Commencement Address to the Class of 2020

May 3, 2020

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

“Truly to sing, that is a different breath.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

You know I was actually trying to come up with an excuse to get out of my 10 year high school reunion this year. Looks like the universe took care of that one for me.

Being an introvert, I’ve been practicing social distancing my whole life. It’s not that I hate people, I’ll deny it in public, but I kind of love them. No other species makes as glorious of a mess as we do. We make music, we make art, we make chocolate ice-cream. We also make war and pollution and Michael Bay movies. It’s awesome and it’s terrible. It’s life. It’s humanity. And that’s fine, I just need a lot of time in my fortress of solitude to make sense of my life and to feel real and safe and to create. To hear myself breathe. Because sometimes, it’s all overwhelming.

This quarantine has actually kind of been a bit of a blessing in disguise for me.

The past decade has been a grind, and a journey I wouldn’t take back. Ever. But I was tired. I was stuck in a routine that was numbing me and exhausting me. And I was sad and anxious all the time. Especially about how money driven and fast paced this world is. And considering the depression rates in this country, I don’t think I was alone.

It’s been a little over a month now and I have gained muscle, I sleep better, I eat healthier and I read so much. I paint, I listen to music and I take long walks and actually have time to enjoy each thing I do. I miss my friends, but I’m lucky I’m still employed and have my family and health.

I know a lot of people are hurting right now. Our social institutions weren’t prepared for a real emergency of this magnitude. Some of that was carelessness and ignorance and some of that was hubris.

There’s a lot more we will not see coming. And I know we don’t have all the solutions.

The virus is one concern. A depressed economy will linger much longer. And there will be famine around the world. And violence. More so than there already is. And what will we do with the downtrodden spirits of all of us grieving at once?

Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with cancer at the peak of his career wrote in his memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, “What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find on her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.”

Science is a wonderful tool, but philosophy has it’s place too. It is the art of creating meaning of the facts. This is our remedy - creating meaning for ourselves.

Every atom in you and I was forged in starfire. We were built for intensity. We were built to last. We were built to be transformed, over and over and over again. And we were built to make our own light.

Yes the universe is a harsh place, but we are not new here.


The birds in my neighborhood are loving spring this year. They are always flying about singing, chasing each other, and I love laying out in the grass in my backyard, bare foot, with a book and my dog, and watching them fly around. As I looked up at the solitary blue of the sky instead of being stuck in my hour and half long noisy and pushy commute to work, I was able to really think about all that I had taken for granted before, all I was grateful for now and all that could be different. Because when something goes wrong, when something is broken, it’s a great opportunity to change it or fix it. Or at the very least, change ourselves to adapt to the new reality.

One thing that I kept thinking about was this year’s graduations. My sister and one of my best friends will be graduating from grad school this year and won’t get to actually attend their graduations. I will make sure they are celebrated in other ways with lots of cheesecake and chocolate gelato, but I know they are still processing a bittersweet feeling about the whole deal. My sister is a teacher and in addition to her own graduation, she was sad about not getting to say goodbye to her students like normal. No celebration, no ritual, no dressing up, no dancing, no teary hugs as she wished them luck as the seniors headed off into the world.

You only graduate high school once.

I know some people don’t care for tradition and ritual, but those are part of all human cultures past and present. I’m not saying rituals shouldn’t change as society does, (glad we don’t have virgin sacrifices to sea deities anymore) but we still need rituals. To celebrate, to grieve, to transition together, it’s not just human, it’s necessary.

And this class, the class of 2020, has been through so much already.

Not just personal trials and triumphs, but school shootings, mental health crises, social and political upheavals, wars, climate disasters.

And now they have to make their way into a more unsure world than before.

You deserved to celebrate reaching this milestone, together. To honor all the smiles, tears and sweat it took to make it here. You deserved a more prepared adultworld.

I really am sorry.

And though we can’t all watch all of you walk across that stage, we can definitely still join in your celebration.

In fact, I think if this were like any other year, your graduation would have come and gone, just as remarkable as any other. However, this year, because the whole world has been shaken out of a stupor, we are all the more conscious of the joy and pain of every passing moment. And we are more aware of how interconnected we all are.


As all of you make your way into the world, you’ll have to keep some things in mind.

Life will bring you to your knees over and over again.

And as you’ve probably already seen, adults don’t have things figured out. Not even a little bit.

I was pretty idealistic and optimistic when I graduated 10 years ago. Maybe even a little arrogant. I was the typical nerd who wanted to eat lunch in the library, hang out with the teachers after school and go to college so I could finally solve all the world’s problems. Cause of course I’d find the answers. I always found the answers. AP tests, SATs, college placement exams. I had to have the answers. I needed to be right. College was similar. I learned a lot and changed my perceptions with slow methodical exposure to new ideas. I traveled and explored, but in a controlled way. But even there, I was pretty good at getting answers. Taking tests was second nature. It was only after I graduated college and had to figure out what was next that it really hit me, not only did I not have the answers, I didn’t even know what the questions were. There was no pre-made structure any more, and no more guides.

It was liberating because now I would get to make my own meaning and terrifying because now I would have to make my own meaning.

I have suffered my fair share of disappointment and disillusionment since then. You will too. Life’s like that. It’s messy and it’s painful. It’s chaos.

But it’s also heartbreakingly, breathtakingly, beautiful.

For every cold night that sobs shook my bed, there were nights filled with a chorus of laughter and twinkling lights and campfires. For every stressful day that ended in rushing through traffic, there was a sunset with my feet pressed into warm sand.

I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of how I learned what I learned, that would be too long of a post, but I can say that from what I have experienced in the last 10 years, my optimism is not based on blind hope and unrealistic expectations, but on experience of seeing the human spirit in action. It’s limitations are many, but every now and then we expand that threshold.

We were not born to seek comfort alone. We come into the world naked, amidst blood, cries, and our mothers’ struggles. We come into this world horribly entangled yet separate and that’s how it always stays. Side by side yet light years apart with our own burdens to carry.

We are Sysiphus but we get stronger every time we make it up that hill with our boulders. The joy is in the doing. You just have to find your sense of purpose. If you have a purpose, you will get out of bed on the hardest of days, because you know why you do what you do. Find that first. (Your purpose is not necessarily your job.) It can be anything. Decide with your heart, find your why and your brain will find the how. And it’s okay to fail, to quit what you don’t care for anymore and try something new. Life is an experiment, do it differently and see what happens. No one makes it out alive anyway, so have fun. But also don’t be afraid to commit to something worthwhile, no matter the cost. (And there always is a cost.)

Then find your people. You take your friends for granted in high school. The adult world is a lonely place. You will have to put effort into those people you want to keep around. Be picky with who you choose to invest in. There’s nothing more lonely than a half-hearted friendship.

When you do find people who take the time to understand you and treat you well, the ones that keep coming back, don’t let them go and give them your all.

Stay curious, because a blue whale’s tongue weighs 8000 pounds, mantis shrimp can see colors that we can’t, caterpillars turn to complete goo in their cocoons before reforming as butterflies, birds are the closest relatives to dinosaurs, the blood vessels in your body could wrap around the Earth 4 times, the nearest solar system to ours is 4.37 light years away, and everything you see and hear is your brain processing light and sound waves. This world is absolutely delightfully bonkers. Remember that and you’ll never be bored.

Be brave. This one is harder than it sounds. Being brave isn’t being loud, opinionated, or charging into situations, no matter how good you think you are or how right. It’s getting comfortable with discomfort. It’s asking for help when you need it, it’s helping others when they need it. It’s being okay with being alone. It’s being okay with being together. It’s putting aside your pride to apologize when you’re wrong. It’s standing up for what you believe in. It’s saying no. It’s saying yes. It’s getting up every morning to face your demons. It’s accepting the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s accepting that much of life is dependent on luck and chance. It’s being willing to see things differently. It’s accepting the fact that fear doesn’t ever go away and that it’s not always a bad thing. It’s finding reasons to laugh anyway. It’s trusting that most things will work out with time.

Be kind. This means being patient. This is perhaps the hardest one. Loving people isn’t easy. Loving yourself isn’t easy. It may even hurt at first to be vulnerable. You will hate it some days. But attempting to understand someone, and letting them try and understand you, something that’s damn near impossible to get right, is the bravest thing I can think of. The dumbest thing I can think of. The most human thing I can think of.

The universe is a vast expanse of cold quiet nothing occasionally punctuated with the most blinding and brilliant everythings.

What gives me hope is that in a place so cold, we are somehow miraculously and wonderfully warm blooded. And whereas most of space is silent, here we sing, even in the most desperate of times. Mothers sing, fathers sing, lovers sing, gangsters sing, ballerinas sing, birds sing, whales sing, even the Germans sing. To sing is to transform your very breath into music. Into vibrations. Into waves. And it always comes down to waves in the end. Music comes in waves. Emotions come in waves. Change comes in waves.

And as Alan Watts once said, “You didn’t come into this world, you came out of it, like a wave out of the ocean. You are no stranger here.”

So don’t act like some transient guest at a cosmic AirBNB - this is your home. Take care of it, the plants, the animals, the oceans, rivers and lakes. Take care of yourself, and take care of each other. We are all we have. And we still have work to do and songs to sing. So find your work song, your fight song, your love song and harmonize with your neighbors, even if it’s from a few balconies away.

All the best,
Gia