Lettered Pieces of Advice
*based on Tim Minchin's graduation speech
One
Two
"Don’t seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away.
Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might find you get some as a side effect.
We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Homo erectus got eaten before passing on their genes."
Three
"Exercise. I’m sorry you pasty, pale, smoking philosophy grads arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve
as you watch the human movement mob winding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence.
You are wrong and they are right. Well you’re half right. You think therefore you are but also you jog therefore
you sleep therefore you’re not overwhelmed by existential angst. You can’t be can’t and you don’t want to be.
Play a sport. Do yoga, pump iron, and run, whatever but take care of your body, you’re going to need it.
Most of you mob are going to live to nearly 100 and even the poorest of you will achieve a level of wealth that
most humans throughout history could not have dreamed of. And this long, luxurious life ahead of you is going
to make you depressed.But don’t despair. There is correlation between depression and exercise.
Do it! Run, my beautiful intellectuals run."
Four
"Define yourself by what you love. I found myself doing this thing a bit recently where if someone asks me
what sort of music I like I say, “Well I don’t listen to the radio because pop song lyrics annoy me,” or if someone
asks me what food I like I say, “I think truffle oil is overused and slightly obnoxious.” And I see it all the time
online - people whose idea of being part of a subculture is to hate Coldplay or football or feminists or the Liberal Party.
We have a tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff. As a comedian I make my living out of it. But try to also
express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise
of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro stuff not just anti stuff."
Five
"Be hard on your opinions. A famous bon mot asserts opinions are like assholes in that everyone has one.
There is great wisdom in this but I would add that opinions differ significantly from assholes in that yours should be
constantly and thoroughly examined. We must think critically and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs.
Take them out onto the verandah and hit them with a cricket bat. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases,
your prejudices, your privileges. Most of society is kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate
false dichotomies and then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions. Like two
tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts."
Six
"Respect people with less power than you.
I have in the past made important decisions about people
I work with – agents and producers - big decisions based largely on how they treat
the wait staff in the restaurants we’re having the meeting in. I don’t care
if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you
on how you treat the least powerful. So there!"
Seven
"Remember it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here.
You are incalculably lucky to be born and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family who encouraged you
to go to uni.Or if you were born into a horrible family that’s unlucky and you have my sympathy but you are still lucky.
Lucky that you happen to be made of the sort of DNA that went on to make the sort of brain which when placed in a
horrible child environment would make decisions that meant you ended up eventually graduated uni. Well done you
for dragging yourself up by your shoelaces. But you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that dragged you up.
They’re not even your shoelaces."
Thanks for looking & reading!
