Paul Pimomo
Paul Pimomo**
Dear Tetso College and Higher Secondary Graduating Class of 2021: I feel privileged to address you and your parents and well-wishers. It is a special honor and I am grateful for this opportunity.
But before I say anything further, I’d like to dedicate this Talk to Dr PS Lorin, the founder Principal of Tetso College and my long time friend, going back to the 1980s in Shillong and in Southern Illinois. May I invite you all, then, to please join me for a moment of silence in grateful remembrance of Dr PS Lorin’s exemplary personal life and immensely successful work in higher education in Nagaland! I don’t doubt Dr Lorin’s presence amongst us this morning, in ways we may not immediately realize… Let’s then pause for a moment of silent recollection. Thank you, Lorin, for everything! Your life’s work continues in and through the people of Tetso College, whom I am so privileged to address here today.
Today’s Graduates and parents, you know better than I do how difficult this last year and a half has been for you to get here. The pandemic has ravaged the world, killing over 4 million people and disrupting our lives to an extent we’ve not seen in our lifetimes. This has been a season of confusion and unnecessary divisions, but across the divides, we have witnessed two realities in the world that we will do well to remember: first, the massive tragedy and suffering on a global scale. Most of it reported to us anonymously simply as numbers and statistics. But we know of course that each death is experienced intimately and personally bythe dear ones left behind to grieve. Some of you may have also lost a family member or a friend to the pandemic. All this goes to show we are all in this global problem together; and we must each do our part, however small it may seem to be. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible. The second reality is the other side of the tragedy: the simple fact of human caring and love for one another manifested in healthcare professionals and communities around the world, and the genius of human ingenuity and excellence among scientists and epidemiologists who have given us the means to cope with this world problem – vaccines.
So graduates, as we do our part to help eradicate the pandemic still raging in many parts of the world by getting vaccinated, let this day of your graduation be a celebration of the other side of the pandemic in your own lives, a day on which you plant two seeds of caring Empathy and professional Excellence for the common good. Your graduation today shows you are capable of both. You and your parents have had to overcome extra challenges to graduate this year, instead of later. That you have survived the pandemic maybe partly good luck, but your graduating today says something more than luck about you: it shows your determination to work hard and to succeed even in the worst of times. So Congratulations to everyone of you! And there are some of you here who are not just graduating. You are university toppers and gold medalists. Your achievement speaks volumes about your personal resolve and drive for excellence. You have my sincere admiration. Congratulations!
So what next? As successful as you are today, you didn’t get here, to this point of your life, by yourself. You did it in partnership with others, your family, professors, advisers, friends, and people in your community, whether the community is Tetso College, a church, town, village, and so on. And despite the fact that you are in Nagaland, there’s a community you belong to that is larger than wherever you are: the global human community, as well. Everybody says we live in an interconnected world, because we do, though we don’t often act like we mean it. We should mean it and live it. This event is a small example of a global community in action. I’m speaking to you Friday morning in Nagaland from my home in the American Northwest on a Thursday night. I live 12-and-half hours behind you, which means my life follows yours on the clock. That of course allows me to avoid all your mistakes and double all your successes! Would that it were true! Or perhaps my life is second hand, a diluted form of your original lives? I don’t know. The point though is that our lives as human beings happen in time and in space, at different clock times, here or there, and we define ourselves within the same difference of our times and places on earth. That is why I’ve decided to share with you for the remainder of my Talk about the human phenomenon of the sameness of difference in our lives with reference to just three aspects that apply to our situation today.
Let us start with two facts of life and a conclusion from those facts:
Difference is a fact of life and reality on planet Earth -- in the natural and material as well as animal and human world. Just look at the immense variety of biodiversity of plants, insects and reptiles, and animals. There is no counter argument here.
Diversity: If difference is a fact of life, then so is diversity. Diversity amplifies the visible differences that we see and hear and taste and smell all around us, not just the outward variations of difference, but the invisible inward states that govern our beings as well.
Co-existence: When we put the facts of difference and diversity on the planet together, the conclusion we are forced to arrive at is co-existence. Nothing seems to exist individually and separately. Everything exists in relation to something else. All share the only one habitable planet, as far as we know at this time.
Humans: What about humans? If we apply this natural reality of difference and diversity co-existing on earth to human beings, we quickly see that despite our diversity in color, size, gender, culture, etc., humans are more interconnected than we like to admit. We all don’t just exist within the same difference of space and time; we live in societies that are different on many levels but also similar in form and goals.
Human beings have thought about this reality of co-existence and framed it in various ways but arrived at basically the same conclusion. Just two examples. The Xhosa people of South Africa have a worldview they call “ubuntu,” which translates to “we are because of other people.” We came into the world because of other people, and we live not by and for ourselves alone, but with and for one another. In other words, as mindful-living teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh exhort us, we cannot exist apart from others; we are incomplete beings by ourselves. Yes, incomplete beings. Humans are naturally symbiotic beings. The reality of our lives is not “I think, therefore I am.” The reality is “I am not I without you,” hence, “I am not” unless “We are”. We inter-are, despite our differences and diversity.
Let us briefly apply this idea of sameness in difference to everyday life by looking at three examples.
1: We often confuse a person’s Temperament for their Values and Convictions. We mistake their personality for their character and worth.
In fact, persons with different temperaments and personalities can and do share the same or similar values and convictions.
Because we are remembering Dr PS Lorin in a special way today, let me refer you to his mild, calm, patient temperament; his genial personality, with the winningest of smiles anywhere in the world; his thoughtful and measured manner of speaking. And please indulge me for a contrast in temperament. Unlike Lorin, I’m impatient and passionate, too quick to react and respond to people’s views, and I show obvious annoyance with arrogant people. Despite this clear difference in our temperaments and personalities, I noticed very early on in our friendship, back in the 1980s Shillong, that we shared the same values: respect for people, kindness, justice and fair play, human rights, peaceful co-existence, hard work, and looking out for the common good. With these shared values, difference in our personalities did not matter; or if it did, it was a welcome form of difference and diversity in our friendship.
2. The second common confusion has to do with Separating Success from Failure as though they are Opposites.
The reality in fact is that Success and Failure are inseparable. They are different, of course, because we experience them differently, but they co-exist in us. They are intimately related. They inter-are; they collaborate in us to shape the kind of persons we become, depending on our response to them.
I bet you have your own examples of something you considered a failure which later turned out to be the start of an unexpected success. Not only that. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between success and failure.
Let me draw another example from Lorin and me, back in the late 1980s, when both of us had completed our PhDs in the US, he in Education, I in English. We were ready for our next move in life. If my idea of success then was returning to Nagaland and finding a job that would make a difference in our people’s lives, then I was a failure because I stayed back in the US. If Lorin’s idea of success was the same, to return to Nagaland and do something useful for our society, he was a success, a great success. Suppose our idea of success at that time were reversed, to stay back in the US, as was generally thoughts in those days, and we ended up where we did, I in the US and he in Nagaland: Looking back over the decades, what has our respective success or failure done to our lives as individuals and as educators? I would unhesitatingly say his was a huge success, much greater than mine, though I wouldn’t call my life a failure either.
In other words, what we call success and failure are different at the moment of the experience, in our perceptions of them, but not in their significance in our lives. Over a life time, success and failure are in fact inseparable. There’s one thing that crucially defines the difference though. What we make of them. We must be true to our better selves in both situations. We could say then that success and failure are like the two sides of a sheet of paper, the left and right sides, inseparable, or the back and the front of your palm; one exists because of the other. That’s why we say success and failure co-exist; they inter-are.
3. Another common confusion is assuming Death puts an end to Life and the possibility of Good. That is, thinking life is good, and because death is the end of life as we know it, therefore death is essentially bad.
Let’s apply the “inter-are” reality test here. That translates into there can be no life without death, and vice-versa. They are like the two sides of a paper, the front and the back of your palm. Life and Death inter-are. Accept them, welcome them both, because life would not have the meaning it has without death, its natural and essential counterpart.
For one thing, we know the human capacities and resources a person builds while alive live on and earn dividends for generations after the person dies. That is because life and death are in a relay. Relay race is not just a sports event. It is the law of nature. This is an equal-opportunity sport, unlike the summer Olympics going on in Tokyo. We are all participants in the Olympic human relay of life and death in good measure. Everyone born dies, sooner or later, to live on in transformed ways, much of it determined by the quality of lived life.
Today’s Tetso college and higher secondary class of 2021 are joining the more than 3000 young people who have graduated during Principal PS Lorin’s leadership of the college. The human resource of intellectual excellence, professional achievement, and community enrichment that have already resulted and will continue to flow from the life and work of Lorin, and everyone associated with his lifework in this regards, do not end with his death or those of the his associates. The relay of good and helpful people continues in greater numbers from generation to generation. This is not idle thinking, this is fact, a reality that we ignore only to our disadvantage and loss of happiness. Life and death are factually inseparable, they inter-are.
There’s another sense in which death does not put an end to life. When we die, we don’t turn to nothing, even physically, do we? Let’s figure this out together with the help of mindful-living teachers. Physically, we are made of the natural elements: earth (our body mass), water (we are about three-quarters liquid), fire (our body temperature – we need that to live), air (we breathe to stay alive). So we are elemental beings, children of Earth. And when we die, we return to our origin, the same elemental particles and forces that drive all life forms and things on earth. Once born, we’re alive, we live and die, and merge back with the source of our birth into life; we become one with the universal cosmos. As some yoga practitioners remind us, we are like soap bubbles floating on earth for a time, then burst to join the universe of air from which we took our first breath. So, it makes sense to say we don’t disappear into nothingness when we die; we merge with a fullness of being greater ourselves. We attain a higher dimension by emptying ourselves into a boundless whole.
But most of all -- and this is the crux of the relay of life and death -- we continue to live in and through each other, especially the ones we leave behind and pass the batons to – the living.
As you embark on the next phase of your life, dear Graduates of Tetso 2021, I want to leave you with a benediction, the blessing of a Naga Elder, in the form of a simple, fervent prayer to God for you:
May you advance mindfully on life’s journey: May good health, peace of mind, professional excellence, and joy of the common good keep you company today and henceforth, though all the days of your life and beyond!
Congratulations! Cheers to all!
*Tetso College, Graduation/Commencement Speech, June 30, 2021. Dedicated to Late Dr PS Lorin, Founder Principal of Tetso College, and my friend.
** Paul/Paulus Pimomo is Emeritus Professor of English at Central Washington University in Washington State, USA. He was educated in northeast India and the United States and taught in both countries. He taught a wide range of English literary studies. His publications are in diverse literary and interdisciplinary areas which have appeared in the UK, USA, The Netherlands, India, and Japan. He and his family live in the American northwest.
