Thursday, March 6, 2008

Hillary Clinton's Idealistic Heart

Okay, okay...I know that I said my next post would be about how shows like Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia were sending feminism back to the Dark Ages but I just have one (or perhaps two) more politically-related posts to get out of my system first. And these posts do have a bit of a pro-woman bent, so....

All the time that I was a Wellesley student, I would hear about Hillary Clinton's commencement speech (from 1969 back when she was Hillary Rodham) and how wonderful it was and how inspirational - especially because she rewrote it practically on the spot as a response to the "official" commencement speech given by a then-U.S. Senator. But I'd never read it, and with all the hoopla surrounding the current Democratic campaigns, I thought I'd check it out. And it is indeed a very good speech...I may post the entirety of it here at some point because it is brief...but what struck me most was the poem she chose to close her remarks with.

The poem was written by a classmate of hers, Nancy Scheibner, and goes like this:

My entrance into the world of so-called "social problems"
Must be with quiet laughter, or not at all.
The hollow men of anger and bitterness
The bountiful ladies of righteous degradation
All must be left to a bygone age.
And the purpose of history is to provide a receptacle
For all those myths and oddments
Which oddly we have acquired
And from which we would become unburdened
To create a newer world
To transform the future into the present.
We have no need of false revolutions
In a world where categories tend to tyrannize our minds
And hang our wills up on narrow pegs.
It is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives.
And once those limits are understood
To understand that limitations no longer exist.
Earth could be fair. And you and I must be free
Not to save the world in a glorious crusade
Not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain
But to practice with all the skill of our being
The art of making possible.

Now, I know she didn't actually write those words herself, but she must have believed in them deeply because she chose them as her final thought...the emblem of all she was speaking about...the crystallization of her message to her fellow students, the faculty, and all in attendance who would then carry its essence out into the wider world.

Non ministrari, sed ministrare.

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