Noblesse oblige, an update

Albert Einstein gave up more than a few quotable utterances in his time. I was reminded of one of them yesterday.

Mary and Daughter One and I attended Daughter Two’s commencement ceremony at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Which meant sitting through a number of speeches. The one by MIT President L. Raphael Reif was interesting and entertaining and touching. Others were fine I suppose but by far the speech that most impressed and most deeply touched us was by Joanne Zhou, the graduating senior class president.

She spoke of the elements that brought them all to this great day and pointed out eloquently and correctly that the biggest factor in their success was the role each other played in their collective lives. I know this was true for Two. We did a passable job as parents and she has the best seester in the known world. She had some great teachers at critical junctures and a couple who really stood out as mentors. And of course, it didn’t hurt that like her seester she had a world class brain.

It was a wonderful event, hard seats and two hours of diploma distribution notwithstanding. And now both One and Two have their degrees and their starts on life. I am so proud of them.

I look back on all the odd twists and turns in my life and I just can’t figure out how I ended up here. I am not complaining; I am part of a family that while not perfect is as close and loving and supportive as any I could name.  And let’s face it – father doesn’t always know best, if you really did leave it to Beaver your kids would not survive puberty and the Brady Bunch don’t exist in real life, thankfully.

We’re not perfect but we’re pretty good. And I know lots of other families that are pretty good. You don’t have to see your kids attend MIT or pursue their childhood dream of performing to be proud of them. Truth is, that’s not the part that makes us most proud.

That quote of Einstein’s that I was reminded of at commencement tells us that “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act. “

He was right. Both our daughters are among “those who have the privilege to know.” And both of them are people who care deeply, believe strongly and advocate passionately. I’ve no doubt they will act.

And that’s the part that makes this dad so proud.