Three Questions

Commencement Address at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln - May 6, 1995

by Steven B. Sample
President, University of Southern California
May 6, 1995

My family and I have been looking forward to this morning with great anticipation. This is a special day for us, as we return to the place we called home during eight of the happiest and most rewarding years of our lives. Both of our daughters are graduates of the University of Nebraska, and today, by virtue of the honorary doctorate you have just bestowed on me, I proudly join them as an alumnus of this great institution.

During the past two days here in Lincoln we have renewed dozens of warm friendships and cherished memories. My wife and I have especially enjoyed spending time with our two beloved teachers and mentors, Woody and Paula Varner.

Typically, commencement speakers exhort the graduating class about the unlimited opportunities they have before them to pursue rewarding careers or change the world in some fundamental way. But my purpose this morning is much more modest. I don't wish to talk to you about your professional or political development at all. Rather, I want to talk to you about your personal development as human beings. Because, in the final analysis, what determines a person's ultimate success is not so much his professional abilities or political brilliance as it is his character.

What I should like to do today is pose three questions, the answers to which only you can formulate, if indeed these questions can be definitively answered at all. While the questions themselves will sound somewhat simplistic, I think you will soon see that the answers are not necessarily simple. Moreover, I hope to persuade you that these three questions underlie many of the more complicated issues which you will have to address during your lifetime.

The first of my questions is: How do you feel about money?

Oh I know, you like money, and so do I. But how do you really feel, deep down, about money? How important is money to you? And to what extent can making, accumulating, and spending money satisfy your deepest desires?

Now please don't misunderstand me; I have no particular axe to grind here. I am not suggesting that you should eschew money and material wealth — far from it. Indeed, as president of an institution that depends for its very existence on gifts and contributions, I would be among the first to say that the country needs more money–motivated people, not fewer. And remember, the question I am asking here is not how should you feel about money, but how do you feel about it in fact.

Let me put this question in context. When I was in my late 20s and was employed as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University, I received an incredibly lucrative offer from one of my consulting clients to join his firm full–time. I was in a quandary over this offer. I liked my work in teaching and research at Purdue, but I was also excited by the technological developments taking place at my client's company.

Quite frankly, my parents and my wife's parents were amazed that I was hesitating at all. To them, as commercial and professional people, the answer was clear — I should seize what could be a once–in–a–lifetime opportunity to become truly wealthy.

Eventually I went for advice to a more senior member of the faculty, who had recently joined our department after serving more than 20 years as an executive at General Motors. When I had explained my problem to him, he said, "Steve, you're asking yourself the wrong question. You should first decide how you and your wife feel about money. If you can answer that question, the answer to your career choice will become obvious."

This man went on to point out that the world is full of unhappy people who have never figured out how they really feel about money. There are multitudes of priests and teachers and artists and public servants who, deep down, would be much more fulfilled by the pursuit of wealth, and who, in following that inclination, would probably make much more significant contributions to society.

Similarly there are many, many people caught up in profit–seeking jobs, in which the principal reward and measure of success is money, who would be much happier and more productive if they were engaged in more altruistic occupations.

As it turned out, the colleague I was talking with had not discovered how he himself truly felt about money until he was nearly 50. The point he was trying to make to me, and that I in turn wish to make to you, is that if a young person can discover at an early age how he feels about money, he will be able to address many of life's choices in a more definitive and satisfying way.

My second question is a bit peculiar, in that I might not pose it if I were addressing a graduating class in another country, or even if I were addressing a graduating class in this country at an earlier time in history.

What leads me to ask this second question is the fact that, in an insidious sort of way, America seems to be abandoning her children.

Think about that for just a minute. Is there another industrialized nation in the world that, on average, treats its children as shabbily as we do? For example, the United States spends more money for health care than any other nation, even proportionately, and yet the quality of health care received by many American children is atrocious by world standards.

Is there another industrialized nation that has as high a proportion of its children who are drug addicts, or that produces as many drug addicts in the womb? Is there another major nation in the world that subjects its children to the high levels of violence that we do in our homes and schools and on our streets? Is there another nation in the world that sexually abuses its children the way we do?

Is there another industrialized nation which has given its public school system as little attention as we have? All of you graduating this morning are fortunate to have attended good schools and an outstanding university. And yet here we are, one of the wealthiest nations in history, and we have within our borders some of the worst elementary and secondary schools in the world.

Finally, can you think of any other developed nation in which family structures are as weak or nonexistent as they have become in the United States?

So my second question to you as young Americans in the 1990s is this: How do you feel about children, both those you will someday call your own and those of your neighbors as well?

Let me suggest that, before you conceive or beget children of your own, you ask yourself what commitments you are willing to make to your child and what sacrifices you are willing to make on his or her behalf. Moreover, ask yourself what commitments you are willing to make to the child's other parent, and what commitments that person is willing to make to you and your child.

Keep in mind that the greatest gift a child can receive in America today is to be raised in a home in which the child's parents live in wedlock and share a strong commitment to the child and to each other. This simple gift of the traditional, two–parent family, which youngsters in other countries take for granted, outweighs all other factors in predicting the social and educational success of a child in America.

As you move into positions of authority and power, ask yourself to what extent the welfare of our children should affect the formulation of public policy and the allocation of public resources. After all, the essence of a democracy is finding the right balance among competing interests. In recent years, we in the United States have gone a long way in extending and protecting the rights of adults to pursue their own interests, irrespective of the interests of their children. Indeed, we have essentially absolved parents of any real legal responsibility for the welfare of their children, and at times it would appear that society as a whole has refused to accept this responsibility as well.

Perhaps it's time to shift the balance of interests back toward the child just a bit. Perhaps all of us as adults must be willing to give up some of our social and economic license in order to advance the well–being of all of America's children — black, white, and brown children; male and female; rich and poor.

As you struggle with the question of how you feel about children, please ask yourself to what extent you see yourself as a teacher and protector of the young. Some of you will actually become paid teachers in schools and colleges. But no matter what your compensated occupation may be, one of the greatest opportunities you will have to make a truly lasting contribution to society will be as teachers and exemplars for children. Indeed, for all Americans, our greatest single challenge in the years ahead will be the reconstruction of our society into one which is user–friendly to children.

My third question is the most difficult of the three, and by far the most personal and embarrassing. No, it has nothing to do with sex. Rather, the question is: How do you feel about God?

Say what? God? Did he say God? Why would anyone bring up God at a secular commencement ceremony? Surely most of us, as modern intellectuals, have grown beyond the point at which God or our relationship to him is a serious question. And besides, I am a Jew, or a Baptist, or a Hindu, or a Catholic, and if you want to know how I feel about God you need only consult this prayer book, or that scripture, or this catechistic text.

But wait, let me assure you, I'm not trying to sell you a set of religious beliefs. Here again, as in the case of money, the question is not how should you feel about God, but how do you feel about God in fact.

It's perfectly all right with me if, deep down in your heart, you believe there is no God at all, or that there is a God but you simply don't wish to have a relationship with him. What I have found, however, is that the vast majority of people duck this question altogether. It is simply too scary or too overwhelming for them to address in any serious way.

There are millions of people in this country who regularly attend religious services, and yet haven't the foggiest idea of how they feel about God, or what kind of relationship they have with their God, or what they expect of him, or what they believe he expects of them. And similarly, there are millions of agnostics who have concluded that questions pertaining to God are simply unanswerable or unimportant, and yet who find it impossible to fully suppress their concerns for the spiritual and transcendent aspects of their own existence.

One of the painful realities we must confront is that we are, in the final analysis, fully human, with all the unsettling and uncomfortable characteristics which that word connotes. We are as fully human, and no more human, than our brothers and sisters in ancient Egypt or in modern Mongolia. And one of mankind's deepest and most abiding concerns for all times, in all places and for all peoples, is our feeling for and relationship with God.

My point is that you may be able to run from your true feelings about God or non–God, but it is very difficult to hide from them in the long term. Thus it is probably to your advantage to discover and confront these feelings sooner rather than later.

Well, there you have it — my small gift to you on the happy occasion of your graduation from the University of Nebraska. No answers, no pat formulas
— just three simple questions:

How do you feel about money?

How do you feel about children?

How do you feel about God?

I can't say that addressing these questions will make you any happier, in the conventional sense of that word, or protect you in some talismanic way from life's pain and disappointments. But I do believe that giving careful consideration to these three questions in the years ahead will prove beneficial to you. For in so doing you will learn a great deal about yourself. You may even come to like and accept yourself a little better.

And if you should be so fortunate as to find answers for yourself to these three questions, you will almost certainly gain a better understanding of the meaning of life, of your place in the universe, and of how you might live in productive peace and harmony with your fellow human beings. And that, after all, is what living is all about.