From the Director
Commencement Comments to the Graduating Class of 2025
5/10/25
Good morning. So, we stand on a threshold. You have arrived at a summit and an ending. It is my great pleasure and privilege on behalf of the John Martinson Honors Program to congratulate you on this achievement. My name is Dr. Eric Ruckh, professor of history, and director of SIUE’s John Martinson Honors Program.
Completing a bachelor’s degree (and, in some cases, a Pharm.D. and various Master’s degrees) is an accomplishment—one of competencies developed, of will exercised, of persistence and resilience tested, and of equipoise discovered. To arrive here, at an ending, means that you have learned to grow and adapt; you have learned how to balance yourself. So, take a deep breath. Pay attention. This moment only come once. Look around. Be in it. Share it with your friends, family, and loved ones.
Let’s start again. You stand on a threshold. This moment isn’t mainly an ending, it is a beginning. Look out and you will see that you have summited a foothill. And it is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the challenge that lies ahead and above. Welcome to adulthood. Welcome to maturity. Welcome, fellow citizens. Welcome to the world. It’s yours.
Welcome to the world. That means you are co-responsible for it. For carrying on the parts that are worthy. For fixing and improving the parts that are falling into disrepair and need updated. For discarding the parts that are irredeemable. And for inventing that which is needed but has never been seen before. Those are your tasks. Making the judgements that identify those differences: what to keep, what to fix, what to discard, what to invent. And then putting those judgements into action: weaving together the communities of actors, doers, and citizens necessary. And doing it again. And again. Until you reach that far distant horizon—if you squint—you might be able to see it—until you come to that threshold where earth and sky, fire and water meet—far out there … there … getting closer each instant.
That horizon, I hope, is a long way off for all of you. Its way out there. There is hard climbing ahead. And I would be remiss if I didn’t provide you with a few pointers or rules of thumb about how to sustain yourself at this beginning. I’ve been climbing for a while: it’s been 36 years [feign shock] since I sat where you sit and, along the way, I’ve learned a few tricks. I know that there is a lot to celebrate—a lot to reflect on—a lot to look back on … But for few minutes, I want to call your attention to the challenges of what is to come. I’ll try to keep it brief.
The path ahead is long and perilous. You will need spiritual sustenance along the way. For that I suggest that you cultivate wonder. The world is strange and marvelous; at every level, from the quantum to the cosmological, it should provoke astonishment. But we, silly creatures, become numb to it; we take it for granted. It is so easy to forget how brief our time in the world is. How brief our time to attend to the world’s beauty and ugliness—its sublimity and horror—its terror and divinity. So how to escape the cage of our forgetfulness? The paths are myriad: prayer, laughter, mediation, song, dance, poetry. Each, exercised intentionally and regularly, can be a way to wonder. For myself, I suggest poetry. A poem is a call to attention. And a poem can be about anything. For years now, I have read at least one poem a day. And those poems have become meditations. And those meditations on the world have become prayers: they have helped me remember, in the words of Thomas Traherne, 17th century English poet, “how bright are all things … everything that I did see/Did with me talk … [and] A native health and innocence/Within my bones did grow” (“Wonder”).
The cultivation of wonder is food for the journey ahead. But you already know what most of the climb ahead is going to be made up of. Work. You knew it when you arrived here. And now it begins (or will soon begin): your first job. And then your second. And then many more. So, how to make them meaningful? How to thrive in? Well, you should strive to treat them like a craft: you should aim to be good at them for their own sake. You should dwell in them and go deep into them. Plumb their depths and deepened you will become. What does that mean? I have learned, over time, to lean into the problems that my job has thrown at me. I have learned to welcome the problems—to attend to them and seek solutions to them. Being a problem solver will gain you much. First, you will learn. Each problem will force you to attend to some aspect of the world. And in each solution (whether it is successful or not) you will have grown—developed more competencies and capacities. Second, you will gain a community. You will gain the respect of your colleagues by inventing solutions to the problems you and they face. And finally, you will rise to you next job. In fixing problems, you will prepare yourself for future jobs you can’t imagine now. For example, I never imagined I would be a dean or solve complex fiscal problems in a university when I began my career as a historian. By leaning into problems and trying to solve them, work constantly reveals the wonder of the world. It astonishes me to this day how revealing a budgetary spreadsheet can be and how illuminating a zero-base budget exercise is to run. In 30 years, I have never felt disengaged, never felt trapped on a wheel, but I have come close to burning myself out.
So, a word of warning and a piece of advice: don’t be afraid to slow down. Action requires breathing. In this last year, my students taught me something of grind culture. They helped me understand what happens to us fated to live in an ‘achievement society.’ We are encouraged to say—always—‘Yes, I can.’ To pick up new projects and initiatives. It is, according to Byung-Chul Han, the contemporary Korean-German philosopher and author of The Burnout Society, “the commandment of late-modern society.” Under unrelenting pressure to achieve, we become hyperactive and can end up exploiting ourselves and becoming depressed. Depression according to Han is “creative fatigue and exhausted ability.” We can become heady in solving problems. And when we exhaust ourselves, we often wind up in “destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression … The depressive,” Han writes, “has been wounded by an internalized war.” So, what is to be done? Nothing. Let go of achievement, sometimes, and do nothing. Be well. Let wonder work its magic, immersing you into the world. Unplug. Take ‘breaks’ and holidays from devices, phones, and social media. Cultivate slow things: slow cooking; long-form novels; gardening; mending; daydreaming; prayer. Anything that introduces an interval into the cadence and rhythm of your days. Don’t be afraid to be bored because boredom—deep contemplative attention—is the antidote to the barbarism that threatens us from all sides.
Finally, one last piece of advice. You can’t make the climb alone. The challenges ahead are too steep. And the vistas that await … well they deserve to be shared. You will need folks to belay the ropes. And friends with whom to crack a beer at the end of a project. Friends, lovers, partners, families. Those relationship don’t magically happen; they are the result of a wondrous kind of work—the work of weaving yourself together with those with whom you spark and vibe. My friends, the world needs you and the communities you will weave, re-weave, and invent. From your neighborhood through our great republic to our troubled yet vibrant world, the world needs you in communities. The problems we face, can’t be fixed in isolation, requiring, as they do, communities of brothers and sisters working together to heal the world. Because the problems are complex and vast. And so that we can pause and breathe knowing that others will pick up the burden.
So, fellow citizens, get going. Welcome problems and solve them. Have a snack of at least one poem a day. Unplug and take regular breaks from your devices. Don’t forget that you need others to work on those problems, so weave together the teams and communities needed to heal the world.
And be well. Be well.
Congratulations!
