Keep Your Head Out of the Elephant's Ass

                                              Address To The Senior Class

                                                

                                                       Michael Casey

 

          Thank you for inviting me to speak.  I regard myself as an odd choice for a speaker on this occasion of your recognition for years of hard work and significant accomplishment.  It would seem that this event calls for a speaker adept at praise and inspiration, who can evoke the bright day dawning and the shining future that beckons you onward.   My contribution to your well being has been of a different sort.  I am notoriously stingy with praise; to my knowledge I have never inspired anyone to do anything; and all I know about the future is that it contains as much toil and trouble as it does joy and delight.   So you see my dilemma.  The things I know in the marrow of my bones are made of caution and warning, not warmth and encouragement.  I have always endeavored to prepare you for the bad stuff and the mean people--even meaner than me--that will cross your path in the years after high school.  So I'll go with what I know.  I do have "life-advice" for your future.  But my focus is not so much how to thrive but how to survive, so that you'll have a shot at thriving despite the odds.

          Recently, I was in conversation with a young teacher--not a teacher here--who was speaking about her first year teaching in a new school with a new principal.  She was puzzled and a little upset that the principal had said to her, "you know, you did a really good job this year, but sometimes you're a pain-in-the-ass."  I congratulated the teacher on receiving that performance review. There is great value and leverage in being a pain-in-the-ass.   Establish yourself as such and you will survive and thrive.  A person who is a pain-in-the-ass does not adopt a purist approach to this mode of presentation of self.  The best results are achieved when one is a pain-in-the-ass-with-a-purpose. 

   What is meant when a person is so described?  First of all, such folk are hard to ignore.  They are presences because they pester, persist and persevere.  They send the memo, the follow-up memo, and the third communiqué.  In between they make the phone calls, knock on doors, and enlist compatriots in causes they care about.  Be they students, scientists, parents, entrepreneurs, teachers, CEOs, artists, or administrators, a pain-in-the-ass has an indefatigable resolve and is extremely hard to discourage.   If you yourself are not one, you want one working for you or with you.

 

   Another strategy for surviving and thriving--especially in the groves of academe--is to learn the intellectual and strategic value of the sham of feigned attention.  Henry James, a genius of modern fiction, said: "Strive to be a person upon whom nothing is lost."  Act like you are such a person.  Some of my own students here have developed this trait admirably.  It consists of pretending to be interested in what the teacher (or your future professor) is explaining or describing.  The slightly bugged eyes, the cocked head, the beaming visage, distinct but not overly eager nodding in agreement and assent, all these can do wonders in making a positive impression on the person in charge.  But be forewarned.  There's a danger here.  Investing energy in this posture can result in your actually becoming interested in something you thought you were bored with, and then you have real work to do.

   Thirdly, whatever you do with your future life, develop an appreciation and appetite for money.  Remember Iago in Shakespeare's Othello.  "Put money in thy purse."  Iago of course was evil incarnate.  But that does not mean he was wrong in what he urged Roderigo to do.  Money may be the root of some evil.  But the lack of money is the guarantor of much pain and misery.  If you are employed by another, learn how to negotiate and squeeze all the dollars you can out of the employer to whom you sell your services.  Money matters because with it you can build the resources to advance social justice causes that activate your passion and values.  Or, if fortune truly smiles and you are the next YouTube mogul, money matters even more because then you can realize your ethical obligations, and bequeath generous donations to nursing homes for retired teachers.

 

   These are three tested and true modes of operation.  But all of them take a back seat to a more fundamental principle upon which all other means of surviving and thriving depend.  This is so important, so profound, that I want to show it to you visually before examining it verbally.  Turn your attention if you would to the screen.

         

   The baseline lesson is unmistakable.  Keep your head out of the elephant's ass.  The literal danger is clear.  It's not a place you want to be.  But the meaning of this dictum is not simply literal, it is a matter of major metaphor.  And all metaphor requires attention and investigation.

   What is represented by the elephant's ass, and what is represented by the head inadvertently placed therein? 

   The elephant's ass is a modern form of Conrad's "heart of darkness."  We can call it the abyss of asininity, the thoughtless or witless response to danger or complexity.  The abyss of asininity is a force that will shallow you up if you do not look up to see where you are and whither you are going.  The abyss of asininity is a force that can take the form of pied pipers, fads, half-baked notions, paradigms, canards, shibboleths, bigotries, popular misconceptions, fatuous institutional goals, inane corporate values, and almost anything that is put forward as new, improved, cutting edge, transformative, globally true, or life-changing. All of these chimeras, all of these come-hither siren songs, are in the elephant's ass.

   Your head is not simply the cranial casing for your cerebral cortex, it is the locus in quo, the place in which the center of your self-ness resides.  You are your brain, your heart, your will, your soul. To survive and thrive, Keep your head out of the elephant's ass.  Keep yourself to yourself.  You do not belong to your parents.  You do not belong to your siblings. You do not belong to this school, you belong to yourself. You own yourself.  Take care of what you own.

   Lay claim to your self-ness and decide on who you will become. That decision is a journey but it need not be a lonely road.   It is true, as I have reminded my senior students, that 24 months from your graduation, if you return here, no young person in the building will know who you are.  But you will always recognize each other, the members of the graduating class.  Look to your right, look to your left.  You are a part of each other.  You do not belong to us, we do not own you.  But we are a part of you.  You take us with you as you go. 

So here's a benediction for your parting, the old, familiar Irish Blessing, . . . old, familiar, and true. 

 

May the road rise to meet you

  May the wind be always at

               your back

May the sun shine warm upon

               your face

   And the rain fall soft upon

                 your fields

   And until we meet again,

   May God hold you in the

          Palm of his hand

                                                                       

Thank You