I recently read about Parker Palmer in a book on life design, and my interest was piqued sufficiently to lead me to a commencement speech he gave at Naropa University in 2015.
Naropa is a Buddhist educational center in Boulder, Colorado, so we had a not-your-typical-speaker at a not-your-typical-university scenario.
I thought one passage moving enough to share as a transcription:
Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. Sometimes we aim that violence at ourselves, as in overwork that leads to burnout or worse, or in the many forms of substance abuse...The good news is that suffering can be transformed into something that brings life, not death. It happens every day.
I’m 76 years old, I now know many people who’ve suffered the loss of the dearest person in their lives.
At first they go into deep grief, certain that their lives will never again be worth living. But then they slowly awaken to the fact that not in spite of their loss, but because of it, they’ve become bigger, more compassionate people, with more capacity of heart to take in other people’s sorrows and joys.
These are broken-hearted people, but their hearts have been broken open, rather than broken apart.
So every day exercise your heart, by taking in life’s little pains and joys. That kind of exercise will make your heart supple, the way a runner makes a muscle supple, so that when it breaks, (and it surely will,) it will break not into a fragment grenade, but into a greater capacity for love.
What attracted me to Parker Palmer's story is that he was living a life of high and admirable principles, but found out along the way that the life he was pursuing was inauthentic for him, so he courageously made a late-stage pivot.
He is a writer, thinker, and philosopher whose journey resonates with where I find myself now.
You can watch the rest of the speech below, should you possess the time and inclination.