Managing Flamingoes: On Courage, Dreams, and Trust

Frontier Regional High School Commencement Remarks
June 7, 2002

Commencement is the celebration of dreams. Today we celebrate the dreams that brought you here and the dreams that will carry you into the future. Often, people think of dreams as fanciful or soft-headed, as a means of avoiding reality. But I believe that dreams are what create new realities. I believe that dreaming is an act of courage. To dream is to lift your vision beyond the limits of what you’ve been given. To dream is to reach deep within yourself and give life to what you imagine is possible. To dream is to give your unspoken aspirations a name, to utter them with public voice, and to set them before you, as a beacon that will guide your actions.

There is a question I want to ask you today: what is your dream? Having come to this day, what grand and impossible aspirations do you hold for yourself and for those around you? And what courage will it take, to make those dreams come true? There are other qualities that must accompany courage. I think of perseverance, optimism, preparedness, trust, and flexibility. This last one, flexibility, is especially important in our world today, since familiar reference points have been turned inside out and upside down. Instant communication, the war on terrorism, the dilemmas of globalization, rapidly changing gender roles and cultural relations–these are the new realities of your lives.

The world we knew only a few years ago is already gone. Things are very different now and change itself is occurring with an ever greater velocity. In many ways, the defining conditions of life in your era will resemble the Queen’s croquet match from that marvelous book, Alice in Wonderland. Of course, you remember Alice. Do you remember the croquet match? A strange game it was: the croquet balls were hedgehogs; the mallets were live flamingoes and the Queen’s soldiers stood on their hands and feet to make the arches. It was not an easy game to play. Just as Alice tucked her flamingo under her arm and straightened out its neck, ready to whack the hedgehog, the flamingo would lift its head up to look at her. And by the time she got its head back down again, the hedgehog had unrolled itself and was crawling away! A difficult game indeed!

For me, the Queen’s croquet match serves as a metaphor for this period in history. We don’t live in Alice’s Wonderland, but we do live in a world in which in which the tools and the parameters are in constant flux. Your challenge, like Alice’s, will be managing your flamingo. But how do you manage a live flamingo with a will of its own? How do you succeed at a game in which no one knows the rules? Being successful, in this new era, requires extraordinary flexibility–both of mind and of spirit.

You must be creative; your strategies must change constantly, as the game changes around you. Rigidity will be of little use; longing for the familiarity of the past will not help you keep up with a dynamic present. Responding to complexity with sensitivity and creativity, on the other hand, will enable you to discover coherence and move closer to realizing your visions. Not only are you entering an historical era of unprecedented change; in your own life histories, you are entering what is perhaps the greatest period of personal change, uncertainty, and questioning in the lifespan of every human being. Whenever you feel nostalgia for a less complicated life, think back on Alice’s experience in the croquet match and remember that reality will never stand still long enough for you to figure out what’s going on. Remember to stay flexible as you learn to manage an unpredictable flamingo.

Along with flexibility, another critical quality is trust. A rapidly changing and uncertain world requires trust: trust in your intuition, trust in your inner-wisdom, and trust that, even amid the apparent chaos of a dynamic and uncertain world, there is a deeper field of meaning we can discover when we listen to each other and listen for the connectedness of things. By cultivating trust, you will expand your capacity for wisdom and action.

From time to time, it is also necessary to check your actions against your dreams. Is your behavior congruent with your vision and values? Are you moving closer to your dreams, and helping others to do the same? Are you acting with the same courage that gave birth to your dreams? In the coming years, some people will encourage you to give up your dreams. Having dreams is too much work, they might say. You’ll be more comfortable if you give up your dreams and accept the pre-packaged reality that others have invested in.

But I know you’re stronger than that. I know you have the courage to dream. It does take courage to dream; our dreams will not reduce the uncertainties in life. They will not make life simpler or more secure. But our dreams can give us the energy, the vitality, the purpose, and the determination to endure and to thrive in the face of uncertainty. Our dreams can give us the strength to act, even when we don’t really know what the ultimate outcomes of our actions will be. Becoming a more complete human being means being prepared sufficiently to respond with sensitivity and creativity and to resist the lure of the rigidly familiar. If we trust ourselves, if we remain flexible, then, in the end, it doesn’t matter how the croquet match turns out. We will have won, just in having the courage to play, in having the courage to claim the fullness of our humanity.

Dr. Marcellette G. Williams
Chancellor