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Tuesday, 19 December 2006 17:10 |
By JIM GENARO
"Cultivate curiosity. That is the ceaseless desire to know more," Merritt Moseley told the graduating class of fall 2006 at UNC Ashevilleës Justice Center last Saturday morning.
The university graduated 160 students at its first December Commencement Ceremony, including one student who received a Masters of Liberal Arts degree.
Moseley,
who gave the commencement speech, is a UNCA professor of literature
and language and director of the universityës Key Center for Community
Citizenship and Service Learning.
He also mused on the etymology of the word "graduation" and its connection to words like "grades" and "graduation."
Moseley noted
that while graduation is a rite of passage that marks a step into a new
phase of oneës life, it does not imply a new life altogether.
Rather, he said, the graduates will continue to be the same people they are now as they embrace new experiences.
He set forth six principles which they should embrace, including curiosity.
"Get engaged in
something," Moseley told the students. "Resolve to make a change in
something. You need not change the world ÇƒÓ most of us never get a
chance to do that."
He also warned the students not to "wait for supernatural intervention."
Mosey joked
about a man whose beautiful garden was being visited by a preacher. The
man told the minister that before he had tended the garden, it was wild
and overgrown.
When the
preacher commended him for what "he and the Lord had done" to make the
garden thrive, the man replied, "Yes, but you should have seen what it
looked like when the Lord had it by Himself."
Laughter erupted through the audience as Moseley explained that, similarly, the graduates should engage life actively.
Moseley also
urged the students to "find the work that gives your life meaning," to
"find somebody to love" and to seek happiness.
He said that
happiness ÇƒÓ which he termed "a noble American value" ÇƒÓ is enshrined in
the Declaration of Independence because humanists like Thomas Jefferson
understood how important it is to living a good life.
"You wonët seek happiness in order to find your work, but finding your work might make you happy," he added.
Finally, Moseley said, graduates should live deliberately.
He urged the
students to remember the example of Henry David Thoreau, whom he noted
was a "miserable failure" by the standards of todayës capitalist
society, but who lived a life of deliberation and contemplation.
Throeau built his own house for $28 and lived in a state of poverty for much of his life, Moseley said.
"He didnët mind being locked up in jail because his life behind bars was as rich as anywhere else," Moseley told the graduates.
Like Thoreau, the students should engage life deliberately and actively, he concluded.
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