Brevity
At a memorial service for my father at the University of Cincinnati, a man, now in his 60s, told a story I’d never heard. Every week for four years, my father hired a student to drive him 1.5 hours to Columbus to meet with the Ohio State University system and the Governor. One week, the Ohio system would present their arguments for denying the University of Cincinnati entrance into the system. The next, my father would present his position. This man, then a student/driver, remembered a week when the Ohio System reps spoke with slides and graphs and mimeographed handouts for 2.5 hours.
The next week, my father spoke for less than two minutes saying something like:
“The purpose of higher education is to give opportunity. The purpose of free access to higher education is to give opportunity to every person. And when every person has opportunity to work and contribute, our state flourishes. The people of Cincinnati are the people of Ohio.”
In July of 1977, 158 years after its founding, the University of Cincinnati joined the Ohio State system.
In a recent “Letter from an American” from Heather Cox Richardson reminded me of Lincoln’s two-minute Gettysburg Address. What I didn’t know, is that it followed a 2.5 hour speech by…someone else. Which speech do we know today?
John F. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon,” speech delivered in 1962, seven years before we found our feet on the moon’s surface, was shorter than a TED Talk.
Greta Thunberg’s astonishing “How Dare You” speech to the UN at age sixteen clocked in under five minutes and gave voice to a generation and accelerated the power of people and actions of governments to halt the damage we do to our planet.
In 1963, Martin Luther King spoke the ever resonant words, “I have a dream.” The entire speech was fifteen minutes.
In this season of waning days and bundled nights, I am working on brevity. To make space, invite in, hear, learn, pay attention, enjoy, elevate, allow, celebrate, honor.
This season, as we radiate warmth and light, we illuminate those around us.
Posts on focusing the light on others: