"Sing that Wonder!": To the Humanities Majors in the Class of 2025

My thoughts are with you, graduating students, and also with you parents, family, friends, faculty, and community members.  A huge thank you, to each of you, for all of the ways through many days and nights, you made each student’s graduation day possible. 

And now I’m going to wax poetic because completing a course of study is one of the occasions when one is most likely allowed to unabashedly do so: This moment, this place, calls on the work of the heart. And so I begin:

You, graduates, right here, right now, are in one of the best possible places anyone can be.  Yes, you’re basking in graduation, you’re on the cusp of a major achievement in life, but I would add, you are also on this edge, in this moment, with an awareness that is in shockingly short supply these days:  You graduates in the humanities have been studying stories, poems, plays, essays, and learning the intricacies of what it is to be humans and so you are those who are best equipped to distinguish real from artificial.  You can appreciate the importance, beauty, and artistry of the photograph while also remaining keenly aware of its differentiation from standing on the mountain top.  You can appreciate the sturdy color and shape of artificial flowers (with no falling petals, potential to wilt, and to otherwise swampify clear water) and still know what it is to see the beauty of an Alaskan-wilderness- summer-meadow alight with fireweed spreading its brilliant magenta up the hillsides.  You understand subtext, and implication, recognize bias, the backhanded compliment, the promises that can’t possibly be fulfilled when followed to their most likely conclusion or confusion.  You know the difference between intelligence and artificial intelligence, and while it might seem overly dramatic to suggest that much of the future depends on understanding that difference, I’ll say it anyway:  Much of the future of what it means to be human will continue to depend on understanding that difference between what it is to be human, and what it is to be artificial.  Keep telling the stories, your stories, the best stories, keep reading those stories and keep writing them.  Keep alive the awareness that each and every one of you is an entirely singular entity that has never before existed in the history of the planet and will never again exist in the history of the planet.  Your unique, incredible, distinct reality is irreplaceable.  Cherish that.  Celebrate that.  And tell the stories, exist in the moment, point out the real, embrace the wonder of who we are, of who you are, the near miraculous occurrence dependent on a massive number of occurrences in your extended family of who had to meet who when, for you to be right here, right now, in one of the best possible places anyone can be.  And know that you can sing that wonder, that real wonder, for every moment of your life.

Irena Praitis is a professor of creative writing and literature at California State University, Fullerton, currently serving as department chair.  She is the author of seven books, most recently Rods and Koans and Cage of Bone, both from Red Mountain Press.