Instead, We Watch Television

'Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.'
--from a recent commencement address by entrepreneur, author and environmental activist Paul Hawken, at the University of Portland. You can read the entire address here. Thanks to our new acquaintance, Executive Happiness Coach Jim Smith, for pointing us to it. This gets our nod as the best commencement address of the '09 season. In 2005, the nod went to author David Foster Wallace, and in 2004 it was comedian Jon Stewart. We've also pointed in the past to an extraordinary commencement address William Zinsser gave at Wesleyan University in 1988. But enough about us. Does anyone have any favorite commencement addresses they'd like to point out? Or perhaps memories of their own graduation speaker? We'd love to hear about it.