2008 Commencement Address, William F. Weld, Governor of Massachusetts, 1991-1997

Chairman McNamara, Members of the Board of Trustees, Headmaster Casertano, members of the graduating class of 2008, and ladies and gentlemen:

It is a high honor for me to be able to say a few words here today. Ed Pulling was a friend of my parents, and I can remember his name being pronounced in hagiographic tones at our dining room table from my earliest days. When the first of our family went away to school, he went to Millbrook. My brother David loved this school with all his heart and all his might, and since his day, I have seen many, many nephews and nieces pass through these precincts, up to and including our current Weld family representatives, my niece, Amanda, and our graduating senior, my nephew and godson, Will.

Talking about a laying on of hands, it was 25 years ago from my brother’s graduation until the graduation of his son, Christopher, who is here today, and 25 more years from Chris’ graduation until today.

You graduating seniors are stepping out into the information age where you will have at your fingertips – nay, you will be bombarded by – more facts and studies and summaries and reports and analyses and bits of information than were even available in 1931, when Mr. Pulling founded Millbrook, or in 1962 when I graduated from one of your sister schools. In making sense of this barrage, in assimilating it to your purposes, one of your chief mainstays will be curiosity, which I understand to be a core theme at Millbrook this year.

Contrary to the popular saying, curiosity not only did not kill the cat, it gave the cat its nine lives. I have had nine careers since joining the workforce – not nine jobs, nine careers – and would attribute that circumstance in large measure to curiosity.

I am speaking of something more than a desire to know individual facts. We may be consumed with a desire to know the details of someone else’s life: that is not curiosity, that is prurience. We may be obsessed with a desire to know who it is that we shall end up marrying: that is not curiosity, that is impatience.

To me, the most generative form of curiosity involves two things: a continuing sense of wonder and a spirit of adventure.

People who love the outdoors have this sense of wonder. My brother, David, Will’s father, could take in an outdoor panorama for three hours without moving. So can any of us for whom the natural world is a cathedral.

Constant activity doesn’t necessarily move your forward. If you want to understand a forest – whether of trees or facts or problems or opportunities – the most important watchword is to be still, to look and listen and consider.

By a spirit of adventure, I don’t mean you have to pack up on a tramp steamer to Borneo. I mean only an openness to new things. If you have that attitude, you will view each job as a training ground for the next. You will never rest on your oars, never stand pat.

We cannot all be Lincoln, whose mind was described as “a little engine that knew no rest.” But we can be willing – willing to learn or try something new.  Entertaining new ways is never easy. Whether you are studying a foreign language or sitting for the bar, one thing is inescapably true – if it doesn’t hurt, you’re no learning anything.

One last point: in being open to change, you don’t have to chuck over what you’ve got. Any oarsman will tell you that you get further if you steer by your wake. Indeed, we have a name for that – it’s called character.

Maintaining a sense of wonder and a spirit of adventure will produce forward motion in your life, and additions to your knowledge and experience. You wil have both satisfaction and joy along the way. Just don’t forget to hang on to what Millbrook has already given you.

Thank you.