Conflict As Architect

It is an interesting month, in that all over the country colleges and universities are graduating hundreds of thousands of kids, around age 22 or so, and dumping them into the economy with some small level of prospect for actual paid work.

To celebrate the achievement of enough college credits accumulated to get an actual degree, value notwithstanding, we have "graduation ceremonies."  In some of those cases -- most, I imagine -- there is a guest speaker who comes to the ceremony and talks for a while about something or other.

I don't actually recall who spoke at the graduation for my college degree in 1973.  Reading those words, I felt obliged to research it, and quickly realized that the reason I forgot who it was, had to do with the fact that it was the then-president of MIT, Jerome Wiesner.  Wiesner did the speech every year then, although in recent years the role has switched to "invited celebrities."

They don't get an invited celebrity, however, to speak to entering freshmen, and I'm thinking that might be a good idea.  Maybe a better idea, actually, at least if the celebrity has something to say.  Because if I were a bigger celebrity, and some campus invited me to speak, I'd tell them "sure, but I'd rather speak to your incoming freshmen than their outgoing seniors."

And I might say this:

"Dear Old Siwash University entering Class of 2021,

I was asked to speak at the commencement exercises in May, and politely declined the offer.  I told the Deans that I had nothing helpful to share with the young people who had graduated.  But I also told them that I would be honored if they would switch my invitation so that I could address you all.  I figured I could help you a whole lot more.

I don't have a long message, which is good, because that will get you more quickly into the cauldron that is a contemporary college education.  And I promise not to use words like "milieu."

My theme for you is a motto that I hope many of you will adopt for the next four years, or however long it takes.  That motto is this -- "Conflict is the Architect of Our Lives".

For most of you, this is the first time you are responsible for the mundane things like getting to where you are supposed to eat on time; washing and drying your own clothes; telling yourself when to stop drinking; that sort of thing.  Yet that is the easy part.

The hardest part is the lesson that you can learn right now.  Conflict is a regular part of life.  Learn to deal with it.  You're going to find days when the dorm cafeteria is serving liver, or you can't figure out why they scheduled you with back to back classes on opposite sides of the campus, or you don't get a bid from the fraternity or sorority you wanted to join the most.

I'm here to tell you that the same thing happens after you graduate.  Your spouse may put something on the table for dinner you don't like.  Your company transfers you to North Dakota (or worse, California -- have you seen the taxes there?).  You don't make the company softball team.  And those are the trivial things.

You probably don't think college is going to teach you any of that, and you would be wrong.  If you adopt the motto I gave you, it will all make sense.  You can react to every little annoyance or inconvenience on campus by looking for the nearest "safe space", and there may be one.  But you are simply putting off a lesson that will get learned eventually if you do.

Every single one of those issues is a conflict -- I was hungry but they gave me something I hate (apologies to those among you who actually like liver).  And how you learn to deal with things as trivial as that is how you will learn to go out with a shiny new degree in four years and face the real world.  

Every conflict grants you a spectrum of options.  You can fight -- physically, in some cases.  You can work to change the underlying reasons for whatever happened you did not like.  Or you can tolerate it with a thicker skin.  You can mobilize classmates.

I want you to go home tonight, back to your dorm room, and find someone there you have not met.  Ask them what Sutton was talking about when he said "conflict was an architect."  And keep doing that until you find someone whose interpretation of my words was different from your own.  Ask that person why he or she believes they're right and you're wrong.

And while they're explaining, you shut your mouth and listen.  Try to understand what they're saying and if you don't understand, ask them to help you understand.  Then try to make your case as to why you felt the way you did.

When you're done, you will understand.  You will understand that we grow not by retreating into a cocoon where nothing ever goes wrong for us, and no one ever disagrees with us, but by learning to deal with situations when they don't break our way.

Those of you who go on to study physiology, the science of how the body works, will learn that bones grow in a peculiar manner, where the ends are roughened and the little fibrils push out to make longer bone tissue.  We are the same.  We grow as human beings through every situation that raises a conflict for us.

If we are mature, we learn to assess our options in each conflict and make a decision from that spectrum of options.  If the option fails, we try another the next time a similar conflict ensues.  And those situations, and our responses, collectively create the mature version of who you are.  

Those conflicts build you.  They are the architects of the person you become.  And now, as you begin your college years, you can make the first wise choice, which is to treat every conflict as a chance to grow and to learn.  Do not avoid the conflict, embrace it.  Consider your options and relish the fact that God gave you the power to make choices.

Conflict is the architect of your lives.  For Heaven's sake, do not avoid conflict, or retreat into a cocoon, even if the college provides one for you.  For if you embrace conflict, you will come out in four years actually able to understand that the world is made up of it.

And you will be a successful human being, which is all I can hope for.  Thank you for listening."

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearances, college commencement speeches (and entering freshmen lectures), advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.