An Inspirational Story
(Mr Vivek
Kumar)
Offbeat Graduation Speech Gets Standing Ovation:
2012's Baccalaureate speaker at the University
of Pennsylvania was an
unconventional choice for an Ivy League school. To address their newly-minted
graduates, aspiring to dazzling careers, they picked a man who has never in his
adult life, applied for a job. A man who hasn't worked for pay in nearly a
decade, and whose self-stated mission is simply "to bring smiles to the
world and stillness to my heart". This off-the-radar speaker launched his
address with a startling piece of advice. Following up with four key insights
gleaned from a radical 1000 km walking pilgrimage through the villages of India. As he
closed his one-of-a-kind Graduation Day speech, the sea of cap and gowned
students rose to their feet for a standing ovation. What follows is the full
transcript of the talk by Nipun Mehta.
Thank you
to my distinguished friends, President Amy Gutmann, Provost Vincent Price and
Rev. Charles Howard for inviting me to share a few reflections on this joyous
occasion. It is an honor and privilege to congratulate you -- UPenn’s class of
2012.
Right now
each one of you is sitting on the runway of life primed for takeoff. You are
some of the world's most gifted, elite, and driven college graduates – and you
are undeniably ready to fly. So what I’m about to say next may sound a bit
crazy. I want to urge you, not to fly, but to – walk. Four years ago, you
walked into this marvelous laboratory of higher learning. Today, head s held
high, you walk to receive your diplomas. Tomorrow, you will walk into a world
of infinite possibilities.
But
walking, in our high-speed world, has unfortunately fallen out of favor. The
word “pedestrian” itself is used to describe something ordinary and
commonplace. Yet, walking with intention has deep roots.
Australia's aboriginal youth go on walkabouts as a rite of
passage; Native American tribes conduct vision quests in the wilderness; in
Europe, for centuries, people have walked the Camino de Santiago, which spans
the breadth of Spain.
Such pilgrims place one foot firmly in front of the other, to fall in step with
the rhythms of the universe and the cadence of their own hearts.
Back in
2005, six months into our marriage, my wife and I decided to “step it up”
ourselves and go on a walking pilgrimage. At the peak of our efforts with
ServiceSpace, we wondered if we had the capacity to put aside our worldly
success and seek higher truths. Have you ever thought of something and then
just known that it had to happen? It was one of those things. So we sold all
our major belongings, and bought a one-way ticket to India. Our plan was to head to
Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, since he had always been an inspiration to us, and
then walk South. Between the two of us, we budgeted a dollar a day, mostly for
incidentals -- which meant that for our survival we had to depend utterly on
the kindness of strangers. We ate whatever food was offered and slept wherever
place was offered.
Now, I do
have to say, such ideas come with a warning: do not try this at home, because
your partner might not exactly welcome this kind of honeymoon.
For us,
this walk was a pilgrimage -- and our goal was simply to be in a space larger
than our egos, and to allow that compassion to guide us in unscripted acts of
service along the way. Stripped entirely of our comfort zone and accustomed
identities, could we still “keep it real”? That was our challenge.
We ended
up walking 1000 kilometers over three months. In that period, we encountered
the very best and the very worst of human nature – not just in others, but also
within ourselves. Soon after we ended
the pilgrimage, my uncle casually popped the million dollar question at the
dinner table: "So, Nipun, what did you learn from this walk?" I
didn't know where to begin. But quite spontaneously, an acronym -- W-A-L-K --
came to mind, which encompassed the key lessons we had learned, and continue to
relearn, even to this day. As you start the next phase of your journey, I want
to share those nuggets with the hope that it might illuminate your path in some
small way too.
The W in WALK stands for Witness. When you
walk, you quite literally see more. Your field of vision is nearly 180 degrees,
compared to 40 degrees when you’re traveling at 62 mph. Higher speeds smudge
our peripheral vision, whereas walking actually broadens your canvas and dramatically
shifts the objects of your attention. For instance, on our pilgrimage, we would
notice the sunrise everyday, and how, at sunset, the birds would congregate for
a little party of their own. Instead of adding Facebook friends online, we were
actually making friends in person, often over a cup of hot “chai”. Life around
us came alive in a new way. A walking
pace is the speed of community. Where high speeds facilitate separation, a
slower pace gifts us an opportunity to commune.
As we traversed rural India
at the speed of a couple of miles per hour, it became clear how much we could
learn simply by bearing witness to the villagers' way of life. Their entire
mental model is different -- the multiplication of wants is replaced by the
basic fulfillment of human needs. When you are no longer preoccupied with asking
for more and more stuff; then you just take what is given and give what is
taken. Life is simple again. A farmer explained it to us this way: "You
cannot make the clouds rain more; you cannot make the sun shine less. They are
just nature's gifts -- take it or leave it." When the things around you
are seen as gifts, they are no longer a means to an end; they are the means and
the end. And thus, a cow-herder will tend to his animals with the compassion of
a father, a village woman will wait 3 hours for a delayed bus without a trace
of anger, a child will spend countless hours fascinated by stars in the galaxy,
and finding his place in the vast cosmos.
So with
today's modernized tools at your ready disposal, don’t let yourself zoom
obliviously from point A to point B on the highways of life; try walking the
backroads of the world, where you will witness a profoundly inextricable
connection with all living things.
The A in WALK stands for Accept. When
walking in this way, you place yourself in the palm of the universe, and face
its realities head on. We walked at the peak of summer, in merciless
temperatures hovering above 120 degrees. Sometimes we were hungry, exhausted
and even frustrated. Our bodies ached for just that extra drink of water, a few
more moments in the shade, or just that little spark of human kindness. Many
times we received that extra bit, and our hearts would overflow with gratitude.
But sometimes we were abruptly refused, and we had to cultivate the capacity to
accept the gifts hidden in even the most challenging of moments.
I
remember one such day, when we approached a rest house along a barren highway.
As heavy trucks whizzed past, we saw a sign, announcing that guests were hosted
at no charge. “Ah, our lucky day,” we thought in delight. I stepped inside
eagerly. The man behind the desk looked up and asked sharply, “Are you here to
see the temple?” A simple yes from my lips would have instantly granted us a
full meal and a room for the night. But it wouldn’t have been the truth. So
instead, I said, “Well, technically, no sir. We’re on a walking pilgrimage to
become better people. But we would be glad to visit the temple.” Rather
abruptly, he retorted: “Um, sorry, we can’t host you.” Something about his curt
arrogance triggered a slew of negative emotions. I wanted to make a snide
remark in return and slam the door on my way out. Instead, I held my raging ego
in check. In that state of physical and mental exhaustion, it felt like a
Herculean task—but through the inner turmoil a voice surfaced within, telling
me to accept the reality of this moment.
There was
a quiet metamorphosis in me. I humbly let go of my defenses, accepted my fate
that day, and turned to leave without a murmur. Perhaps the man behind the
counter sensed this shift in me, because he yelled out just then, “So what
exactly are you doing again?” After my brief explanation he said, “Look, I
can’t feed you or host you, because rules are rules. But there are restrooms out
in the back. You could sleep outside the male restroom and your wife can sleep
outside the female restroom.” Though he was being kind, his offer felt like
salt in my wounds. We had no choice but to accept.
That day
we fasted and that night, we slept by the bathrooms. A small lie could’ve
bought us an upgrade, but that would’ve been no pilgrimage. As I went to sleep
with a wall separating me from my wife, I had this beautiful, unbidden vision
of a couple climbing to the top of a mountain from two different sides. Midway
through this difficult ascent, as the man contemplated giving up, a small
sparrow flew by with this counsel, “Don’t quit now, friend. Your wife is eager
to see you at the top.” He kept climbing. A few days later, when the wife found
herself on the brink of quitting, the little sparrow showed up with the same
message. Step by step, their love sustained their journey all the way to the
mountaintop. Visited by the timely grace of this vision, I shed a few grateful
tears -- and this story became a touchstone not only in our relationship, but
many other noble friendships as well.
So I
encourage you to cultivate equanimity and accept whatever life tosses into your
laps -- when you do that, you will be blessed with the insight of an inner
transformation that is yours to keep for all of time.
The L in WALK stands for Love. The more
we learned from nature, and built a kind of inner resilience to external
circumstances, the more we fell into our natural state -- which was to be
loving. In our dominant paradigm, Hollywood
has insidiously co-opted the word, but the love I’m talking about here is the
kind of love that only knows one thing -- to give with no strings attached.
Purely. Selflessly.
Most of
us believe that to give, we first need to have something to give. The trouble
with that is, that when we are taking stock of what we have, we almost always
make accounting errors. Oscar Wilde once quipped, “Now-a-days, people know the
price of everything, but the value of nothing.” We have forgotten how to value
things without a price tag. Hence, when we get to our most abundant gifts –
like attention, insight, compassion -- we confuse their worth because they’re,
well, priceless. On our walking pilgrimage, we noticed that those who had the
least were most readily equipped to honor the priceless. In urban cities, the
people we encountered began with an unspoken wariness: “Why are you doing this?
What do you want from me?” In the countryside, on the other hand, villagers
almost always met us with an open-hearted curiosity launching straight in with:
“Hey buddy, you don’t look local. What’s your story?”
In the
villages, your worth wasn’t assessed by your business card, professional
network or your salary. That innate simplicity allowed them to love life and cherish
all its connections. Extremely poor villagers, who couldn’t even afford their
own meals, would often borrow food from their neighbors to feed us. When we
tried to refuse, they would simply explain: “To us, the guest is God. This is
our offering to the divine in you that connects us to each other.” Now, how
could one refuse that? Street vendors often gifted us vegetables; in a very
touching moment, an armless fruit-seller once insisted on giving us a slice of
watermelon. Everyone, no matter how old, would be overjoyed to give us
directions, even when they weren’t fully sure of them. And I still remember the
woman who generously gave us water when we were extremely thirsty -- only to
later discover that she had to walk 10 kilometers at 4AM to get that one bucket
of water. These people knew how to give, not because they had a lot, but
because they knew how to love life. They didn’t need any credit or assurance
that you would ever return to pay them back. Rather, they just trusted in the
pay-it-forward circle of giving. When you come alive in this way, you'll
realize that true generosity doesn’t start when you have some thing to give,
but rather when there’s nothing in you that’s trying to take. So I hope that
you will make all your precious moments an expression of loving life.
And
lastly, the K in WALK stands for Know
Thyself. Sages have long informed us that when we serve others
unconditionally, we shift from the me-to-the-we and connect more deeply with
the other. That matrix of inter-connections allows for a profound quality of
mental quietude. Like a still lake undisturbed by waves or ripples, we are then
able to see clearly into who we are and how we can live in deep harmony with
the environment around us. When one foot walks, the other rests. Doing and
being have to be in balance. Our rational mind wants to rightfully ensure
progress, but our intuitive mind also needs space for the emergent, unknown and
unplanned to arise. Doing is certainly important, but when we aren't aware of
our internal ecosystem, we get so vested in our plans and actions, that we
don't notice the buildup of mental residue. Over time, that unconscious
internal noise starts polluting our motivations, our ethics and our spirit. And
so, it is critical to still the mind. A melody, after all, can only be created
with the silence in between the notes. As we walked -- witnessed, accepted,
loved -- our vision of the world indeed grew clearer. That clarity,
paradoxically enough, blurred our previous distinctions between me versus we, inner
transformation versus external impact, and selfishness versus selflessness.
They were inextricably connected. When a poor farmer gave me a tomato as a
parting gift, with tears rolling down his eyes, was I receiving or giving? When
sat for hours in silent meditation, was the benefit solely mine or would it
ripple out into the world? When I lifted the haystack off an old man's head and
carried it for a kilometer, was I serving him or serving myself? Which is to
say, don't just go through life -- grow through life. It will be easy and
tempting for you to arrive at reflexive answers -- but make it a point,
instead, to acknowledge mystery and welcome rich questions ... questions that
nudge you towards a greater understanding of this world and your place in it.
That’s
W-A-L-K. And today, at this momentous milestone of your life, you came in
walking and you will go out walking. As you walk on into a world that is
increasingly aiming to move beyond the speed of thought, I hope you will each
remember the importance of traveling at the speed of thoughtfulness. I hope
that you will take time to witness our magnificent interconnections. That you
will accept the beautiful gifts of life even when they aren’t pretty, that you
will practice loving selflessly and strive to know your deepest nature.
I want to
close with a story about my great grandfather. He was a man of little wealth
who still managed to give every single day of his life. Each morning, he had a
ritual of going on a walk -- and as he walked, he diligently fed the ant hills
along his path with small pinches of wheat flour. Now that is an act of
microgenerosity so small that it might seem utterly negligible, in the grand
scheme of the universe. How does it matter? It matters in that it changed him
inside. And my great grandfather's goodness shaped the worldview of my
grandparents who in turn influenced that of their children -- my parents. Today
those ants and the ant hills are gone, but my great grandpa’s spirit is very
much embedded in all my actions and their future ripples. It is precisely these
small, often invisible, acts of inner transformation that mold the stuff of our
being, and bend the arc of our shared destiny.
On your
walk, today and always, I wish you the eyes to see the anthills and the heart
to feed them with joy. May you be blessed. Change yourself -- change the world.
(This is
a transcript of the Baccalaureate address to UPenn's graduating class of 2012,
delivered by Nipun Mehta. Nipun is the founder of ServiceSpace.org, a nonprofit
that works at the intersection of gift-economy, technology and volunteerism.
His popular TED talk Designing for Generosity provides an overview of their
work and guiding principles)
