Stephen King on Giving – Vassar commencement address, 2001
http://commencement.vassar.edu/2001/010520.king.html
Keywords: King, Stephen; giving; charity; commencement;
What are you going to do, Vassar oh-one? Who will be the doctors, the lawyers, the writers, the painters, the executives, the politicians? Who’s going to look around at age forty-five, surprised as hell to find himself or herself the head concierge at the Hotel Carlyle in New York and say, “How in the hell did I wind up here?”
What will you do? Well, I’ll tell you one thing you’re not going to do, and that’s take it with you. I’m worth I don’t exactly know how many millions of dollars—I’m still in the Third World compared to Bill Gates, but on the whole I’m doing okay—and a couple of years ago I found out what “you can’t take it with you” means. I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you’re lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard. If you find yourself in the ER with a serious infarct, or if the doctor tells you yeah, that lump you felt in your breast is a tumor, you can’t wave your Diners Club at it and make it go away. My life, as it happened, was saved. The man who saved it was a volunteer EMT named Paul Fillebrown. He did the things that needed to be done at the scene, and then he drove me to the nearest hospital at a hundred and ten miles an hour. And while Paul Fillebrown may have an American Express Card, I doubt very much if it’s a gold one, or God save us, the black one that offers double Frequent Flyer miles and special deals at Club Med.
We all know that life is ephemeral, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life’s simple backstage truths, We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we’re just as broke. Warren Buffet? Going to go out broke. Bill Gates? Going to go out broke. Tom Hanks? Going out broke. President Fergusson? Broke. Steve King? Broke. You guys? Broke. Not a crying dime. And how long in between? How long have you got to be in the chips? “I’m aware of the time passin’ by, they say in the end it’s the blink of an eye.” That’s how long. Just the blink of an eye…
Let me give you some rough numbers, okay? The class of 2001, if everyone graduated on time, would consist of six hundred and twenty-four men and women… Now let’s say each of you works forty years…this class as a group can expect to earn 984 million dollars during its active years in the American economy. ..Almost a billion dollars. And so what? I’m aware of the time passin’ by, they say in the end it’s the blink of an eye, and the scary man said I was going to go out broke. The scary man actually says more than that. The scary man says all the money you will earn, all the credit you will swing like Tom Sawyer’s dead cat on a string, all the stocks you will buy, all the mutual funds and precious metals you will trade—all of that is mostly smoke and mirrors. You will continue to put on your pants one leg at a time no matter how many T-bills you have or how many shares of General Electric in your portfolio. It’s still going to be quarter-past getting late whether you tell the time on a Timex or a Rolex. No matter how large your bank account, your kids will still play their music too loud when you get to be my age. No matter how many credit cards you have, sooner or later things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have which you can really call your own: your body, your spirit, and your mind.
Yet for a short period—let’s say forty years, but the merest blink in the larger course of things—you and your contemporaries will wield enormous power: the power of the economy, the power of the hugest military-industrial complex in the history of the world, the power of the American society you will create in your own image. That’s your time, your moment. Don’t miss it. I think my generation did, although I don’t blame us too much; it’s over in the blink of an eye and it’s easy to miss.
Of all the power which will shortly come into your hands—gradually at first, but then with a speed that will take your breath away—the greatest is undoubtedly the power of compassion, the ability to give. We have enormous resources in this country—resources you yourselves will soon command—but they are only yours on loan. Only yours to give for a short while. You’ll die broke. In the end, it’s the blink of an eye. I came here to talk about charity, and I want you to think about it on a large scale.
Should you give away what you have? Of course you should. I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others, and why not? All you have is on loan, anyway. All you want to get at the getting place, from the Maserati you may dream about to the retirement fund some broker will try to sell you on, none of that is real. All that lasts is what you pass on. The rest is smoke and mirrors…
Here’s another scary thing to think about before you leave here. Imagine a nice little back yard, surrounded by a board fence. Dad—a pleasant fellow, a little plump, wearing an apron that says YOU MAY KISS THE COOK—is tending the barbecue. Mom and the kids are setting the picnic table by the backyard pool: fried chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, a chocolate cake for dessert. And standing around that fence, looking in, are emaciated men and women, starving children. They are silent. They only watch. That family at the picnic is us, ladies and gentlemen; that back yard is America, and those hungry people on the other side of the fence, watching us sit down to eat, include far too much of the rest of the world. It’s Asia and the subcontinent; it’s countries in Central Europe where people live on the edge from one harvest to the next; it’s South America, where they'[re burning down the rainforests to make room for housing developments and for grazing lands where next year’s Big Macs are now being raised; most of all it’s Africa, where AIDS is pandemic—not epidemic but pandemic—and starvation is a fact of life. Am I overstating? Well, America contains five percent of the world’s population and uses up seventy-five percent of the world’s resources, so you tell me. What we scrape down the kitchen disposal after Thanksgiving dinner for a family of eight would feed a Liberian village for a week, so you tell me. And the Woodstock Generation, which set out to change the world, has, by and large, subsided into a TV-driven existence of quiet and unobtrusive selfishness. While our national worth has tripled over the last quarter-century, the help we give the world’s poor has sunk back to 1973 levels, so you tell me, you dare to tell me I’m overstating the case.” In West Africa, the average lifespan is thirty-nine years. Infant mortality in the first year is fifteen percent. It’s not a pretty picture, but we have the power to help, the power to change. And why should we refuse? Because we’re going to take it with us? Please…
Giving isn’t about the receiver or the gift but the giver. It’s for the giver. One doesn’t open one’s wallet to improve the world, although it’s nice when that happens; one does it to improve one’s self. I give because it’s the only concrete way I have of saying that I’m glad to be alive and that I can earn my daily bread doing what I love. I hope that you will be similarly grateful to be alive and that you will also be glad to do whatever it is you wind up dokng…even that guy who’s going to end up as the concierge at the Carlyle Hotel. Giving is a way of taking the focus off the money we make and putting it back where it belongs—on the lives we lead, the families we raise, the communities which nurture us…
I don’t as a rule talk about charitable giving; I actually do happen to believe that the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing…or if it does, it shouldn’t discuss it. Today I’m going to make an exception to that rule. I intend to give $20,000 to Dutchess Outreach, in honor of the Class of 2001. I would take it kindly if those of you who are here today would help to match that amount. Each strictly according to his or her resources; nobody gets hurt. I don’t ask that you do this because it will solve the problem of hunger and want in Poughkeepsie or Dutchess County, let alone in the whole world, but because you’ll enjoy your own coming meal more fully knowing that you shared your joy and your good fortune in having been a part of this happy occasion. And don’t let it be a one-shot. Let it be the beginning of a life’s giving, not just of money but of time and spirit. It repays. Not least of all because it helps us remember that we may be going out broke, but right now we’re doing okay. Right now we have the power to do great good for others and for ourselves. So I ask you to begin the next great phase of your life by giving, and to continue as you begin. I think you’ll find in the end that you got far more than you ever had, and did more good than you ever dreamed.
Thank you.
http://commencement.vassar.edu/2001/010520.king.html