“Being kind is just as important in life as being smart”
BY PAMELA WALLIN
Editor's note: The following is excerpted from the convocation address given by Pamela Wallin, consul general to New York and one of Canada's best-known broadcast journalists, when she received an honorary degree Feb. 21.
It is said that each person's life is lived as a series of conversations. For me, that is quite literally true. I've had thousands of those exchanges professionally, in the glare of the TV lights. Now those conversations happen discreetly and mostly behind closed diplomatic doors.
But from each of those conversations, I've gleaned some insight about the instinctive curiosity and generosity of the human spirit.
And as we all know, our flaws and failures teach us, too. Crisis often defines character. It shows us what we're made of. I once asked Rick Hansen, the “Man in Motion,” whether given what he knows today — and his life in a wheelchair — if he had it to do over again, would he get into the back of that truck with a drunk driver at the wheel? His answer was an emphatic “Yes.” Why? Because he believes the tragedy forced him to dig deep.
“We are a combination of what we're born with, the things that happen to us, our environment and the choices we make,” he explained. “I wouldn't have had the opportunity to find out who I was if this hadn't happened to me.”
We are indeed curious creatures.
There was a conversation with the late Al Purdy, the poet who announced that I, as a journalist, had the best job in the world — except, he said, for that of the poet.
“How could ‘poet' be the best job?” I asked. “You make no money, there's little respect or fame in literary circles, and your books are seldom bestsellers!”
The wrong test for success, he said.
Poets, he explained, are observers who see with their eyes and their hearts, and this allowed him to live by his mantra, which was simply to “stay stupid.” This, he said, simply means “keeping your mind open.”
Then there was one of those “aha!” conversations with the late scientist Stephen Jay Gould, a genius at translating science for the layperson, who quoted the words of the great British writer G.K. Chesterton. Roughly paraphrased, he said: “The essence of art is limitation.” His point was that the most important part of any painting is its frame. It tells us what we're looking at and which side is up.
We must learn to recognize that there are boundaries to what we can do in life, too, and know our limits. It's not about backing away from challenges; it's about putting your effort into what matters most. In other words: “Framing your world, then focusing on where you can make a difference.”
A wise old journalist, Sydney Harris, put it this way: “An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done — or left undone — in the short run determines the long run.”
This will prove true in every single personal or professional relationship we have. In my professional life, the Canada-U.S. “relationship” is the frame for my world. Where I choose to try to make a difference is on the front line of the largest economic relationship in the world.
But my years as a journalist have also framed my approach.
It is the task of the journalist — simply put — to inform minds and provide perspective so that others can choose wisely. That, as it turns out, is precisely the job of the diplomat. Because without perspective, context, a sense of history and a knowledge of the present, how can we have an accurate and informed picture of ourselves or our neighbours? It's a tough task in the world of 24-hour news, blogs and reality TV, which is anything but!
Thomas Paine, an American philosopher and journalist who lived and wrote in the 1700s, said we must all learn to think thoughts other than those we're used to thinking, to hear with others' ears and to try to see the world through others' eyes.
That is my job — to see the world through the eyes of the country in which I am a guest (a country that is profoundly scarred and still healing) and then translate that for others. In other words, to offer perspective.
The diplomat's job is the reporter's unrequited dream: the chance to live and breathe another place, to come to know it — its nuances, its nature.
The job also gives me a unique view on my own country — from a distance and from a very different vantage point — and I see some troubling signs. For example, the anti-Americanism that has spread in our country is not a very useful or constructive response. And we express these views at our peril — not for fear of some punitive American retaliation but because it's the antithesis of what we purport to be.
And in my view, “not being Americans” simply does not qualify as an affirmation of Canadian sovereignty.
Even a fundamental disagreement over the war or the fact that some don't like a president's politics or personality should not — and must not — blunt our sensitivities to the true nature of the violation Americans have experienced with 9/11 or to the reality of our own vulnerability.
In the post 9/11 world, we can't risk operating in a world of simplistic reactions or outdated stereotypes: black hats/white hats, good guys/bad guys. There is simply too much at stake.
There are many wise words on this topic, like this old adage from one of the late and great journalists, Edward R. Murrow: “To be persuasive,” he said, “we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. And to be credible, we must be truthful.”
Our actions, and our reactions, will define us.
I know I am considered a successful person — in part because I spent so many years on television and our culture often sees celebrity and success as interchangeable.
But I have come to measure my success in other ways: first, in terms of an ability to adapt and change and, when necessary, reinvent myself. Experience has taught me that the risk and the effort are always worth it.
But without my friends and family, it would not have been possible. All have given me great and good guidance in life. They had high expectations, and they were there to help me meet the challenges. They helped me find and set my moral compass. And so, in the end, I have come to measure my success by the company I keep.
We are all a product of the people and the place we call home. Family and community shape attitudes and craft value systems. Families are our first mentors. We learn from them a clear sense of the importance of keeping attuned to our own moral compass. It allows us to have the courage of our own convictions.
So I am thankful to have grown up in a home where my mother, the English teacher, taught me to speak my mind, but only when that mind was informed. And where my father taught me how to inform myself. He always said: “Go look it up and then we'll talk about it.” In other words, he taught me how to think and to use my own judgment. And to do my homework!
But the single most important thing they taught me — by example, not by lecture — is that character trumps genius. In other words, being kind is just as important in life as being smart.
So your compassion and concern, your instinct and intuition — as well as your education — will prove valuable in understanding why things happen and learning from that and reacting to it. That's what makes us a caring citizen — a participant, not just a bystander.
For the last few years as a student, you have been an observer, learning the theories of politics or economics or the meaning of a literary work or the importance of a scientific truth or mathematical law. Today, you are graduating from observer to participant, and you are about to discover the wonderful “burden of choice.” Your education is a tool to help you understand the choices you will make.
But learning is not about knowing for knowing's sake. It's about knowing so we can make a difference, and about understanding that the decisions you make will matter — and not just to you.
We must, as individuals, not only be able to think and analyze but also know what's the right thing to do. Every single day of your life, you will be called on to make value judgments. And you'll need intuition about people and a good gut instinct about what's right and wrong. Your moral compass will need to be set.
So here's the sum of what I've learned — so far — in life:
