Diana and Oprah, distilled

My meanderings through the internet today took me to a website with the speeches given at my college commencement ceremony, almost (gasp!) ten years ago.

I loved the four years I spent in college and reading those speeches instantly brought back so many memories. I there were plenty of difficult times in college, but looking back through my rose-tinted glasses, it seems like such a perfect time. And crowning those four years was our commencement ceremony. Reading other commencement speeches, I realize that speakers tend to cover the same kind of ground in these speeches, but nonetheless, my rose-tinted glasses allow me to believe that my commencement was somehow special.

I remember both of the main speeches so clearly. One was by the President of the College, and it was a speech that came off well enough when listened to, but that I came to love later, after reading it a few times. Oprah Winfrey was the other speaker and her speech was almost the opposite. It is was speech meant to be heard and seen, and loses a bit when read.

One thing both speeches had in common was their use of poems. Oprah’s reading of Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman was one of the first times, I think, that I ever heard a poem come to life when read aloud. I was mesmerized. The other poem, Heroines by Adrienne Rich, I had never heard before, but has also come to be a favorite of mine.

To make a long-winded ramble even longer, here is a distilled version of the two speeches.

Oprah:

You will survive everything if you can live your life from the point of view of truth. That took me a while to get, pretending to be something I wasn’t, wanting to be somebody I couldn’t, but understanding deep inside myself when I was willing to listen, that my own truth and only my own truth could set me free.

When people show you who they are, believe them – the first time.

Be grateful. If you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant and you will have more. If you concentrate and focus in your life on what you don’t have, you will never have enough. Be grateful.

Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe. Every life speaks to the power of what can be done.

You’ll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God’s way of saying, “Excuse me, you’re moving in the wrong direction.” What I try to do in my life is to get God on the whisper.

“Pretty women, honey, they wonder just where my secret lies `cause I’m not cute or, built to suit a fashion model size but when I start to tell them, they say, Girl, you’re telling lies and I said, no, honey, it’s in the reach of my arms, it’s in the span of my hips, it’s in the stride of my stepping, it’s in the curl of my lips, `cause I’m a woman, honey, phenomenally, phenomenal, phenomenal woman. Sometimes I walk into a room just as cool as you please and to a man the fellows either stand up or fall down on their knees. And then they start swarming all around me like a hive of honey bees and I said whoopcha must be this fire in my eyes, could be the flash of my teeth or the swing of my waist or just the joy in my feet, all I know is I’m a woman, you’re a woman, we are women, honey, phenomenally, phenomenal women. Now you understand why my head’s not bowed, you won’t see me dropping about or when you see me coming, it ought to make you proud, sister girl, I say, it’s the bend of my hair, it’s in the palm of my hands, the need for your care `cause I’m a woman, you’re a woman, we just women, we phenomenal, phenomenally phenomenal, phenomenal women.” That’s you, Wellesley, that’s you. God Bless You!

Diana:

you begin speaking out
and a great gust of freedom
rushes in with your words
yet still you speak
in the shattered language
of a partial vision
You draw your long skirts
deviant
across the nineteenth century
registering injustice
failing to make it whole
How can I fail to love
your clarity and fury
how can I give you all your due
take courage from your courage
honor your exact legacy as it is
recognizing as well
that it is not enough?

My charge to you today is this: Register injustice with clarity and courage, as you have done here. Make of your lives an elegant and challenging argument. Live and embody your ideals. Be the change you want to see. And don’t forget those pioneering women who never forgot about you.

They knew that they were not inheriting from the women who had preceded them but rather were borrowing it for a time from those still to come — from you. And in the face of obstacles and defeats, they took their solace in the knowledge that you would come along to honor their exact legacy as it is and to recognize as well that it is not enough.

Go out into the world, now, mindful of the legacies you will be called to leave. Make the world a better place in every way you can. Reach out to other women. And remember this special place. Virginia Woolf believed that to support her creativity a woman needs a room of her own. In Wellesley, women have a college of their own.