh about streaking the lawn and a knowing exchange about the
complexity of Jefferson.
I'd give a nod to your collective futures and the uncertain world awaiting you, while
expressing my confidence-- which is sincere-- that you'll figure it out and make the world
a better place along the way.
But this is no normal year, and this is not a normal ceremony.
And in fact, I've been told I only have about six to seven minutes for this speech so as
not to bore you to tears and cause you to turn this whole program off.
Which is why I need to dispense with the traditional messages of graduation and focus on a more
pressing topic-- coffee, or at least the idea of coffee.
Let me explain.
In the summer of 1991, my now-wife, then-girlfriend Katie, a fellow Wahoo, by the way-- Katie
and I went on a three-day camping trip in Alaska with Katie's sister and her sister's
boyfriend, a Norwegian guy named Inge, who was a bush pilot.
Inge flew us to a remote cabin miles from any trace of civilization.
The first afternoon and evening were glorious, and all was well until the next morning when
we awoke, and I discovered that we had forgotten to bring coffee.
Now, I won't say whose fault it was because it's just not that important to rehash the
fact that Katie assured me she had packed the coffee before we left.
What matters is that for the next three days, Katie and I experienced caffeine withdrawal,
which is, in a word, unpleasant.
When we returned to civilization, Katie and I made quite different resolutions.
She resolved never to become addicted to caffeine again.
I resolved never again to be more than 100 yards away from coffee.
You might think the moral of this story is that Katie is a stronger and better person
than I am.
That is true, but that's not my point.
My point is that I've kept my resolution, and coffee has continued to play a crucial
role in my life.
It's the main character in my morning ritual, where I make a cup of coffee, greet our two
dogs, sit next to the window, take a look at the newspaper and watch the birds at our
feeder, while our dogs nudge me to take them out.
Once I finish my coffee, I'm awake enough to go on a run, which in turn makes me ready
to face the day ahead.
I tell you this story because deprivation has a way of helping you focus on what's important.
You've all been deprived of a great deal over these last couple of months, as have we all.
We've had to do without much of what makes up our normal lives.
My guess is that this has helped you think about what's important to you, what you can
live without, and what you can't.
And my hope is that as you prepare to reenter the world at some point and to start the next
chapter of your lives, you're thinking hard about what you want to bring with you.
If it helps, you might even think about a line from a Bruce Springsteen song, as I'm
want to do myself.
The song is called "The Land of Hope and Dreams."
It's about a couple who, for unstated reasons, quickly leave their home to board a train
in search of a better life.
And the main character says to his partner, "We'll take what we can carry, and we'll leave
the rest."
Many of you faced a similar challenge when we asked you to quickly vacate your dorms
and apartments.
What did you carry, I wonder.
What did you leave behind?
And did you miss any of it?
More generally, what have you discovered or rediscovered during this time of isolation
that you want to carry with you when the world reopens and your life restarts?
And what, in particular, do you want to carry from UVA?
Now, if I had 15 more minutes or so, I might offer some suggestions about what you should
carry with you, especially from UVA.
I might suggest that you carry forward the values of this place, like trust, honor, integrity,
and inclusion; that you bring with you the willingness and capacity to build bridges;
that you carry forward qualities that are the hallmarks of a great and good education,
like skepticism, so you don't believe everything you read, even when you wrote it, and empathy,
so you can see the world through the eyes of others, and passion, so you'll have something
other than coffee that makes you excited to get up in the morning, and vulnerability,
because when you drill down, that's at the heart of all true friendships.
If we had more time, I might also tell you that there's one other thing about my coffee
ritual that I forgot to mention.
I pour my coffee every morning into a mug that says, "I Heart Dad," which roughly translates
to "I love Dad."
My daughter Phoebe gave me this mug a couple of years ago, and as corny as it might sound,
when I look at that mug, I remind myself that there are people in this world whom I love
deeply and those who love me in return.
And I remind myself to be grateful for both.
This gratitude, I would tell you, is what I try to carry forward every day, and I'm
pretty sure I could leave the rest behind.
And so you would get that it's not really about the coffee after all.
The coffee is just a conduit.
But there's not time for all of that, and besides, I shouldn't answer the question of
what you should carry with you and what you should leave behind.
It's far better that you answer it for yourself.
My only hope is that because of your time here, you have the proclivity to ask the question
repeatedly, if need be, and that you have the ability to answer it; that because of
your time at UVA, you're in a better position to know what you should carry with you and
what you should leave behind; that you're in a better position, in other words, to answer
not just the age-old question of what is the good life, but the more specific question
of what is my good life?
Because at the end of the day, our basic business at UVA is to help people live their very best
lives, and I'm pretty sure that if you know what to carry with you and what to leave behind,
you will do just that.
Congratulations, and best of luck.