08 December 2008
Our Choices Write a Story
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer spoke to the graduating class of the New School University in New York City in 2005. (Excerpt used with permission.)
The best advice I received when I was your age was from a former law school dean, Bayless Manning. And I shall repeat it. Bayless understood that I, like you, was anxiously wondering: What comes next? He pointed out that when we make an important personal decision, we rarely know more than 10 percent of all we would like to know. We know that our decision will open certain doors, but we often cannot know which ones it will close. We agonize over the decision, but sometimes agonizing does not help. Sometimes we must simply choose. Once we reach a decision, our lives then shape themselves around the choices that we make. Those choices then write a story – and that is a metaphor I have found useful. Every person’s life is a story of passion, with its moments of joy and happiness, of tragedy and sorrow. And each person’s story is different, each from the other….
What we do and how we explain our choices tell us who we are. We cannot escape the negative meaning that a failure of integrity – a failure to live up to our own standards of right and wrong – will give to the stories we ourselves shape. I agree with the philosopher who said that money can vanish overnight, power can disappear, reputation can evaporate, but character – personal integrity – is a rock that stays secure.
