Felician
Graduates Told to Avoid Seeking Happiness
in
their Quest for Future Success
Lodi
and Rutherford, NJ—As the nearly 300 graduates of Felician College celebrated
the completion of one journey and prepared to embark upon another, commencement
speaker Father Michael Duffy instructed them not to seek out happiness.
“Don’t seek happiness, because that’s not a goal.
It is a byproduct—something that happens because you are doing
something else,” said Father Duffy as he addressed an auditorium overflowing
with the graduates, who comprise Felician’s largest graduating class yet, and
their families and friends. Using
an analogy of rocks in a jar, Father Duffy spoke of filling a jar with rocks,
pebbles and sand. The large rocks,
he said, represent the most worthwhile things in life—family, friends, health,
and faith. The pebbles, he said,
represent the things that are nice but not essential—a big house, nice car,
vacations. The sand, he said,
represents the “stuff” in people’s lives—clothes, gadgets, toys.
It would be easy, he warned, to fill the jar with sand and leave no room
for anything else. The secret to a
happy life, he said, lies in the ability to “wrap knowledge in compassion and
share it with others to make a difference.”
Referring to September 11, Father Duffy told the graduates they have an
important role ahead. “We live in
a broken world. Who is going to
repair it, if not you? We live in a world of hate.
Who is going to bring love, if not you?” he asked.
“Sow love where you see hate. Sow
light where you see darkness. Sow
peace where you see war…and then, incidentally, you’ll have a life filled
with happiness.” True happiness,
he said, comes from turning to those less fortunate and serving them with love.
An
emphasis on service was a common thread throughout the two-hour ceremony. Two honorary doctorates were given in recognition of lives
lived in service. One went to
Father Michael Duffy, O.F.M., who has spent more than 40 years serving others
through his ministry. Currently a
director of Philadelphia’s well-known St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen that
serves 400 people a day, Father Duffy became a national figure in the days
following the September 11 attack, when he delivered the homily for his friend
Father Mychal Judge, the fire department chaplain who died under the collapse of
the world trade centers while giving last rights to fallen firefighters.
The other went to Sister Mary Agatha Cebula, C.S.S.F., who has spent more
than 40 years in the fields of nursing and teaching.
Her recent role as Administrator of the St. Ignatius Nursing Home in West
Philadelphia has left an indelible mark on the lives of the economically
challenged elderly and infirm citizens who have benefited from her innovative
leadership that has resulted in a three-fold expansion plan to improve the
once-fragile facility.
Service
was again brought to mind as Father Duffy recognized members of the graduating
class by name for volunteer service they’ve performed, including that of
valedictorian, Agnieszka Ziebowicz, who travels 120 miles regularly to volunteer
at a hospital in Delaware. With a
perfect 4.0 grade point average and a life exemplified by service to others,
Ziebowicz served as an inspiration to graduates, faculty, and families alike as
she addressed the class of 2002. Drawing
from the core curriculum’s theme of a “Good Life,” she told her fellow
graduates that “a good life” is a life of service and sacrifice. “While we
don’t know what the future will bring, we do know what our roles need to
be,” she said as she spoke of the importance of contributing to the greater
well-being of society. “Strive to
always go beyond what is expected…aspire to enrich your own life by enriching
the lives of others.” And “have the courage,” she said, to “dream beyond
what is merely conventional.”
Accomplishing
more than is expected and going beyond the conventional is something Ziebowicz
models in her daily life. As a
native of Poland who came to the United States to study at Felician College,
Ziebowicz excelled in a land and culture foreign to her.
She graduated with two majors—one in psychology and one in
philosophy—and completed two highly complex senior theses: “The
Psychological Hermeneutics of Suspicion—Conscious and Unconscious Meanings of
Being a Religious Person,” and “Vanquishing the Idols of the
Mind—Nietzsche as an Anti-nihilist.” Ziebowicz’s
completion of undergraduate studies serves as a passageway to a future in which she
hopes to make greater contributions to society through a career in medicine.
She plans to complete an intensive 18-month program to earn the necessary
science requirements for medical school and then begin her medical studies
towards the completion of her goal to become a doctor.
As she
begins this trek into a future of horizons yet to be discovered, Ziebowicz
will no-doubt draw from the words she spoke in her commencement-day address:
“An unexamined life is not worth living.”
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