The most vital rule: Damn it, you have to be kind

Kirksville, Mo. -- Fifty-seven years ago, 92 miles to the south in Columbia, Mo., I received my bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and started my professional career of informing people with news stories and complicating their thinking with opinion writing.

I had only the vaguest idea of any details of my coming life. But I thought one day I might father children who, in turn, might give birth to their own children. And on and on. It's one of the relatively few things I got right about predicting my future. Each of my two daughters has given birth to two phenomenal human beings, the oldest of whom, Olivia, just graduated (summa cum laude) from Truman State University here with a nursing degree.

The several graduation speakers, of course, offered Olivia and the other graduates all the expected advice and cliches about what's ahead of them -- grab the future, help humankind get better, along the way have a little fun, don't forget your roots, send money to the alumni association. That sort of thing.

Most of that is important, of course, and some folks need to hear it several dozen times before any of it registers. But I'm not sure it's the most important advice for new graduates.

Instead, I think that one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., got a lot closer to what graduates need to hear when he wrote this in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies --'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'”

Remember that, Olivia. But you also might want to ask what it means to be kind, what kindness looks like and why the global supply of it now seems so pathetically low. Here are a few of my answers. But, Olivia, you need to get your own answers, so read these lightly and fix them if they need fixing.

-- To be kind means never to dehumanize another person. In Christianity (and other religions), the idea is that each human being -- no matter what -- is created in the image of God. If you dehumanize someone you attempt to erase that image and make someone subhuman. That leads to war, to mass murder, to the Holocaust, to ignoring the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the mentally deranged, the disabled and on and on. You don't have to like everyone you meet. That's an almost-impossible goal. But never treat them as being outside the human family.

-- To be kind means not to make yourself the center of the universe so that others feel somehow diminished or even worthless by comparison. Very few people in the world (8-plus billion of them) even know you exist. That should instill a little humility in all of us -- and our world may not be the only one in a cosmos that is some 13.5 billion years old. That said, I am overjoyed that you exist and are already as kind and winsome as you are.

-- To be kind means treating our home, Mother Earth, with great tenderness. Every day we should try to do something that will heal whatever we are doing to damage our planet while we find ways to quit doing more such damage. Earth is resilient and astonishingly generous in its gifts to us. But it's not immortal. Treat it sweetly.

-- To be kind means to live with gratitude. Don't abuse the many ways in which you are already privileged. Rather, give thanks daily for your life, your talents, your resources, your friends, your family, your opportunity to help someone else heal, which, of course, will be your profession as a nurse as well as your calling as a human being. But while you do all that, don't forget to take care of yourself. A wounded healer can't be of much help to others.

-- There's more, but let me stop with this: To be kind means to honor your commitments, whether that's as an employee, a family member, a lover or simply as someone granted the gift of life on this planet. So don't make commitments you know you won't be able to keep. That helps no one.

Olivia, I used to think about all of these things when you were a baby and I'd make regular Tuesday afternoon stops by your house to hold you, carry you around and show you the world outside your windows. Now you get to think about them and decide whether I got any of this right. Onward, sweet child. The world needs you to be a generative, kind presence. Starting yesterday. I'll be off to one side proudly applauding.

(The top photo shows Olivia with her parents and brother and with my wife and me. The lower photo shows Olivia at roughly six years of age -- already a handful for her maternal grandfather.)

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UH, ABOUT THAT ODD BUTKER SPEECH

Speaking of graduation speeches, everybody with any kind of public voice has reacted to the one given recently at Benedictine College by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. So much so that I hardly feel any need to, uh, kick Butker while he's down, despite deserving it for what I took to be demeaning remarks aimed at women, LGBTQ+ folks and others. Americans, after all, still are free to believe stupid ideas, hold on to attitudes that achieved their highest favorable ratings a century or two ago and that are spoken by people with no expertise in the field they're addressing. So let's not be shocked when those ideas are advocated as part of an event designed to move students into their futures. By the time of graduation from college, students should be discerning enough to tell worthy ideas from rejected rubble. And I'm confident, therefore, that the Benedictine graduates will discern for themselves if there was anything of value in what Butker said.