Commencement Address

The Mercer University School of Medicine

By Senator Cecil Staton

May 3, 2008

Being Who you Really are

President Underwood, Dean Dalton, distinguished faculty, family and friends, and most of all graduates—good afternoon. Thank you for the very high honor of being your commencement speaker on this most momentous of occasions.

As I begin, I am mindful of the fact that next Sunday is Mother’s Day. It has always seemed appropriate to me that spring commencements occur around Mother’s Day. There is an old proverb that says, “God couldn’t be everywhere, so he made mothers.” Certainly, graduates, you would not be where you are without the gracious efforts of mothers and fathers, other family members and friends. Let’s ask the mothers and fathers of our graduates to stand, be recognized, honored, and thanked this afternoon. Stand up mothers and fathers.

The giving of a commencement speech is a time-honored tradition in American higher education. But let me be honest with you. I have four earned degrees and I can’t remember a single word uttered by any of the commencement speakers I sat through. Of course at Oxford it was all in Latin, so I didn’t understand a word of it any way. Now my lack of memory probably says more about me than it does about the speakers at my commencement ceremonies. But it puts me in mind of the fact that I am the only thing that stands between you and that degree and that well earned title that you will take with you this day and forever hold and have attached to your identity.

So I am very clear about my humble role in this process. But while I have you here, captured for a few moments, allow me to make a feeble attempt to say something that may be worth remembering, at least for a little while, if your memory is better than my own.

I could tell you how great you are for having reached this milestone in your lives, but you already know how great you are and your family and friends will be impressed enough by your new degree and title.

I could tell you what a difficult road you have before you. It’s tough out there, especially for all things related to health care. Some want it nationalized, removing the little that is left of the free market in health care arena. Just remember—there are politicians, insurance company executives, and lawyers out there just wringing their hands as they devise ways to make the life and work of health care professionals more difficult and less rewarding. They live for it.

For you future doctors, I could remind you that there is still a long road ahead as you prepare for countless hours and sleepless nights you’ll face during your residencies.

I could warn you about the high divorce rates among those who have gone before you, the potential for addictions, burnout, financial difficulties, and the numerous temptations that will be placed in your paths. But all that is way to deep for today, so I’ll aim for something even deeper, even more thought provoking.

Instead I have a question for you.

I simply want to ask you a question this afternoon, an important question that you need to be able to answer, in my opinion, if the accomplishments behind the degree you are about to receive are to reach their fullest potential in your life and work. A simple little question. And it is this. Who are you? Really, who are you? It is a simple question, and yet your answer, I believe, makes all the difference in the world.

Now I know whom you will officially be in just a few minutes when your degree is awarded. Some of you are going to receive your master’s degree in your field of study, or many of you are going officially to become a “doctor.” That sounds good, doesn’t it? You’ve worked hard. You’ve earned it. To your parents, to your spouses, to your close friends, to your bankers, and even to your egos, that sounds really good. I’m no medical doctor, but I remember standing before the vice chancellor of Oxford University when I received my doctor of philosophy degree and I could have almost floated on air out of the ancient Sheldonian Theatre that afternoon in October of 1988, wearing this same strange garment I have on today.

But I want to know who you are and more importantly, I want to make sure you know who you are as you leave this place with a new name and a new title this afternoon. It is important that you have an answer to that seemingly simple, but in reality enormously complex question.

Now some people need a title to tell them who they are. I’m Dr. so in so. I’m President so in so. I’m Senator so in so. In the academic world we like to be called Dr. Staton. In the political world we really like to hear our titles. Good morning Senator Staton. Can I get you a cup of coffee Senator Staton?

But let me tell you a secret. The Mercer University School of Medicine can call you a “doctor” this afternoon or award you a master’s degree in a health related field. Institutions have the power to tell you who you are, but if all you have is a title, if that is all you know about yourself, then you don’t know much. Don’t let that title or degree go to your head. Without integrity and character and purpose your degree is just a piece of paper and your title, just a hollow word.

Some people need money to tell them who they are. Some of you, depending on the path you take, have the potential to make a lot of money by comparison to the majority of people on this planet. William Sloane Coffin, longtime chaplain at Yale, reminds us that there are, of course, two ways of being rich. One is to have a lot of money, the other to have few needs. In today’s society the goal of too many is imply to find ways to make a lot of money as though that is all that is needed for identity and worth in this world. Health care professionals are in great demand. In fact there is a coming severe shortage in many areas and that may mean that you will have the ability to make a lot more money than the vast majority of Americans, and you’ll be tempted, but don’t let your money tell the world who you are and control your destiny.

Some people need power to tell them who they are. I work in a world where that is too often the case. Politicians too often seek power, gain power, and hang on to power—it is their only goal—only to sacrifice their integrity, and sometimes their families, with little really to show for it at the end of the day. Not long after I was elected I was fortunate to receive council from a retiring older political leader, who to the world would have seemed to be a powerful and respected man in his community. But he said at the end of his career of power, I lost my wife, I lost my children, and I lost my self-respect in my quest for power. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. You must be more than the power you hold in your hands and you will often times hold considerable power over those you care for and work with.

Some people need enemies to tell them who they are. Enemies are easily made and easily found, but unworthy of that much power over our lives. Some people need their mistakes to tell them who they are. You are going to make mistakes. Doctors are human. Always remember, you are more than one act, one mistake. Learn to forgive others and to forgive yourself and move on. Remember always, there is more mercy in God than there is sin in us (Coffin).

And some people have their identity wrapped up in their work. That will be true for some, if not many of you. I confess I am more sympathetic with this one. This is my real point to you this afternoon. I hope the end of all your education is really vocation and that your commitment to your vocation will ultimately answer my question about your identity. For you see vocation matters to human beings. I believe that to be ultimately fulfilled, humans need a calling, a mission, a purpose, and in that purpose is the potential to really discover who you are.

Some people journey through life without purpose, without a calling, without a vocation. I hope that you are here today because you have found your calling, your sacred duty, and that in your living out that vocation, we will have the chance to see who you really are.

The sage Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.” And “Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.”

“The great British philosopher John Ruskin said, “The primary reward for human toil is not what you get for it, it’s what you become by it.” Ultimately I think he is right. Human potential is really a matter of being more, not having more.

Almost a century ago, Stephen Paget, the British physician and author, in his book Confessio Medici, wrote these words, which perhaps you have read or heard before:

“Every year, young men (and women) enter the medical profession who neither are born doctors, nor have any great love of medicine, nor are helped by name or influence. Without a welcome, without money, without prospects, they fight their way into practice, and in practice; they find it hard work, ill-thanked, ill-paid; there are times when they say, ‘What call had I to be a doctor? I should have done better for myself and my wife and the children in some other calling.’ But they stick to it, and that not only from necessity, but from pride, honor, conviction; and Heaven, sooner or later, lets them know what it thinks of them. The information comes quite as a surprise to them, being the first received from any source, that they were indeed called to be doctors; and they hesitate to give the name of divine vocation to work paid by the job, and shamefully underpaid at that. Calls, they imagine, should master men, beating down on them: surely a diploma, obtained by hard examination and hard cash, and signed and sealed by earthly examiners, cannot be a summons from heaven. But it may be. For if a doctor’s life may not be a divine vocation, then no life is a vocation, and nothing is divine.” [i]

So, dear graduating students, wrestle well with the question of who you are. Who or what tells you who you are? Don’t let money tell you who you are. Don’t let power tell you who you are. Don’t let enemies or even your sins tell you are. But may we come to see who you really are through your exercising of your vocation, a divine vocation if there is one, of healing, comfort, and help for we feeble humans.

The great German writer Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) wrote, “If each one does their duty as an individual and if each one works in their own proper vocation, it will be right with the whole.”

That is my most sincere hope and prayer for each one of you today. Congratulations.