Musician and Comedian, Tim Minchin, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Australia. He also gave this speech:
[I have edited the speech for emphasis and length. A lot of the hilarity has been removed. Please, please, PLEASE check out the full speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yoEezZD71sc It is fantastic and you won't regret a second of it.]
[I have edited the speech for emphasis and length. A lot of the hilarity has been removed. Please, please, PLEASE check out the full speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yoEezZD71sc It is fantastic and you won't regret a second of it.]
...
Arts degrees are awesome and they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you, there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Searching for meaning is like looking for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook. You won’t find it and you’ll bugger up your soufflé… I’m not an inspirational speaker. I’ve never lost a limb on a mountainside, metaphorically or otherwise, and I’m certainly not here to give career advice because, well, I’ve never really had what most people would consider a job. However I have had large groups of people listening to what I say for a quite a few years now and it has given me an inflated sense of self-importance. So I will now, at the ripe old age of 37.9, bestow upon you 9 life lessons.
- You don’t have to have a dream. I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short term goals… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware then ext worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery. Which is why you should be careful of long term dreams; if you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye.
- Don’t seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm, if you think about it too much it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might get some as a side-effect.
- Remember, it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here. You are incalculably lucky to be born… Understanding that you can’t truly take credit for your success, nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate.
- Exercise! You think, therefore you are. But also you jog, therefore you sleep, therefore you’re not overwhelmed by existential angst. You can’t be Kant and you don’t want to be. Play a sport, do yoga, pump iron, whatever, but take care of your body. You’re going to need it… This long luxurious life ahead of you is going to make you depressed. But don’t despair; there is an inverse correlation between depression and exercise. Do it, run my beautiful intellectuals, run.
- Be hard on your opinions. We
must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on
your beliefs. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices,
your privileges. Most of society’s arguments are kept alive by a failure
to acknowledge new ones.
By the way… please don’t make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one-another. That is a recent, stupid, and damaging idea. You don’t have to be “unscientific” to make beautiful art and to write beautiful things. Science is not a body of knowledge nor a belief system. It’s just a term that describes human kind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome. The arts and sciences need to work together to improve how knowledge is communicated. - Be a teacher… Teachers are the most admirable and important people in the world. You don’t have to do it forever, but if you’re in doubt about what to do be an amazing teacher… Even if you’re not a teacher, be a teacher. Share your ideas. Don’t take for granted your education. Rejoice in what you learn and spray it.
- Define yourself by what you love. We have a tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff… but try to also express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give standing ovations. Be “pro-“ stuff not just “anti-” stuff.
- Respect people with less power than you. I have in the past made important decisions about people I work with, agents and producers, big decisions based largely on how they treat the wait staff in the restaurants we’re having the meeting in. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful.
- Don’t rush. You don’t need
to already know what you’re going to do with the rest of your life… Don’t
panic. Most people I know who were sure of their career path at 20 are
having mid-life crises now.
Life is meaningless. [This is] not a flippant assertion. I think it’s absurd, the idea of seeking meaning in the set of circumstances that happen to exist after 13.8 billion years worth of unguided events. Leave it to humans to think the universe has a purpose for them. However, I’m no nihilist, I’m not even a cynic, I am actually rather romantic. And here’s my idea of romance. You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough, and god it’s tiring, and you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad, and then you’ll be old, and then you’ll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence. And that is: Fill It… And in my opinion, until I change it, life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can, taking pride in whatever you’re doing, having compassion, sharing ideas, running, being enthusiastic, and then there’s wine and travel and love and sex and art and kids and giving and mountain climbing, but you know all that stuff already. It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one meaningless life of yours. Good luck, and thank-you for indulging me.
- Tim Minchin
Once again, for the full effect and enjoyment of this speech, watch the video:
