The education that we pay for barely prepares us for the challenges that lie ahead.
Here is what we ought to have been told at graduation instead of all the misplaced, self-congratulatory platitudes.
1. We strived to give you the best education. But what is the best education? The best education is not that which enables you to make a good living, nor even that which enables you to make a social contribution, but that which enables you on the path to freedom and individuation, and which, in the longer term, leads to the fullest living and the greatest social contribution.
2. Always ask for plenty of advice, but only from people whom you admire or seek to emulate. Best of all, seek advice from great works of literature and philosophy. Shakespeare and Plato are far wiser than anyone you could ever meet.