mcdermott
*Edited - Podcast available here.
Click here to get your own player.
I hope you'll indulge me for a moment. Each year, i give a speech at the Washington State AmeriCorps Launch and swearing-in ceremony for the nearly 1,000 members who join the program. It's always been a big honor for me, and a chance to meet some very cool folks. Three years ago, former Governor Mike Lowry (who would later write a blurb for my first book) spoke after me, last year it was Governor Chris Gregoire, and this year, Congressman Jim McDermott. We have a solid history in our state of politicians, community leaders and business people getting behind national service, which helps take a bit of the edge off of my natural inclination towards cynicism.
The following is the text of my speech. Unlike in past years, I actually recorded this one, and am considering putting it up on the site as a podcast. As soon as I can get over my phonophobia, specifically, the fear of hearing my own voice.
It's a bit long for a blog entry, and some of you will recognize recycled phrases from past entries. Okay, it's a lot long for a blog entry.
* * *
Note to self: Before you begin your presentation to the 2006 Class of AmeriCorps members, inform them that the reason you look blurry is because you are actually giving your speech from 20 YEARS IN THE FUTURE and not because you are shaking from nervousness, because let's face it, no one here is going to believe you could possibly be nervous trying to motivate nearly 1,000 individuals knowing that if you fail the cornerstone of the Corporation for National and Community Service will crumble, the entire program will go bankrupt, all of you will be forced to become legislative pages and there will be a glut of useless, gray T-shirts overwhelming the bandwidth at eBay.
And the reason no one will believe you are nervous is because you're now in your third year of motivational commentary, and since AmeriCorps goes by many nicknames, one of which is THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA, most of you have now likely known me for three years, and no, I will NOT tell you how to get out of AmeriCorps, because here I am 10 years after my first day of service, and no one has told ME, yet.
Plus, the other reason I’m not nervous around you is because I got to meet many of you last week in Ocean Shores, and even though most of you had to hold my hair for me above the toilet, that wasn't nervousness, that was, you know, irony. It was SICKENING, how utterly calm I was and NOT NERVOUS, and anyway, it's out of my system now mostly. We're all old friends, is what I'm trying to say, and not just because I'm speaking to you from twenty years in the future or need to borrow money.
No problem, I said to myself, nothing to be nervous about, I said out loud, and to prove it, I repeated the word 'nervous' again and again and again and again until I no longer recognized it as a word, nor did I recognize the growing puddle at my feet, although I am thankful for how much it rains in this part of the country, and I would have been even more thankful had I actually been outside at the time. Because I guess it is scary. Not the actual speech, you see, because I was once a firefighter, and I’m not afraid of yelling at perfect strangers and brandishing an axe and an organ donor cooler, but what's frightening is knowing, KNOWING that if I say the wrong thing, 90% of you will turn around and go home, and all those people in Washington State who need your help will come after ME! And they'll get pretty close, too, until they realize that, you know, I might rain on them.
The purpose of my sickeningly good speech, therefore, is to talk to you from 20 years in the future, to inform you of all the good you've done since the last we met, back in 2006, to motivate you for your upcoming year of service, and not just to tell jokes at my expense, because let's face it, while laughter MAY be the best medicine, it is NOT covered by your Health Plan, although the generic version, known by its street name as Bitter Melancholy, IS reimbursed at 50% after a $10 co-pay and a two-month delay. And I know what you're thinking, because I was also once in your shoes (and sometimes high heels whenever I was stuck at home by myself for long periods of time, I'm just sayin), and what you're thinking is, 'Pfft. I don't need laughter to get me through. Over-the-counter cold medicine and taurine will help those valleys feel like the high-speed super slide at Action Park.. After all, misery loves chemistry, but take it from someone who has a twenty year head start on you into the future, consuming Nyquil and Red Bull at 1pm in the afternoon CREATES just as many problems as it SOLVES, and those problems (runny nose, sinus pressure, headache, depression, inappropriate outbursts of pointing followed by even more inappropriate outbursts of laughter) are often compounded by 'HOURS LEFT IN THE WORKDAY.'
But you say, I have plenty of accomplishments, and I agree, you should be very proud, in summary,
1.You never believed it was not butter. Not for one instant.
2.Your MySpace account was never implicated in a crime, though among your 52,567 'friends,' you don't deny that one or two may have lived outside of those social norms we commonly refer to as the LAW.
3.You remembered to wear pants.
This last part is important, because I would like to take the benefit of foresight to remind you that there was a time when showing up to work meant pants were more than just optional, they were required by the conditions of your parole, and sometimes you forget this, and while we should all be forgiven for sometimes forgetting, it is better to wear pants first than ask for forgiveness later. Don't forget, only superheroes are allowed to show up wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants, and superheroes don't need forgiveness, they need our support, and by support I mean they need us to occasionally remind them that it is the PANTS that go on the outside.
Or the superheroes could simply follow my own example. For while most guys debate whether to buy underwear that looks like boxers or underwear that looks like briefs, I prefer to buy underwear that looks like a full pair of pants, that way there's no mistakes.
But you're no superheroes, you're just ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and ordinary people often forget their earlier accomplishments later in life, bogged down as we sometimes get in the rat race, which often looks a lot like the following scenario:
Oh, by the way, one of the things we very wisely eliminated in the future is Power Point, so you'll just have to use your imagination as I recreate this scene from my workplace that just occurred yesterday, or you know, twenty years ago yesterday, or should I say yesterday, twenty years removed, oh for Peter’s sake, I don't know why they say the future is so BRIGHT, because in fact the future is so CONFUSING, just bear with me:
My boss walks in:
Brandon, Do you have that report yet? How many funny numbers did we eventually have to massage in order to turn the stockholders' frowns upside downs?
How am I supposed to know, I don't even work here!
Yes you do!
So! I STILL don't know. You lemming.
And at that moment you realize you work at a place where your boss allows you to call him a lemming, and while this is a frightening thought, at least it's frightening in your favor, but still, something gnaws at you and it is this: You once did something meaningful with your life, back in 2006. You experienced a rite of passage, long after you thought rites of passage ended with that final hurdle of trading in your fake ID for the real one, but as you get older, you will realize that the rites of passage have only just begun. Give me a call when you experience that first weekend straining for a kidney stone, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just turn the phone volume down and pray you never have to strain for a COLON stone, because, well, that is totally the WRONG rite of passage.
You then vaguely recall that you once began a great journey. Every great journey seems to end up somehow back at STARTING POINT A, and not, as you might expect, 10,000 miles away from your parents' basement with an alias and a minor criminal record. Still, hopefully, you've not been mean to YOUR parents. Other than using your college trust fund to get a bachelor's degree in French Literature.
And very few parents actually still believe that AmeriCorps is nothing more than a failed energy company that runs power plants by burning cadaver parts solicited through Craig's List so that Utility Bills can be kept high in California because they never turn the lights down.
Look, don't worry, your parents still adore you. All I'm trying to do is somehow motivate you while reinforcing the long held notion that sometimes love, no matter how well intentioned, is little more than a Class C Misdemeanor.
Okay, so sure, looking back, maybe this wasn't the easiest destination for such a long journey. And you've arrived with hearts full of good deeds and bellies full of conference food, and already you've been told that certain passions of yours might be off limits for the next year, like influencing legislation or using your workplace computer to manage your love life, but they might as well make all that stuff perfectly LEGAL, because it's not like you're going to have time for any of that, anyway. I mean, I’ve seen how many pages are in your work plans and it's a lot, it's, it’s at least…well, it's more pages than even Mark Foley would be interested in. And the reason I’ve seen those work plans is because I have in fact written work plans for my own members, and I know how wordy I can get and so do you and so do I and you do, too. If there are ANY activities AmeriCorps should prohibit, it should be sleeping, and eating between meals. Get used to using the restroom at the same time everyday.
Oh, now, I can see the looks in your eyes, some of you are thinking about quitting already, but from what I hear, they put America Online in charge of AmeriCorps withdrawals. Good luck quitting now, sucker.
I'm kidding. You can quit any time. You only do AmeriCorps to help you relax, and then only on weekends and non-federal holidays in the privacy of your own home. You'll quit when you're ready. When you're good and ready. And tired of wearing the same grocery basket day in and day out.
From my vantage point in the year 2026, I know that you do not quit, however. I wish you could see it from where I stand, this lovely future with all of you in it. You did so much people. Your accomplishments were, in fact, planetary. True the International Astronomical Union later classified your accomplishments as Small Solar System Bodies, but there isn't a scientist among us who would want Pluto landing in our back yard.
And you also learned that the idealism of poetry that has driven your actions sometimes presented unexpected realities, such as that first day you realized that the number one problem with the road less traveled is that it's clogged with people asking for directions.
You also learned that there’s no need to worry about rocking the boat when everyone is already hanging over the railing blowing into their self-inflatable life preservers.
Not only that, but you woke up to a new person who no longer allowed the din of everyday living to drown out the cries for help all around us. I desperately want to tell you these things now, because you will forget what you've accomplished down the road, and if you forget, there's a danger that others will forget, and there's only so much writing in these hands, and I can't tell all your stories to my children. You have to help me out, folks. You have to plant this future memory now, that there is more. Much more.
Downplaying your achievements, which will be your biggest mistake by far, very likely because you were too close to the action, too close to the tutored child, too close to the abused spouse, too close to the polluted environment, too close to it all to actually see that you made more than a difference. My friends, you made a statement. You made a stand.
And you exercised a freedom. Maybe not one of the ones you hear about, press, assembly, petition, but the freedom to act for the betterment of your community, the freedom to speak out against the injustices suffered by those whose only crime was to be born into the wrong tax bracket, and I am proud of you, these twenty years later, for having had the courage to do so. Why defend a freedom if you have no intention of exercising it?
And you didn't just stop after your term expired. You continued to volunteer. Because for every rat race there is a sugar pill behind the lever, and that reward for you became volunteerism.
I know all this, not only because I can see your future, but because I have the privilege of counting myself as one of you. I share with you the untold secret of the volunteer, which is, of course, that our actions are driven not by the needs of others, but by our own very personal need to clean up our present so that we can imagine a future. It was a hard secret for me to crack, and I wish it were easier to teach hope, but it's even harder to teach experience.
And as we all know, this is a hard present in which to gain that experience.
I want to thank you in advance for your efforts. Because one day when you're taking a stroll down memory lane, you will pass that old avenue that marks your time in AmeriCorps, and before you get to the end of the road, you will have to stop, you’ll be a bit tired; you'll have to lean over and brace your hands against your knees, the tripod position we learned about as EMTs, and wonder why it's so hard to breathe, why your heart feels so large inside your chest.
Larger than your past mistakes, larger than your lost friendships, larger than missing your prom, larger than the bad news coming down the airwaves, larger than your checking account, larger than the words to loved ones you wish you could take back, larger than that second helping of dessert, larger than that time you were the smaller person, larger than the late fees, larger than the corners you cut, larger than the excuses for missing the birthday, larger than the broken alibi, larger than avoiding the issues, larger than the times when you didn't make a difference, larger than the times when you could have helped but didn't, larger than the times when you didn't take a stand, larger than not caring enough to cast your vote.
Larger than the moment when you didn't lend your hands, those same hands that are now shaking at the memory, on knees that are shaking because it feels so good to be back on this old street, holding up a chest that heaves at how fortunate you were to have lived here for a little while, a chest surrounding a heart entirely too full, entirely too full with everything that you did manage to achieve while you were here.
There is nothing I can do for that kind of breathing difficulty. There is nothing I would want to. It is a lovely illness. It is not nearly contagious enough. If it does not kill you, it will make you stronger. If it does not kill you, you will long for the symptoms.
I think you can be forgiven for your breathing difficulty.
Go out then and rock the boat, people. The water’s not so deep as it looks.
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