Commencement Address to the Class of 2007

10 things I didn't know 40 years ago when I sat in those seats

Philip D. Hansten, PharmD
Professor Emeritus, University of Washington

May 5, 2007

Thank you very much. I am deeply honored to speak to you today. Now, if I had any sense at all, I could congratulate you and sit down, but it is only fair that you sit through one of these speeches, like I had to 40 years ago.

So, loath as I am to giving advice, I know it is expected. So here are 10 things I know now that I didn't know 40 years ago when I was sitting where you are.

But first I need to explain why Friedrich Nietzsche is on the podium. Nietzsche helped me choose several of the things I will talk about. By the way, Nietzsche's title was "Professor Extraordinarius" -- I don't know if you have that title here at UCSF, but it makes my current title of "Professor Emeritus" sound pretty puny!

So... I have 10 pieces of advice for you: 5 don'ts and 5 dos. (I'm going to start with some simple practical advice and then go on to the heavier stuff.)

The first don't is don't balance your checkbook.

It's a complete waste of time. There are 3 types of checkbook balancers. Type I people are obsessed and will spend hours tracking down a 3-cent discrepancy. Type II people are actually the pathetic ones. They long to be Type I with a perfectly balanced checkbook, but they're forever backsliding. They begin to envy Type I people. Every non-sufficient funds notice from the bank is tangible physical evidence of their abject failure as human beings. Then there are the emancipated -- Type III people. They never balance their checkbooks. Sure, they bounce checks now and then, but think of all the time they save.

So here's my advice. If you're a Type I or Type II, come to that bright light that is Type III. You are eventually going to end up as a Type III anyway -- when you are old and drooling like me -- so why not start now while you can still enjoy it? Besides... the nice people at the bank will always let you know if you are writing checks with no money in your account. They're good that way.

The second don't is don't despair when you lose something on your computer.

Here's why. Nineteenth-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle asked his friend John Stuart Mill to look over his manuscript on the French Revolution. Later, on the fateful night of March 6, 1835, Mill showed up at Carlyle's door and confessed that his maid had used the manuscript to start a fire. There was no copy. It was gone. Years of work down the drain. The next time you lose something on your computer, take comfort that whatever you lost couldn't possibly be as bad as this! So Carlyle forced himself to write the manuscript again, and it was a huge success. So don't despair when you get a fatal error or the blue screen of death on your computer. It could be a lot worse.

The next don't is practically obligatory for commencement speakers. It is don't make money your primary goal in life.

I can hear you saying, "Yeah, yeah... I've heard this a thousand times." Sure, it's a cliché, but consider the fact that sages from antiquity to the present are aligned on this. And all of the studies within cultures or across cultures agree as well. And all of our experience tells us this. But despite this overwhelming evidence, we cannot seem to disentangle ourselves from the illusion that wealth is required for happiness. It's a constant struggle but we have to fight it.

Don't #4 is don't be too left-brained.

This is an occupational hazard for people who have studied as much science as you all have.

For a number of years, I had discussion groups with students that began with Bertrand Russell's essay, "Useless Knowledge." The penetrating clarity of Russell's writing is reason enough to read him, but in this essay he argued persuasively that professional students need to spend time in intellectual pursuits outside their professions. Excellent advice.

An egregious example of left-brain excess was Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, who postponed his honeymoon to work on an exciting idea he had on atomic structure. Hmmm... theoretical physics trumping conjugal bliss. Any guy listening to this story who doesn't understand why this should be a problem will require a lot of remedial training by his wife.

5. The 5th don't is don't believe everything you think.

I'm almost done writing a book entitled The Ignorance of Certainty. Almost nobody escapes this foible. On the one hand, smart people are prone to taking their opinions too seriously. They assume that mental horsepower alone has allowed them to emerge from Plato's cave into the sunlight, and they are unique in apprehending the true nature of the world. And these people are not just in universities... they're also in barber shops and taxis; they sit next to you on airplanes; they're everywhere.

But those with more pedestrian intellectual gifts are also guilty of The Ignorance of Certainty, and they often fall into the trap of framing complex problems in simple terms. This can be rather dangerous if they happen to be in positions of great power. Fortified with certainty, and unencumbered by serious reflection, they gerrymander any set of facts to fit their preconceived notions.

One remedy for this is to be honest with yourself about past errors. I have passionately believed many things in my life that later turned out to be palpably untrue. I have misjudged things in every area from the trivial to the profound: science, politics, horticulture, map-reading, birthday presents for my wife; you name it... I've screwed it up.

A central thesis of 16th-century French essayist Montaigne was that intellectual humility is inseparable from wisdom. Charles Van Doren summarized Montaigne's thesis well: "All of us sometimes, and most of us always are steeped in a brew of illusions."

Okay, now we're done with the don'ts so now the 5 dos.

1. The first do is to be kind to each other.

At the end of a long interview, British philosopher Stephen Toulmin, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, was asked what big problems he still struggled with. He paused, and then said, "Why are people so nasty to each other?" It's a good question.

Now a digression before I circle back to my point. Given the talent and intelligence of this group of graduates, many of you will do great things. After all, the Swedish pharmacist Karl Scheele discovered 8 elements and made many other important discoveries. Another pharmacist, Englishman Luke Howard was the father of modern meteorology. He's the guy who came up with cloud names like stratus, cumulus, etc.

But while some of you will make dramatic contributions such as these to society at large, we all have one common legacy -- a legacy that is far removed from our professional accomplishments, our material accumulations or our standing in society. This legacy is the sum total of all our interactions with our fellow humans -- family, friends, patients, co-workers, neighbors, acquaintances... and yes, even total strangers whose lives cross ours only once.

Most of us will vanish without a trace, and in 200 years our descendents will be on ancestry.com trying to figure out who we were. So make the best of your time on earth by being kind to your fellow travelers. Everything else you accomplish is gravy.

The next do is to live dangerously!

Now I'm not talking about climbing Everest or wrestling alligators... and I'm certainly not suggesting that you cancel your honeymoon to work on a physics problem!

Nietzsche urged us to say yes to life, no matter what fate brings. For Nietzsche, seeking comfort and safety results in only a "wretched contentment" as he called and was a great sin. He wanted us to live dangerously!

Writer Reynolds Price recounted the words of a woman on her deathbed. She said, "Remember, I only regret my economies." My unscientific poll of elderly people tells the same story -- when forced to choose, almost all regret the things they didn't do rather than regretting the things they did do.

Henri Poincaré talks of people "...without curiosity, who, shunning excess, would not die of disease, but would surely die of ennui." I've thought about this, and I've decided that I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather did -- not screaming and yelling like the people in his car.

The next do is to adopt a contemplative habit of mind.

If you are too busy to spend time in reading and contemplation, you're too busy. Some believe that the mental delight of reading and contemplation is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. I think they have a point.

When looking for wisdom in the written word, look primarily to the past. Little of the thinking that is stylish in any given age will prove to be of lasting value. Look to what has survived from past ages, where time has winnowed the selection for us, and where most of the nonsense has already been discarded.

But the point is that we need to spend some time focusing inward; we need to become more centripetal. And it is not just mental delight; there is more practical wisdom in Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca than all the modern self-help books combined.

But, one can go too far in the contemplative life, of course. When British philosopher Alfred Ewing was asked what he looked forward to in the next life, Ewing replied, "God will tell me whether there are synthetic a priori propositions." Good grief!

The next do is if you want to have a positive outlook, develop a tragic sense of life. (This is the most important of my 10 pieces of advice.)

It sounds ridiculous, I know. But recognizing the essential tragic nature of human existence actually improves our outlook, while denying it can result in despair. This is one of Nietzsche's central points. Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl credits Nietzsche with giving him the intellectual insights to avoid abject despair during his ordeals.

Okay, so how does one develop a tragic sense of life? It requires several insights, but here are 3 of the more important:

• First, develop realistic expectations. Trying to construct a pain-free life is a fools errand. As singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter said, "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug."

  Oscar Wilde also knew about realistic expectations. He was not a fan of Niagara Falls, and during the time that Niagara was a popular honeymoon destination, Wilde observed that Niagara Falls was the second biggest disappointment in every newlywed woman's life. They needed more realistic expectations.

• The second step in developing the tragic sense of life is to recognize the relationship between suffering and joy. (This is a critical step.) It is a profound paradox: True joy springs not from good fortune, but from our rising above our struggles.

  As poet Kahlil Gibran said,

  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

  This is highly counterintuitive, but it is almost certainly true.

• The third step is to achieve what Viktor Frankl called "tragic optimism."

  Writer Joseph Conrad said, "We begin to live when we have conceived life as a tragedy." A rather impressive list of other people have come to the same conclusion: The Buddha, Heraclitus, Boethius, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, Emerson, Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, Proust, Dostoyevsky, Miguel de Unamuno, Viktor Frankl, C.S. Lewis, Jorge Borges, Albert Camus, Eric Hoffer, M. Scott Peck, Reinhold Neibuhr, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Pema Chödrön, and many, many others. For so many wise people to all come to the same conclusion suggests that we should listen up.

  Plus, it goes without saying that the absence of pain and suffering would ruin the country-western song business. Some classics include "I'm So Miserable Without You, It's Like Having You Here;" "You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly;" or my personal favorite, "You Done Tore Out My Heart And Stomped That Sucker Flat."

So... develop a tragic sense of life. You'll be glad you did.

5. The last do is to recognize the role of luck in your life.

I had some astonishing luck while I was here at UCSF, without which I would not be standing here before you. I was in the drug information center one evening in the late 1960s when a doctor came in, saw me working on a drug interaction project, and encouraged me to publish it.

So I took it to a publisher, and they were very pleasant and helpful... as they turned me down. I don't take rejection well, so I decided to give up the project.

But then I saw that same physician several more times, and he was relentless in encouraging me to get it published. So I eventually sent it to another publisher in Philadelphia and they accepted the manuscript.

The book was successful beyond my wildest expectations, and totally transformed my professional career. In the preface to the first edition I stated that the book would not have been written were it not for the encouragement from this doctor.

After the book was published, I was talking to a former colleague. He said, "Hey, you know that guy you dedicated your book to?" I replied, "Yeah, how is he doing?" "Well," he said "not so good -- he was just arrested." "Arrested?! For what?" "For impersonating a physician," he replied. This is a true story, and it gets worse. This "doctor" had put on a white coat and was examining female patients in the hospital. So I had dedicated my book to a pervert! But... if I had not just happened to meet this guy late one night in the drug information center, my career would have been entirely different. I was in the right place at the right time...

Then, last November another stroke of good luck allowed me to gain more notoriety in one night, than in my entire 40 years of working on drug interactions. Appropriately for this audience, the story involves a San Francisco native, Stephen Colbert, Junior. This is the eaglet that the San Francisco Zoo named after Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report on the Comedy Channel. As many of you know, Stephen Colbert is quite taken with his adopted son, and talks about him frequently. One day, just by luck, I noticed one of our cats, Yoda, staring up into a tall tree in our yard. Yoda had alerted me to some mating bald eagles, which I photographed and put into a booklet entitled "Lascivious Leucocephalus." I sent the booklet to Stephen Colbert as "Stephen Junior's First Eagle Porn Book" since Stephen Junior was now an eagle teenager, and might be interested in such things. They aired the photos on the November 14th show.

Now in all my years as a professor, my students almost never congratulated me on any professional accomplishment. But after my photos aired on The Colbert Report, dozens of students came up to me to express their admiration. It was very cool.

Now I am going to utter those magic words that graduation audiences long to hear... "In conclusion." So we now come full circle back to our friend, Nietzsche. Nietzsche said that life is not a riddle that has an answer. No, life is a messy, glorious, unpredictable, voluptuous, bewildering, and wondrous journey. I wish you well on your journey. Congratulations, and thank you very much.

Go To: Commencement Speeches