Wear sunscreen

I was listing to the radio in the car over the weekend, and stumbled upon this song twice. Somehow I missed this song - this experience - in 1999. Then I realized I was living in Cote d'Ivoire, living it (click below).

Baz Lurhmann's Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen).

It turns out this song was a column written by journalist Mary Schmich: Schmich's June 1, 1997 column began with the injunction to wear sunscreen and continued with discursive advice for living without regret. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one.

This reminded me of my own "commencement speech". When I graduated from the University of Iowa in 1996, I made my own graduation announcements (I mean really, who needs those fancy expensive things). On the front was a photo of me as a baby laughing announcing my graduation. On the back was a long statement that follows below. (My only copy of this hangs out with my box of resume paper - which is where it should be - always look at where you think you might want to go next):

On my way to an undergraduate playwright's meeting, a friend asked me what I was going to do now that I was graduating. I wrote this:

Because I am greedy and because I am graduating, I'm going to tell you what I want:

I want to learn Portuguese. I want to live in Brazil and master the cello. I want to a masters in Arabic and Senegalese culture and be able to do the Samba in my sleep and hit that center in Salsa that I always seem to miss.

I want to be married someday - honestly I do.

I want to climb Mt. St. Helen's again. I want to become a master chef. I want to have my own arts center for youth, I want to give youth a voice. I want to be forever young at heart. I want to play the piano. I want to have a friend teach me to dance in a tight circle like they do in Zaire. I want to visit Paris in the summer and Moscow too.

I want to teach French on Native American Reservations - there was a need a few years ago. I want to play soccer again - every day. I want to learn Hindi. (I wanted to be Gandhi - but that was when I was young and didn't know anything.)

I want to meet Marisa Monte and maybe Nick Cave and visit Haiti and go to Trinidad during festival and learn Spanish. I want to make an award-winning documentary and be a one-hit filmmaker. I want to work for PBS and NPR and BBC.

I want to live with the gypsies of North Africa for a while. I want to name the new color of a crayola crayon. I want to be some one's fairy godmother.

I want to be an art therapist. I want to spend 20 years observing a primate we know nothing about. I want to increase consciousness about malnutrition, disease, social injustice, justice, joy and hope.

I want to sleep on a firm mattress with a feather pillow under five quilts. I want to drink lemon tea in the mornings and stay up every night engrossed in conversation about God and love and literature and dance and faint from exhaustion. I want to live every second and not let it kill me. I want to be able to live by the principle Voltaire once stated and that is "Change your small corner of the world and be content." I want ethnic cleansing to stop. I want Muslims to be respected and blacks and Latinos and the people who try every day.

I want every single person to respect at least one other single person.

I want to visit Nepal. I want to stop the Chinese from destroying Tibet. I want Tibetans to reclaim their own culture. I want to live by the Buddhist saying "We can all choose to be awake."

And I want you to, too.