Toni Morrison Commencement Address: On Adulthood & The Limitations Of Desire

“I am sure you have been told that this is the best time of your life.  It may be.  But if it’s true that this is the best time of your life, then you have my condolences.  Because you’ll want to remain here, stuck in these so called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain.  One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic designed to maintain hunger for stasis.  While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being eroticized into eternal juvenilia. . . There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. . . The process of becoming one is not inevitable.  Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.”  Wellesley, Massachusetts 2004