Commencement Address by Milton Mayer

This is one of my all-time favorite essays. I read it regularly as a checkup on myself.

“Commencement Address” by Milton Mayer:

As you are now, so I once was; as I am now, so you will be. You will be tempted to smile when I tell you that I am middle-aged and corrupt. You should resist the temptation. Twenty-five years from now you will be ineluctably middle-aged and, unless you hear and heed what I say today, just as ineluctably corrupt. You will not believe me, and you should not, because what I say at my age should be unbelievable at yours. But you should hear me out because I know more than you do in one respect: you know only what it is to be young, while I know what it is to be both young and old. In any case, I will not lie to you in order to make you feel good. You will be old much longer than you are young, and I would rather that you believed me the longer time than the shorter. . . .

Click on this PDF link below to see the whole essay:

Commencement Address Milton Mayer

Reprinted in What Can A Man Do?, 1964

Edited By W. Eric Gustafson

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