An immigrants view of enduring values
5.29.2025
It was another rainy day in the Berkshires and I was surfing the web when I learned that Abraham Verghese had recently given the commencement address at Harvard. I found the valedictory address on YouTube and took a few notes. Then I found the transcript.
Here are my Take-Home messages from the address; but if you are interested, you can follow the hypertext links above to see the oration and/or read the transcript.
Novels can teach you powerful lessons about life in a manner quite different than a movie might teach you. That’s because a novel is a collaborative venture: the writer provides the words, the reader provides his or her imagination and a mental movie unfolds in the reader’s brain… When a novel speaks to you, it’s because it rings true.
To paraphrase Camus, fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives. When a novel speaks to you, it’s because it rings true.
Graduates, the commencement ritual obliges me to offer advice, even though in forty-years as of being a professor attending every graduation, I remember so little of what was said. But advice is part of this ritual. I’ve already slipped in one piece of advice, and that is to read fiction. It’s a trait of some of the best physicians and leaders I have met, including your President, I mean your university’s President. And if you don’t read fiction, my considered medical opinion is that a part of your brain responsible for active imagination atrophies.
I’ll leave you with two other pieces of advice: one has to do with decisions and the other with time. First let me tell you about Decisions. There’s a writing aphorism I just love, about how to create a fictional character, and it goes like this, Character is determined by decisions taken under pressure.
Love trumps all bigotry, love trumps ideology when it is your child, your family member that is affected, all that stuff flies out the window.
Meaning at the end of a shortened life did not reside in fame, power, reputation, acquisitions, or good looks. Instead they found that meaning in their lives ultimately resided in the successful relationships that they had forged in a lifetime, particularly with parents. particularly with family.
Comments from Dato Dr. Cheng Leng Ong, Pahang Darul Makmur, Malaysia,
Dear Editor,
You’ve wisely paired the commencement addresses of the two top universities of your great country for our consideration.
I’ve read carefully through both the speeches given by powerful personalities and it is our pleasure to just read them. I’ll now analyse both ( speakers and their respective speech) carefully and truthfully, without regards to political correctness.
Why were they both specially selected? Well, both of them are powerful and articulate. And as expected, they had risen up to the occasion.
What occasion? It is a time when the top universities had just received the news that they have to tighten their belts especially in an area that has been their pride for years, they have been gathering brains from all corners of the world, which helps to maintain their premier league positions.
Why tightening of the belt? Your country has been giving aids to almost the whole world, you have been really great. But time is different now, you’re in debts by overspending even in charities. When Harvard, Yale take in top students from poorer countries, they are often given scholarships or at least some forms of grants. It has been a selfless act, from your background of long Christian history. But it is often done at the expense of your own American students!
Time is no more the same, competitions are tough, and the top competitor is knocking at the door, after learning from every possible ways, your technologies!
Your president eagerly wants to make America great again, no wonder he plays his trump card that shocks the whole world! The poor counties which have grown dependant on USAIDS won’t be weaned of so easily! Pray for wisdom to adjust sensibly.
I noticed that both the invited speakers are not speaking from the Word of God, which has the final say in all things. God save America and the world!